"What is the creature that walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon and three in the evening?"
Eliphas Levi put forth the Four Powers of the Sphinx and these powers were deeply related to the Magi of old. These powers became the baseline traits for anyone working magic and in the realm of the spiritual to gain wisdom. In Levi's own words he writes:
“To attain the SANCTUM REGNUM, in other words, the knowledge and power of the Magi, there are four indispensable conditions an intelligence illuminated by study, an intrepidity which nothing can check, a will which cannot be broken, and a prudence which nothing can corrupt and nothing intoxicate. TO KNOW, TO DARE, TO WILL, TO KEEP SILENCE such are the four words of the Magus, inscribed upon the four symbolical forms of the sphinx.”
To Levi, the Magi were carriers of wisdom and magical traditions and to be a magician one needed to aspire to be like the Magi because Levi also stated," magic is the traditional science of the secrets of nature which has been transmitted to us from the magi.”
So, in translation for one to be proficient in their craft they need to know what they are doing and theory behind it, they need to be fearless on that study, possess exceptional stamina and a strong inner strength, and to understand when to keep silent about their practices in addition to idle talk. Even though Levi brought these into modern light the wisdom of the Four Powers can be found in much older Hermetics and other mystery schools. These Four Powers also have elemental correlations:
TO KNOW - Air
TO DARE - Water
TO WILL - Fire
TO KEEP SILENT - Earth
The Four Powers of the Sphinx made it into ceremonial magical traditions (such as the Golden Dawn) and countless other craft traditions around 1950. Around that time it became known as the Witches' Pyramid (it is almost exclusively known by this today).
During the same time period Aliester Crowly also incorporated this into his Thelema and added a 5th power known as TO GO, which correlates to the element of Spirit. TO GO means that we must put our souls into our work and apply the other Powers to our every day life. This would in turn help us to create a balanced life both materially and spiritually. This addition is considered optional by many people and some traditions use it while others don't.
As stated before that this Witches' Pyramid has been incorporated into countless traditions and been written about in countless books. Though, some of the more notable appearances are in Paul Husan's Mastering Witchcraft, Lady Sheba's Book of Shadows, and Christopher Orapello's Besom, Stang, and Sword.
Even though this is commonly used for magical practices, I think the Witches' Pyramid is a pillar that should be used and put into practice with any spiritual path regardless of that paths use or views on magic.
Our ancestors and people today have been conducting sacrifice since time immemorial. The English translation of sacrifice comes down to give something up for the greater good. Though, the origin of the word is derived from Latin, meaning, to make sacred. The literary and historical evidence of animal sacrifice are extensive except where the actual ritual is concerned. The ritual aspect is mentioned in several Norse sagas, the Heimskringla, and portions of the Poetic Edda. Many observers mention sacrifice in their manuscripts as well.
The word and idea if sacrifice has gained a negative connotation in today's world. This is because of modern media, Hollywood, the Christian ideas of good and evil, ignorance, and an extreme disconnection with our food. Even though farmers and people in rural communities do this everyday without spiritual significance.
The truth is, the art of sacrifice is a very solemn, intimate, and respectful affair. The animal in question before the ritual is pampered and made comfortable as possible. This includes being calm around the animal as not to stress it out. During the ritual, the animal is thanked for its sacrifice and it can be asked to deliver messages to the Gods during this time. Then the animal is offered water and sometimes baptized by the water before its life is ended. The ending of the animals life is done is the most humane and respectful way possible. Then, the animal is prepared and cooked for the feast, and thus consumed by all.
It is truly amazing to me that even when presented with the truth about sacrifice people still repel against it and harsh judgements are made. It is sad that some of these judgements come from people that run in similar spiritual circles that have never experienced sacrifice themselves.
This situation has caused people who honor this practice to come up with a different term other then sacrifice. The most common alternate term is "Sacred Slaughter", which has led to a schism between it and the definition of sacrifice. Both words still mean to make sacred, but sacrifice is now considered the act when you do not feast on the animal after the ritual.
