Altar Crafting!

Altar crafting!

I'm going to be posting a video within the next couple of weeks about altar doodads, from incense to closeted altars and so on. If there's anything in particular people want addressed, I'm all ears!

the fight is harder each year.

How to Write an Invocation:

Hey, you’re a god! Here’s why you’re awesome! We’re honoring you on this day. Here’s your offering. It’s appropriate to give to you for this celebration because Reasons. Here’s how it is given to you and how you receive it.   Yay, god! Take your gift!

If I might cut in to this waltz:

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The main reason my altar(s) are so pared down is because, if you haven't glanced over my blog, I'm car-homeless. I would like my devotional spaces, if and when I choose to share them, to be an example of what you can do even when you have nothing. They are not to be used to disparage other people's religious choices.

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I am not practically an ascetic by choice, though there is nothing wrong with choosing that path. I reiterate: I'm homeless. Before that, I was rather literally in the closet, and I used a set of shoe cubbies as my altar.

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My dream endgoal is actually a cedar shed behind my eventual house. Stone flooring, bead curtains, statuary, peacock feathers, flowers. Copper offering vessels, ridiculously expensive cuneiform tablets from Etsy, lamassu statues from a museum gift shop in Berlin, star maps and barley sheaves and lanterns. Everything with a meaning, a purpose. A certain amount of personal pride, sure. But I want that space FOR MY GODS.

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Because I'm a visual person, an artist, and when I'm in love with someone or something I kiss their ring while throwing the contents of my wallet in their general direction. Also, I write a lot of sappy poetry. Hence my blog.

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Live and let live. Be in good health, and don't cause yourself such undue stress at the sight of a post on the internet that you proceed to stalk the person like some sort of offended ekimmu. At the very least, there are better things to obsess over, like the influence of the printing press on the Protestant Reformation, or whether all that we see or seem is aught but a dream within a dream.

you say for the shrines don’t focus on elaborate displays? everything is secondary? listen to your own advice then

Hello again hate anon. I’m assuming this is in reference to my comments on @mastabas-and-mushussu altar?

Let’s use your BS hatred to teach others for a moment:

🔹An altar/ shrine can be as little as one wants or as large as one wants.

🔹An altar/shrine can have the bare necessities or have many additional objects and tools. Or only representations as a space to be a focal point for the Gods.

🔹An altar/shrine can be in a plain clean spot or it can be decked out with decorations.

🔹An altar/shrine can be a practical simple space for the person’s religion or it can be a piece of art.

🔹Altars / Shrines will also take different forms based on different traditions. Not everyone is the same.

🔹Someone else’s altars or shrines are no one else’s business. No one, I repeat no one, has the right to look at someone elses altar/shrine and say “thats wrong.” Or as you said in the last ask “gaudy” and “not focused on the gods”

🔹Any altar/shrine made with sincerity and love towards the Gods is acceptable and beautiful.

Mine are a personal piece of art, are very decorated, and usually have more than the minimum necessities on it. However, this isn’t always the case.

My altars can be elaborate:

Or only have the bare requirements of offering vessels and basic ‘tools’:

Or are tiny and plain without all the tools but are simply a shrine space I make for the Gods:

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Here are excerpts from a post I wrote about altars awhile back:

“ […] My altar and my idols are my everything inreligion. Prayers, offerings, any rituals, all come as a package deal to maintain my altar which is my relationship to the Gods. The importance to me is simply not fully describable, kind of like sometimes people can’t fully describe other spiritual experiences.”

and

“Some say that the gods can be anywhere they want to be, at any time, which I agree with. But animating an Idol makes the God tangible & visible, in my mundane, physical space. No astral, or dreams, or meditation; they are there [on the altar] and I am charged with taking care of this gift they have blessed me with.”

Heiress of Suns & Souls

What are your tips for maintaining an altar for a...

Anonymous said: What are your tips for maintaining an altar for a deity or group of deities? How often do you suggest changing water or bury

My altars are for the Gods. The piece of artwork, as I describe it, is specifically for the Gods. In all ways, it is offered to them and meant for them. If I want to craft one that is super simple or extra elaborate is none of your business. Altars are one of the fundamental necessary aspects of my religion. They are the core representation of my relationship with the Gods— just as the idols were to the ancient Sumerians. You know absolutely nothing anon, take a hike.

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Previous hate BS: https://michi-izkur-ereshkigal.tumblr.com/post/179488659203/your-altars-are-too-gaudy-and-not-focused-on-gods

Also, I have a side blog where I keep my altar related posts only, because they are important to me. My Altar Timeline

Just a little something for anyone who's worried about offerings. You can make fancy cakes and hunt down expensive historically accurate wheat. Or you can make a midnight run to Walmart and whip up some sweet, totally healthy and very appropriate deliciousness. In fact, I might try making some by squishing dates in a Ziploc and shaking that in a bag of chopped pistachios. Who knows. Is this what they call a life hack?

Two Babylonian Lullabies (BM 122691 and OECT 11 002)

This first lullaby is a loose translation, in order to fit a modern musical meter.  It can be sung to “Nettleton” (Come Thou Fount) or Joyful, Joyful (Ode to Joy) — I recommend singing lines 1-8, then repeating 1-6 and finishing with 9-10.  A closer translation of the same text is at the end, followed by a different, longer incantation to help a crying baby sleep.

Little one, who dwelled in darkness,        now you’ve come and seen the sun. Why the crying?  Why the worries?        What has made your peace undone?

You have roused the household spirits;        you have scared the guardian-gods. “Who has roused me?  Who has scared me?”        “Little baby woke you up!”

May you settle into slumber,        sweet as plum-wine, deep as love.

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