My Altar

Recently I rearranged my family room where I have my altar to accommodate an extra piece of furniture — another filing cabinet for my personal paperwork etc. My altar has grown over the years from a few statues and figurines on a windowsill, to the top of one filing cabinet  beside my desk and now is spread over the top of two filing cabinets which stand beside each other. My collection of dragon statues has also grown substantially so rather than have them all crammed together in the one area I now have dragons in different places in the room. Here’s a few photos (click to enlarge each one)…

My altar at Imbolc (August) 2008 — on top of my filing cabinet

Imbolc (August) 2010 — 1 cabinet is much deeper than the other so it backs onto the smaller one. Its drawers open from the end of the altar. A piece of particle board (with packing under one end) sits on top to cover the height difference between the 2 cabinets.

My new altar is big enough to include display/storage space for my tools plus a clear working area in the centre.

East (oil burner, censer, bell, wand) and South (stone ‘egg’, salt lamp, green-earth-dragon-on-book storage box)

West (chalice, selenite spire, scrying bowl, beach rocks, cauldron) and North (athame, salt tealight holder). Candle in foreground and charcoal block/herbs in bowl were part of some spellwork.

Dragons of the East – Air

Dragons of the North – Fire

The northern corner also has a drawing of a dragon (computer graphic created  by my son ‘J’ for his Year 10 “Major Work” for Visual Art) as well as my first dragon sword. And yes, I know there’s a painting of the ocean there as well, but the painting looked best on that wall. It does feature the sun, so that counts as fire in the northern sky …although the painting is of a sunrise (east) or sunset (west). Oh well, it was too difficult to get everything absolutely perfect …some compromises had to be made.

My son’s artwork 😀

Dragons of the West – Water

Dragons of the South – Earth

Some of you might be wondering about the directional correspondences I’ve used — they are correct as I’m in the southern hemisphere where the sun travels through the northern sky, putting the “Fire” quarter in the North instead of the south as it is in the northern hemisphere. There is a river just west of my house so it’s quite appropriate to have water in the west, even though I’m on the east coast of Australia with the ocean in the east.  Directional correspondences vary depending on where you are or who you’re talking to …it’s a whole other topic and best left for another time. 😀

See more at My Altar (2).