"Why did the chicken cross the road?" Is the wrong question that we have been asking for to long. What we should be asking instead is, "What's the chicken for?".
The chicken is for reconnecting with nature.
The chicken is for connecting with your kin.
The chicken is for connecting with your Gods.
The chicken is for connecting with the universe.
The chicken is for becoming part of the cycle of life.
The chicken is to truly understand sacred.
The chicken is to connect with your inner self.
The chicken is for becoming the focal point for vibrations and energy and feeling it channeled through you.
Although many tarot practitioners apply a Jungian psychological approach to their tarot work, there’s been a question as to whether Jung himself knew anything about tarot. In fact he did, and he would have liked to explore it more deeply but for a lack of hours in the day. Here are some of his references to the cards, although his tarot knowledge, especially of its history, was sorely lacking.
On 16 September 1930, Jung wrote to a Mrs. Eckstein:
“Yes, I know of the Tarot. It is, as far as I know, the pack of cards originally used by the Spanish gypsies, the oldest cards historically known. They are still used for divinatory purposes.”
[Jung was not always right: Current historical research does not support an original use of the cards by gypsies, nor were tarot cards the oldest known. The ordinary playing card deck (with many variations) preceded tarot by approximately 50 to 75 years. Tarot appeared first in Northern Italy roughly around 1440.]
On 1 March 1933, Carl Jung spoke about the Tarot during a seminar he was conducting on active imagination, demonstrating that he was a little more familiar with these images than we would have thought from just the preceding letter. This is a transcript of his actual spoken words:
“Another strange field of occult experience in which the hermaphrodite appears is the Tarot. That is a set of playing cards, such as were originally used by the gypsies. There are Spanish specimens, if I remember rightly, as old as the fifteenth century. These cards are really the origin of our pack of cards, in which the red and the black symbolize the opposites, and the division of four—clubs, spades, diamonds, and hearts—also belongs to the individuation symbolism. They are psychological images, symbols with which one plays, as the unconscious seems to play with its contents. They combine in certain ways, and the different combinations correspond to the playful development of events in the history of mankind. The original cards of the Tarot consist of the ordinary cards, the king, the queen, the knight, the ace, etc.,—only the figures are somewhat different—and besides, there are twenty-one cards upon which are symbols, or pictures of symbolical situations. For example, the symbol of the sun, or the symbol of the man hung up by the feet, or the tower struck by lightning, or the wheel of fortune, and so on. Those are sort of archetypal ideas, of a differentiated nature, which mingle with the ordinary constituents of the flow of the unconscious, and therefore it is applicable for an intuitive method that has the purpose of understanding the flow of life, possibly even predicting future events, at all events lending itself to the reading of the conditions of the present moment. It is in that way analogous to the I Ching, the Chinese divination method that allows at least a reading of the present condition. You see, man always felt the need of finding an access through the unconscious to the meaning of an actual condition, because there is a sort of correspondence or a likeness between the prevailing condition and the condition of the collective unconscious. Now in the Tarot there is a hermaphroditic figure called the diable [the Devil card]. That would be in alchemy the gold. In other words, such an attempt as the union of opposites appears to the Christian mentality as devilish, something evil which is not allowed, something belonging to black magic."
“If one wants to form a picture of the symbolic process, the series of pictures found in alchemy are good examples. . . . It also seems as if the set of pictures in the Tarot cards were distantly descended from the archetypes of transformation, a view that has been confirmed for me in a very enlightening lecture by professor [Rudolph] Bernoulli. The symbolic process is an experience in images and of images. Its development usually shows an enantiodromian* structure like the text of the I Ching, and so presents a rhythm of negative and positive, loss and gain, dark and light.” [*a Greek term used by Jung to mean ‘things turning over into their own opposite.’]
Dierdre Bair recounts in Jung: A Biography (Little, Brown, 2003, p. 549) that in 1950 Jung assigned to each of the four members of his Psychology Club an ‘intuitive, synchronistic method’ to explore. Hanni Binder was to research the Tarot and teach him how to read the cards. They determined that Grimaud’s Ancien Tarot de Marseille “was the only deck that possessed the properties and fulfilled the requirements of metaphor that he gleaned from within the alchemical texts.” Hanni Binder’s work amounted to very little as can be seen from her report preserved at the Jung Institute in New York. The group disbanded around 1954.
