{"id":65,"date":"2011-11-21T17:34:00","date_gmt":"2011-11-21T23:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.wordpress.com\/2011\/11\/21\/one-altar-rebuilt-and-simplified"},"modified":"2011-11-21T17:34:00","modified_gmt":"2011-11-21T23:34:00","slug":"one-altar-rebuilt-and-simplified","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/2011\/11\/21\/one-altar-rebuilt-and-simplified\/","title":{"rendered":"One Altar, Rebuilt and Simplified"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a result of yesterday\u2019s near-catastrophe, I have spent the last day and a half disassembling my altar, cleaning it, and putting it back together.\u00a0 Keeping Frater Acher\u2019s recent post<\/a> in mind\u2014the parts I understood were rock-solid advise, which I will take into better account once I\u2019ve finished my year of complicating my magic with ceremonial studies\u2014I have greatly reduced the clutter of crystals and half-started magical projects.
\"IMG_4835\"<\/a>
It\u2019s a work-in-progress, of course.\u00a0 There are still a half-dozen gods and powers who need to be honored here, and it\u2019s almost time to transition from Samhain to Yule.\u00a0 A lot of my tools and crystals need better homes than I have for them now\u2014most prominently, the collection of wand piled on the left-hand side, for one, and the rock and tarot collections currently packed in that grenade box on the right.
Speaking of my wands and tarot cards, I thought I\u2019d take a moment to show them off since I had them all out while I was doing the cleaning.
\"IMG_4833\"<\/a>
Yes, that\u2019s more than one thyrsus you see there (\u03b8\u1f7b\u03c1\u03c3\u03bf\u03c2, more accurately transliterated as thursos, plural \u03b8\u1f7b\u03c1\u03c3\u03bf\u03b9 thursoi; dual \u03b8\u1f7b\u03c1\u03c3\u03c9 thurso probably not appropriate to this instance).\u00a0 The one on the left is newer, longer, and lighter\u2014more practical for carrying about; the one on the right is use-dedicated in mead-making and Beltane rituals and weighs a shit-ton.\u00a0 The plain iron, clay, and copper number in the middle is my general-use double-terminated wand.\u00a0 The willow branch was a gift which I haven\u2019t made use of light I ought to.\u00a0 The second from the right is made of copper, clay, obsidian, and amethyst, and I use it for healing work.\u00a0 The foot-long crystal on the right is lab-grown quartz and lived on my altar for a decade before being put to use on my ceremonial altar.
\"IMG_4831\"<\/a>
Fourteen of my fifteen tarot decks are pictured above\u2014there\u2019s also a Waite-Smith deck the size of the smaller Thoth (came in a set with, actually) which I have lent to a friend at school who is interested in studying the tarot.\u00a0 Both were gifts from Aradia, given at a time\u2014a month or two before Crowley holdings were put back into publication\u2014when Thoth decks were almost impossible to find.\u00a0 The Pamela Coleman-Smith Centennial set was also a gift from Aradia.\u00a0 The Gypsy Fortune Telling set was a dumpster find.\u00a0 The second, larger, Thoth deck was purchased for use in my ceremonial studies.\u00a0 From left to right, the second row down features the Goddess Oracle Deck, the Witch\u2019s Tarot, the Hansen-Roberts deck (my very first tarot deck), the Lord of the Rings Tarot (a gift from a lady I courted back in the early days of the KU Cauldron), and an Art Nouveau tarot deck.\u00a0 The bottom row shows the Shapeshifter Tarot, an old-school cardstock tarot with Waite-Smith major arcana and no illustrations on the minors; the Unicorn Tarot (which I have no idea how I got my hands on, but can\u2019t give up because I\u2019m a hoarder), another Art Nouveau tarot deck, and the Celtic Tarot.
Returning to the subject of my altar \u2026 it\u2019s almost time for Yule.\u00a0 I pretty much forgot about Mabon.\u00a0 Samhain has always gotten more extravagant treatment from me than any other holiday.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want to go back to forgetting about the seasons\u2014down that path leads to also forgetting about the moons\u2014particularly not while I\u2019m doing this whole ceremonial thing.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want to get any more unbalanced than I already am.
Seasonal altars was something I never really bothered with before living with Aradia, but even if I had I wouldn\u2019t have done Yule. Now that I\u2019m no longer with her, I\u2019m not really sure how to do seasonal altars. Yule has always been too much like Christmas, a holiday which I have hated with an ever-increasing passion since I got too old to miss how much it stressed out my parents.\u00a0 Between the annual ordeal of extended-family drama and the horror that was working jewelry during the gift-giving holiday, I pretty much had nothing but hate for the entire two-month stretch from my birthday until New Years, when the fervor finally went out in a drunken orgy.
I don\u2019t have to deal with those family members anymore.\u00a0 And while I may pick up some shifts in jewelry over the holiday, it\u2019ll be so mercenary on my part as to lack the usual sting.\u00a0 I have my sun-god mask, but his seasonal crowns didn\u2019t survive the move.\u00a0 And\u00a0\u00a0 Finally, I will actually be in Kansas City for the Sabbat, itself\u2014assuming that no blizzards take out the highway between here and there.
So the question remains \u2026 what will I do with my altar for Yule?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a result of yesterday\u2019s near-catastrophe, I have spent the last day and a half disassembling my altar, cleaning it, and putting it back together.\u00a0 Keeping Frater Acher\u2019s recent post in mind\u2014the parts I understood were rock-solid advise, which I will take into better account once I\u2019ve finished my year of complicating my magic with … Read More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-witchcraft"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8kUcm-13","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}