Best For:
Beginner Pagans & Wiccans building their first altar, readers interested in the why behind a spiritual altar, individuals interested in Pagan Eclectic Practices.
The Essence:
Read time: ⏰ 15 mins | Weight: ⚖️ Reflective| Mood: 🌿 Grounded, Inspiring, Sacred|
The Vault:
- Why putting you in your Altar is a Must & Why my spirituality meets creativity.
- The Hiking Altar, The Working Altar, The Tool Stand,
- Key Terms to know: Altar, Essence, Ritual, & Book of Shadows
- The colors meaning in Wiccan practice for purple, white, and black altar cloths.
Making Sure Your Space is More You:
If your like me before my fiancé and I moved then you know what it’s like to have your creativity fighting for space with the seasonal storage in the garage.
In a house where the kitchen table fits better in your workspace, your collections, spiritual space, and your creativity all end up in a fight for room on that kitchen table. This may keep your energy fragmented, if you’re like me.
After all, you are not just building a studio, remember you are building your manifesto. If your essence is not present inside your altar, spiritual work, or your craft, your work has no emotional core.
It cannot breathe life into anything, if it doesn’t even know who or what it comes from.
You. You. You:
It is time to stop keeping your painted portraits in your art stack and start hanging them in your own space.
You should know that putting yourself in your altar is one of the most important acts of the craft.
When you curate a space, you are creating a resonance chamber. You are not just organizing stuff. You are anchoring your essence into the physical world so that your intent can actually manifest.
If you are absent from your own altar, you are merely decorating. By placing your own essence…
your portraits, your specific memories, your hiking finds…
You are acting to transform a shelf into a focal point for your own power. You are saying, “I am here. This is the center of my world.”
The Hiking Altar: The Anchor of Energy:
For me it all starts at my hiking altar. This is where you find the absolute essence of me.
It acts as a topographic map of the miles I have walked since October 2021. This is a space is heavy with memory and growth. I have added bird’s nests, antlers, bones, fossils, stones, shell casings, and more over time as my collection has evolved.
Of course I have also included pamphlets from the specific trails I have conquered. As well as horoscope & crystal booklets, deity & fairy pictures all of which guide my path.
My more recent additions include fairy statues and a mix of American and foreign coins. Which I’ve also found over my treks.
You must anchor your altar in something that proves you have lived. By keeping these found items and gifted tokens here, I am not just storing objects. I am creating loop between my hikes, creative output, and spiritual journey.
This serves as a monument to my experiences and is a place where I hold my energy and as well as grief. It is the center of my altar for a reason. Everything else grows out from this place.
The Working Altar – Ritual, Reading, & Memory:
In front of this, the main altar area, sits a big, comfy chair. This is the place where I like to work. The table itself is covered in a purple, white, and black cloth for a very specific reason, tied to meanings of color.
- Purple: deeply linked to the Crown Chakra, which is considered the gateway to enlightenment, universal connection, and spiritual wisdom.
- White: the color of clarity, used to “reset” a space or an object so it can be used for new intentions.
- Black: a “heavy” shield. It is used to absorb, bind, and neutralize negative energy, toxicity, or unwanted influences. It acts as a sponge, taking in harmful vibrations so that they do not affect the practitioner.
This is the boundary line for my ritual space.
This is also where my Book of Shadows lives, along with my pendulum boards, my pendulum, and my rune stones.
I keep a selenite charging jar here specifically for my pens and spoons or other small items.
This table houses the stones from the Picture Rocks National Lakeshore stones from a trip I took with my partner, Kelsey. That was the same trip where we sprinkled my mother’s ashes. It is the one of the most sacred spot on my altar.
My non-traveling deck of tarot cards and my pressed flower book from the Blue Ridge Parkway, Asheville, NC, the New River Gorge, and Hawks Nest 2025 trip also live here.
Spirituality & Creativity:
Why have my spiritual stuff so close to my creative things? There is no real separation for me.
When I am crafting a windchime or polishing a stone for a a necklace, I am pulling the energy of these sacred objects into the work.