What was behind Jung’s attempt to gather all this material? Marie-Louise von Franz recounts in Psyche and Matter(1988) that toward the end of his life:
“Jung suggested investigating cases where it could be supposed that the archetypal layer of the unconscious is constellated*—following a serious accident, for instance, or in the midst of a conflict or divorce situation—by having people engage in a divinatory procedure: throwing the I Ching, laying the Tarot cards, consulting the Mexican divination calendar, having a transit horoscope or a geomantic reading done. If Jung’s hypothesis is accurate, the results of all these procedures should converge. . . . [*a Jungian term meaning ‘the coming together of elements in the unconscious so that they form a consciously recognizable pattern of relationships.’ Christine Houde adds, “The constellated material is activated in the psyche of the individual where it attempts to erupt into the field of experience.”]
“[This investigation would consist of] studying an incident (accident) by the convergence . . . of a multitude of methods, with the help of which we could try to find out what the Self “thought” of this particular accident. . . . The generally rather vague formulations of divinatory techniques resemble these “clouds of cognition” that, according to Jung, constitute “absolute knowledge.”
Von Franz further explains that Jung’s “clouds of cognition” represents an awareness on the part of our conscious intelligence of a far vaster field of information, an “absolute knowledge,” within the collective unconscious. These images, on the part of a “more or less conscious ego,” lack precise focus and detail. Thus, the realization of meaning has to be “a living experience that touches the heart just as much as the mind.” She continues:
“Archetypal dream images and the images of the great myths and religions still have about them a little of the “cloudy” nature of absolute knowledge in that they always seem to contain more than we can assimilate consciously, even by means of elaborate interpretations. They always retain an ineffable and mysterious quality that seems to reveal to us more than we can really know.”*
On 9 February 1960, about a year before he died, Jung wrote Mr. A. D. Cornell about the disappointing end to his grand experiment:
“Under certain conditions it is possible to experiment with archetypes, as my ‘astrological experiment’ has shown. As a matter of fact we had begun such experiments at the C. G. Jung Institute in Zurich, using the historically known intuitive, i.e., synchronistic methods (astrology, geomancy, Tarot cards, and the I Ching). But we had too few co-workers and too little means, so we could not go on and had to stop.”
“Such an experiment fits our description of not being forced, controlling, or manipulating, but it presents its own difficulties. How, for example, can we convincingly show that the divinatory procedures in fact converge, that appropriate subjects were chosen when an archetype was actually constellated, that the data was taken without biasing the interpretation, and that other extraneous factors are not distorting the outcome? These problems are not insurmountable, but to do more than “preach to the converted,” this experiment or any other must be done with sufficient rigor that the larger scientific community would be satisfied with all aspects of the data taking, analysis of the data, and so forth."
In 1984, Art Rosengarten (here shown with Tarot author, Eden Gray), as research for his doctoral dissertation, conducted an experiment very similar to the one described by Jung, in which he compared the tarot, TAT and dream interpretation. You can read about this experiment in his book, Tarot and Psychology: Spectrums of Possibility. I think Jung would have been pleased.
Adding it all together...
Though not a direct focus of his energies, Carl Jung, nevertheless, recognized tarot as depicting archetypes of transformation like those he had found in myths, dreams and alchemy, and as having divinatory characteristics similar to the I-Ching and astrology. Most of all, Jung believed a person could use “an intuitive method” to understand—through tarot’s reflecting the collective unconscious into a “cloud of cognition”—the meaning in a present, prevailing condition.
Here’s another statement by Jung on “clouds of cognition,” from the chapter, “On Life after Death,” in Memories Dream, Reflections, p 308. He states that i sen the “space-timelessness” surrounding an archetype there exists a diffuse cloud of cognition that contains “primorial images with many aspects” or “a “diffuse omniscience” but no discrete contents (that is, subjectless). For cognition to happen these potentialities [my word] have to be brought into space-time coordinates. Reading this entire chapter is absolutely essential to getting at what Jung saw as the source material for divinations.
