The Perks of an Altar
I just finished setting up my altar in Ubud. It may be a placebo effect but I always feel grounded when my altar is put in place.
There is a moment in the arrangement of things that just seems to click. A moment where the mundane becomes suddenly sacred.
Placebo, materialism, and the importance of ritual to the psyche.
Maybe these sensations are placebo but what does that matter if it has a positive effect?
If we can feel it in our bodies, if it moves our psyche, changing the way we function then it is in its own way real.
The problem with modern materialism is that unless there is a chemical explanation for something having an effect it gets dismissed as superstition.
The difficulty with this is that the brain and body are constantly releasing chemicals.
Consciousness goes both ways.
Chemicals and the experience of the physical environment affect our consciousness but our consciousness and what it perceives also affects the chemicals of our body.
They may not have done an MRI on how good it feels to have an established altar or how taking down an altar feels like raising anchor but that sensation in the chest, in the body, that experience of the mind is real, it is physical, it has a chemical component.
Altars as axis mundi.
The ancients were sensitive to these internal experiences. To the way that act and symbol in ritual affect the psyche.
Cultures around the world hold special significance for altars and hearths. In many regions, the two are the same.
In Bali, there are multiple shrines in the home, from the family temple to the kitchen shrine of Brahma associated with Agni, god of fire.
In Vedic Hinduism, Agni is always called first as the fire ceremonies are used to invoke the other gods.
In Roman tradition, Vesta is called on first as is Hestia in the Greek.
Both are goddesses of the hearth and with it altars in the home and the larger communities.
These altars and hearths act as axis mundi for the community or individual. They bridged the space between the mundane and the sacred. Give orientation to the infinite experience of the spiritual amongst the finite experiences of the community and individual.
Altars open up the space, link the two realms, act a sort of signal flare. One starts offerings and worship with the gods of fire because these draw the attention of the other gods.
One establishes an altar because this draws the numen or attention of the psyche to spiritual practice.
How do you create an altar?
Figure out what works for you.
There are millions of people ready to tell you what you “need to do” to create your altar, which direction it has to face, what things have to go on it but what really matters is how it affects your psyche.
People have been creating different kinds of altars for millennia from the Ash Altar of Zeus on Mount Lykaion formed from sacrificial ashes and a retaining wall to the marble altars of churches, the prescriptions of the Torah for the tabernacle, and the traveling kit of a wandering shaman with items of bone, stone, cloth, and small cords to mark the boundaries.
If orientating your altar according to the directions gives it more psychological weight, go for it. If a special cloth, statue, incense holder, or crucifix gives it more numen then add it to your altar.
Mine right now is a glass bowl shaped to natural wood, filled with salt as an incense holder. Everything else I found here as an incense holder felt tacky but this allowed me to add some symbolism with what I added to the salt.
It also makes for a visually pleasing centerpiece. As a Balinese friend told me, “we make things beautiful so that we enjoy praying. So that we want to do it more.”
Arranged around this centerpiece are some special incense and things with symbolic value: sacred books, a stone, salt, honey, frankincense, a cross, and cords that mark space.
I bought a nice cloth with birds that look like phoenixes and trees to cover a small table that comes with my room.
The altar is a symbol and that symbol is only effective if it has an effect in your psyche, so build an altar that works for you.
What are your stories of altars?
Do you have one? How does it affect you? What does it feel like to take it down? To put it back up?
Love and share.
I’m starting something new. Writing every day as I put my random thoughts down on binary paper.
If you’d like to join me on this journey you can sign up for my email list here. I share thoughts, tips, adventures, and goodies.