Having my BOS, my runes, and my mother’s memorial stones right next to where I pour polish or grind a stone keeps my intent sharp. It reminds me that I am not just a person trying to make money.
I am a crafter of sacred items, a rockhound in service to the land, and an eclectic pagan working in communion with the spirits of the places I’ve walked. Between this working altar and the hiking altar is a big, comfy chair where I spend a lot of time doing many different things.
- Making wind chimes
- reading cards or pendulum boards
- doing spell work or ritual work
- making necklaces or keychains
- whatever it may be.
The Tool Stand – Un-Ritualized Labor:
Then on the other side of my working altar is the stand for the gritty, necessary tools. This is where I keep my wood burner, Dremels, polishes, sandpaper, oils, and the heaters for the garage.
I’m here to say honestly not every piece of your process needs to be ritualized.
Sometimes, you just need an area to be functional. For instance maybe it’s a place to store the things you do not want to make sacred. This is the backbone of my workshop, it is what makes the ritual work possible.
The shelf just keeps the mess away from the magic. A place for the things that provide the friction required for the transformation of raw material into a finished ritual object.
The Production & Weed Table – Daily Necessities:
On the other side of the working altar is a stand with pull-out cubes, topped with a picture Luna helped paint years ago. Next to it is a small rolling table, the center of daily necessity.
The rolling table holds an ashtray with my roaches, a lighter, a grinder, and chapstick. I keep a mortar and pestle here and a tool for inspecting crystals.
Underneath this table in the drawers are various materials I use to make spell bags, wreaths, and windchimes.
This is the true alchemy of my small business and my spiritual practice. It is where the physical items come to life. By keeping my daily necessities alongside my spiritual tools, I acknowledge that the mundane is just as holy as the grand ritual.
The Shop Floor – Workflow & Logistics:
My saw table is completely mobile. I move it outside when I need to cut, this is a move I made in order to keep the shop environment more clean. Above the saw is the new shelf for heart rocks, alongside the running rock tumblers.
I have also had two cedar chests. One sits on the tumbler table hosting the non-running tumblers, while the other holds finished, non-delicate items, including tinctures, sprays, spells, cleaned fossils, and polished rocks. I also have an area dedicated to zines and flyers, with a shelf underneath for windchimes, wreaths, and other delicate finished pieces that cannot hang on my standard keychain holders.
Rocks are kept throughout the room in various pots and boxes. Other polishes and supplies are stashed in the shelving near my rolling area. The floor is a living part of the shop, covered in rocks that have yet to find their permanent home.
Occupying the Space – The Final Manifesto
I put up a skeleton, a trans flag, a mushroom flag, a weed flag, and rope lights to ensure the space felt more like me.
I put portraits out, the ones my partner and I painted of each other, and anchored them with candles, heart rocks and a sign that reminds us that not all those who wander are lost.
Putting yourself in your altar is the final step of the craft. When you stop hiding your paintings in your art stack and start hanging them under your own lights, you start telling the universe that your work belongs here.
Your altar is your manifesto. Look at your floor and at the corners you have ignored.
If you are still waiting for permission to build your own altar, you are already behind.
Go out there and move the seasonal decor in your way.
Make the space bleed with your own colors. You are the architect of your own sanctuary, and it is time to start building.
TLDR:
Figure out how Axton developed his spiritual and creative areas around his workshop and daily rituals.
Put the you in your altar and learn why your essence is the one of the most important additions to your spiritual space.
Realize not all spaces are for ritual functional things have their spaces and matter just as much.
Read More:
Altar. Moon Phase Cheat Sheet.
Key Terms Defined:
- Altar: a table or platform for the presentation of religious offerings, for sacrifices, or for other ritualistic purposes
- Essence: what is uniquely ours in the divine/human alchemy gifted to us
- Ritual: deliberate series of actions performed in a prescribed order to connect with nature, deities, or the sacred
- Book of Spells: also referred to as a grimore or book of shadows, is a sacred personal journal used to store incantations, rituals, or instructions.
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