“As I see it the three-dimensional world in time and space is like a system of co-ordinates, what is here separated into ordinates and abscissae may appear “there,” in space-timelessness, as a primordial image with many aspects, perhaps as a diffuse cloud of cognition surrounding an archetype. Yet a system of co-ordinates is necessary if any distinction of discrete contents is to be possible. Any such operation seems to us unthinkable in a state of diffuse omniscience, or, as the case may be, of subjectless consciousness, with no spatio-temporal demarcations. Cognition, like generation, presupposes an opposition, a here and there, an above and below, a before and after.”
For a different take, here is a bit of an interview with Jung on alchemy and predicting the future: “We can predict the future when we know how the present moment has evolved out of the past.”
Disclaimer: This article is a repost from Mary K. Greer's research on the subject.
"Just as in the physical body of the embodied being is the process of childhood, youth, old age; similarly in the transmigration from one body to another the wise are never deluded."
- Chapter 2, Verse 13 of the Bhagavad-Gita
Based on the principles of Breath of Odin (Numina) and Web of Wyrd {Tela), Vigilism affirms that the divine numinous essence embedded in a natural physical entity is imbued and carries with it some partial element; personal identity or the entire soul, of an individual. This type of henology assumes unification by return and is not dependent on any conditions of redemption. Therefore Vigilism asserts and emphasizes working for a good life by cultivating virtue or virtuous behavior as its doctrine of salvation.
"The soul never takes birth and never dies at any time nor does it come into being again when the body is created. The soul is birthless, eternal, imperishable and timeless and is never terminated when the body is terminated."
- Chapter 2, Verse 20 of the Bhagavad-Gita
When a person passes on, their soul goes to Hel (Spirit World) for an undetermined amount of time. At some point, the soul gets reincarnated and exists again in Midgard (Material World) to live another life. This cycle of reincarnation continues until the soul has m learned all of its lessons it needs m to,accomplished all of its tasks, and experienced everything it sought out to experience. Once this happens, the soul is freed from this cycle of reincarnation and the soul transcends to the Summerlands, a place outside of the realms.
There are three instances besides transcendence into the Summerlands that affect the cycle of reincarnation. The first one is that during on the lives the soul manages to impress one of the Gods or Goddesses to a point where that said God or Goddess invites the soul to a seat of honor in their hall, though the soul still has one more task to complete m (before final transcendence to the m Summerlands) at the said God or Goddess request. The second instant is when a person dies in battle, then that soul is brought into either Valhalla (Odin’s Hall) or Folkvangr (Freya’s Field); though again, he soul still has m one more task to complete (before final transcendence to the Summerlands) at the said God or Goddess request. The third instance is that person reaches true enlightenment on their current life and choose to ascend to the Summerlands or reincarnated for the good of their fellows.
"For one who has taken birth, death is certain and for one who has died, birth is certain. Therefore in an inevitable situation understanding should prevail."
The Noble Eightfold Path is grouped into three higher learnings for ease of teaching and learning purposes. The first higher learning is called ethics and it consists of Right Speech, Right Action, and Right Livelihood.
Right Speech
This practice considers being truthful, not participating in slander and other name calling, talk that may bring about hatred and other negative effects, and harsh and impolite language. The most interesting aspect of this practice is that one should avoid all idle talk or useless gossip. This basically translates as one should not speak carelessly - always speak with a purpose and if you have nothing useful to say then practice "noble silence".
Right Action
This practice is about promoting and pursuing honorable, moral, and peaceful conduct. One should not steal, avoid dishonest dealings, illegitimate sexual actions, and hurting life. This action also encourages that one should help other people to lead the same type of life. Right Livelihood This practice states that one should earn a living by honest means and not deal in weapons, intoxicants, hurting people or animals, exploiting people or animals, and anything else that could be considered illegal or that causes harm to anyone or anything.
