badstar

Some time ago, after setting up my altar to Hestia, I started putting my keys there, and sometimes rent or utility money when I needed to keep it separate but it wasn't time to actually pay it yet. At first, I was a little baffled. I wondered whatever possessed me to put such things on my altar, and when I went to put them there I would often quickly catch myself and remove them right away. Sure, it's a shelf right beside my bedroom door, things are highly visible there. But I never put them there before I started using that shelf as an altar. After a while though, It started to make sense in a way. Altar to Hestia, rent money, house keys...ok, those things all go together. I eventually stopped feeling like I was doing something sacrilegious by putting those things there and went with it.

A while ago, Pier One imports had these plates that I loved. Clear glass plates with red/pink/bronze painted metallic backs. I just wanted one because they were so pretty. But they were also like $20 apiece. And then one day I went in and they were on clearance. There were two left and they were like 3.75 each. So I grabbed one. No idea what I was going to do with it. I eventually decided to just put it on the altar- I didn't really have a reason for it. A few days later, I was getting ready to go to bed, I took the jewelery that I was wearing off and put it on the plate. Again, it seemed weird- up to this point, I had been putting my jewelery on the wooden ledge that goes around my room, which is just the same height as my bed. No idea why I did that. I removed it and put it on the ledge again. The next night I did the same thing. After about 3 nights, I gave up and started leaving my jewelery on the plate on the altar at night. About this same time, my day to day jewelery became more uniform. Rings- chalcedony, apatite, iolite (ad since I've found it again, garnet) I used to wear it only once in a great while, but I now wear my moonstone and iolite bracelet every day, as well as my flame and labradorite necklaces. My moonstone ring, for the moment, seems to just be living on that plate. I put them on the plate, then I light a couple of sticks of incense before I go to bed at night, and in the morning, usually the last thing I do before I go downstairs to leave is to put the same jewelery back on. Sometimes I just grab it and put it on as I'm walking out. I've only failed to do this once, I realized it when I was walking down St. Paul on my way to the train and all day I felt naked.

I have an altar set up in my room now. It's on the lower of the shelves built into my wall, low enough to sit in front of. It has a well, a fire and a tree. I'll take a picture tomorrow.

The well is represented by a large abalone shell, which is deep enough to hold water.

The fire is represented by a single candle sitting on a candle plate.

The tree is represented by a piece of driftwood that I found on the shore of a lake in Texas in 1998 and have had since then. It looks vaguely like a tree with no branches.

Also currently residing on the altar:

-The sphere of ocean jasper pictured below, which kinda looks like a planet, to represent the earth.


-The notebook into which I've been writing invocations that I've written for rituals

-my runes

-my Haindl Tarot

-glass incense burner

Future plans for my altar:

One idea that I had for this altar in the near future was to try to grow a bonsai tree for it- I've seen a tiny bonsai tree "gift kit" in bookstores, and while it's not an Indo-European element, I would like to include a small Zen sand garden. It seems to me that it would be good for meditation and contemplation while sitting at my altar. I may sit a small table next to it for holding things that aren't specifically for on the altar, like a glass of water, books or a journal.