The traditional western elemental correspondences are as such;
Earth: Relates to the North, the new moon, winter, the color green, life cycles, and midnight. It has power in grounding and that translates into the realms of protection, money, hearth, home, etc. In Tarot and various Pagan paths the element is represented by Pentacles.
Air: Relates to the East, the waning moon, spring, the color yellow, and sunrise. It has power in communication, moving through unseen realms of thought, wisdom, intellect, etc. In Tarot and various Pagan paths the element is represented by Swords while others Wands.
Fire: Relates to the South, the full moon, summer, the color red, and noon. It has power in heat, purification, destruction, passion, creativity, etc. In the Tarot and various Pagan paths the element is represented by Wands while others Swords.
Water: Relates to the West, the waxing moon, autumn, the color blue, and sunset. It has power in emotion, intuition, change, adapting, blessings, overcoming obstacles, etc. In the Tarot and various Pagan paths the element is represented by cups.
The Fifth Element: There are some more modern Pagan traditions that use and recognize a 5th element, the element of Spirit. This is also known as akasha or aether and is the bridge between the spiritual and the physical - part of the universal energy.
All of the information regarding the elements, their Correspondences, and their uses in Alchemy makes sense to me and working with them has never been a problem. So, I have never really felt like I needed to explore the subject at different angles, look through the information with different lenses, or meditate deeply on the elements and their connections.
It was not until coming across the Blacktree tradition that made me sit back and do a double take regarding the elements and their Correspondences. The Blacktree's interpretation (which was originally put forth by Robert Cochrane and is called The Northern Quarter System which is based out of the four winds of Celtic Tradition) is thus:
Earth: This is placed in the South becuase the Earth dwells beneath our feet.
Air: This is placed in the North becuase air is above us.
Fire: This is placed in the East becuase the sun rises there.
Water: This is placed in the west because water can always be found in the west. In addition, it is where the sun sets and is the home of the West Gate, where the dead are said to enter the underworld (Hel).
The elements, their powers, and other associations do not change or differ much other ways.
These correspondences also align with the four qualities given to them by the philosopher Aristotle - hot, cold, dry, and wet.
The Northern Quarter System is a more land based way of looking/interacting with the worlds and how the spiritual interacts with the physical and vice versa.
This system also gives us a variation on the traditional pentagram. It stays compass like and there is no discernible way to say there is a right side up or what have you. It also creates a need for different technique when using it to invoke or banish per the techniques put forth by The Golden Dawn in their Lesser Banishing Ritual and others. When invoking the person starts at the point of the element that is being used and traces clockwise and for banishing trace counter clockwise.
If one studies the lore and the history of the Norse it quickly becomes clear that their Gods are different then other Gods and Goddesses. These differences have been deduced by the lore, the Norse and their ancestors personally experiences, and all of the modern day personally experiences followers of the path have. The main reasons why the Norse Gods are different are thus:
1. They are not omnipotent
There are multiple instances and examples in the lore where various Gods go searching for knowledge and wisdom. One such example is Odin plucking out his own eye to gain wisdom from the Well of Mimir.
2. They are not immortal
The Gods rely on the Golden Apples that are kept by the Goddess Idun to stay ageless. They can also be killed. Such examples are in the death of Baldr and Kvisar (in addition to all of the deaths and chaos in Ragnrok).
3. They are fallible
There are numerous instances where they act out of emotion (Freyr giving up his powerful sword in his quest for love), are morally flexible (The gods made an oath if payment with a person to build a wall around Asgard but found a way to get out of holding up their end of the oath), and go to various lengths to get that they want (Freya slept with multiple dwarves to get the Necklace of the Brisings).
4. They don't necessarily have purviews
In the lore and history it is rarely stated that the Gods control certain aspects of the realms or are in charge of various elements. The Gods depicted in the primary source materials are larger then life personalities. The Norse, their ancestors, and modern day interpretations/followers of the path have attached various purviews to the Gods based on their personality traits and the types of myths, situations in those myths that they are involved in, the emotions involved in those myths, and personal experiences of the spiritual. These associations have also been popularized by the media, Marvel, and Hollywood.
All of these aspects with the combined knowledge and belief of how the Gods expect their patrons and kin to have a plan B (this promotes self sufficiency and preperation) in life and dealings (they do not pick us up and carry us in the sand) with them makes the Gods very humanistic. This humanistic aspect makes the Gods extremely relatable which helps those on the path.
This is how I talk about the Gods/the divine and relate to the Gods personality. Though, I have been part witness to and part of multiple conversations where one side is describing them like I have and the other side says yes but that is only how they are perceived and experienced with our limited resources (this is meant to represent our five senses, the limitations of our perception by our brain, and other spiritual limitations our physical bodies) - this connects with the fact the existence, time, matter, energy, and space are completely different for the divine and other spiritual beings. This ongoing debate (for lack of a better term) has inspired me to do some research regarding the divine and have gone back to the Vedics.
This has led to the conclusion that each God simultaneously exists in three different forms. The first form being the anthropomorphic one that the Norse, their ancestors, and the follows of the path experience and relate to. The second form being an celestial existence and this his how they interact on that level, and third being a cosmic intelligence. Cosmic Intelligence is the idea that the deities exist as a force the permeates and is a part of everything (including every person - the divine spark if you will) in the galaxy. It is described in the Srimad Bhagavatam 2.1.32-33:
“Oh King, the rivers are the veins of the Cosmic Person and the trees are the hairs of his body. The air is his breath, the ocean is his waist, the hills and mountains are the stacks of his bones and the passing ages are his movements"
In light of the Altars Four post I have decided now would be a good time to talk about something that I think is very important and more often then not misunderstood.
Modern society has commercialized Paganism. By this I mean that there is a general attitude that makes people feel like they need to have X, Y, Z to be considered faithful or a true walker of the path. This mentality directly feeds into the belief that for ritual work of any kind to be effective and to have an altar that won't be offensive to the spirits/Gods you need the X,Y,Z items and have to say things and move in an exact way.
This mentality is mainly perpetuated by the literature and the general attitude of people already involved which creates a self sustaining cycle. This happens because the litature itself and the tone (of how it has to be done) of it describes what needs to be on an altar/how to set it up, what items/ingredients are needed for various workings, how you should commune with the spirits, etc. This said litature rarely explains that you can or should improvise, make your own ritual tools, use your own wording, and write your own rituals/spells. Then people armed with these references (or just how they were taught) preach these "necessities" and thus, the cycle continues to perpetuate.
Do not get me wrong, I think it is great that we easily have access to Pagan litature and supplies. It is the "you need this" or "most do it this way" attitude that is intimidating and creates self doubt in the individual practitioner regarding their faith. I was a victim of this intimidation and self doubt for a very long time - this was what held me back from practicing for a very, very long time. It was not until a conversation with a High Priestess that cleared my beliefs of this need and made me realize that intent, faith, and effort are 90% of it. My first altar (I used it for years) was four different stones that represented the four elements in a little box and a tea candle.
People need to remember/realize/be taught that ritual tools are metaphorical and help one focus the energy and their mind. In addition, altar items are considered the same as above. Even the Buddha said many time, "My teaching is like a finger pointing at the moon. Do not mistake the finger for the moon." This is something important and powerful to remember when studying Paganism/Spirituality in any shape or form and Manly P. Hall goes on to elaborate that;
...wisdom drapes her truth with symbolism, and covers her insight with allegory. Creeds, rituals, poems are parables and symbols. The ignorant take them literally and build for themselves prison houses of words and with bitter speech and bitterer taunt denounce those who will not join them in the dungeon. Before the rapt vision of the seer, dogma and ceremony, legend and trope dissolve and fade, and he sees behind the fact that truth, behind the symbol the Reality. Through the shadow shines ever the Perfect Light.
These items/tools do not need to be exact or bought and can be improvised. The people's Gods and the spirits will not be offended if you do not have that $300.00 dollar statue of them in the window or some fancy hand carved hammer. A hand crafted token of representation and/or a trip to a thrift/craft/hardware store or the woods (be respectful and thankful) will work just as well if not better becuase the person put in time and creative energy.
Certain items or techniques may resonate with what or whoever the person is working with and those said items and techniques may make things easier when working with particular energy but it is not needed (remember to stay responsible and safe). Does a person need a green candle for a money spell to work? No. If the green candle will help the person focus their mind and energy for their desired intent then bring on the green candle.
It is common in Pagan, Occult, and various cultures to have Altar or three set up in or around their house. An Altar as defined by Webster is "an elevatedplace or structure, as a mound or platform, at whichreligiousritesareperformed or on whichsacrificesareoffered to gods,ancestors,etc." Do not let the word sacrifice scare you as it rarely represents the Hollywood horror angle in which most people come into contact with the word. It is despondent that sacrifice gets thrown around as a scare tactic and to change the narrative. In actuality, it is mostly in reference to giving up time, energy, resources, etc. Altars can be found in every church, spiritual sight, and most homes (even when it is not considered or recognized a such. Such as the pictures of relatives that have passed on the fireplace mantle). Depending on the intended use and culture or practice the Altar is found in conjunction with is going to depend on what type of items that may be on it. Some of the most common items are ritual tools, statues or representations of Deity and Spirits, divination objects, images or representations of ancestors, herbs, minerals, artwork, leaves, etc. The list can really go on and on. Some people have one Altar that serves many different functions, some have an separate alter for their work and their ancestors, other people may have seasonal Altars, and some people treat their Altars as something that is fluid as they add or remove various items (in addition to possibly changing the use or meaning of the Altar itself).
It is beneficial to have different Altars dedicated for different purposes. This allows the energy to stay focused in addition to the mind when someone is making use of said Altar.
In various traditions and systems (for example: Traditional Witchcraft) it is a common theme to find three different Altars suggested and discussed.
The first Altar being the Genius Loci. This Altar is usually located outside close to the person's house. Some of the main functions of this is to be a sacred area to leave offerings for spirits and Deity, a place to bless objects, a focus point for outdoor ritual, and to act as housing for the local land and house wights. In Heathen circles, this is known as a Harrow or Horg and is commonly made of stone.
The second Altar being the Ancestral Altar. This is usually located inside the home and its main focus is for Ancestral veneration. Usually pictures of ancestors, items that represent them, and even some of the ancestors personal belongings can be found on these Altars. The style of veneration various from person to person, culture to culture, and tradition to tradition. Though common threads do exist such acting as a place to leave offerings or messages, to ask for their wisdom, and as a sign of respect.
On my personal Altar there is a Hearthstone (it represents strength and foundation), a Skull (is a memento mori, represents our connection to the dead, and serves as housing for an ancestral spirit during ritual), and a message box (it's a wood box where I leave messages for my ancestors when I wish to communicate. During the full moon I burn any messages that may have been transmitted).
The third Altar being the Sacrificial Altar. This is the work horse of the Altars and is usually found inside the house. It is where a lot of ritual, meditation, prayer, and Magick is conducted. On it one can usually find ritual tools, herbs, depictions or representations of various spirits and Deities, candles, oils, divination objects (such as Tarot Cards, Runes, etc), and so on. There is no limitation to what can be found on a Sacrificial Altar and what can work is done with it. It is also something that can be moveable (and is usually considered to be more so then the Ancestral and Genius Loci Altars) depending on where the ritual is going to be.
There is a fourth Altar that is rarely if ever talked about, discussed, printed, and taught outside of the passing warning about not participating in ritual or conducting Magick if you are physical ill or mentally/emotionally off. This is the Altar inside of the person, their Divine Spark, and their mind. Outside the practitioners of Vedic derivities most people are so focused on conducting outward Magicks that they neglect their Altar inside of themselves. It is more important then anything else to focus on introspection, build that inner Altar, and keep it purified as much as possible. The person is the intent, the will, the conduit, and the lightning rod. An unstable person no matter how intense their focus, how precise their incantations, how elaborate their rituals and Altars, will never achieve the desired effects due to their malleable foundation.
