…some ruminations on Altars and a Witches connectedness to the Land

The kitchen/dining room table made a nice altar and went well with the dragons blood candles and my incense didn’t set off the fire alarm, so on the whole I’d say things went well.

My friend Kym had to bow out on me when something came up with her family, so we will be trying for next month… or maybe the new moon… will have to talk to here about that!

I was thinking about altars as I set up last night and I realized that I sort of did have an altar for nearly a year or so in the house we were renting until earlier this year. I just really didn’t do anything with it. We had a galley style kitchen, the house had been built in the early 60’s, with a window on one end and the small window sill was tiled… so I kept a small altar on the window sill until Boots (a cat who has since run away for the life of a Tom) decided to investigate the windowsill and knocked things over… including my first cauldron… a ceramic bowl from my friend Nathan that I’d had for 10+ years, destoyed by random act of Kitty ~sigh~.

I just never really USED it… the altar, which is kind of against the whole point of having an altar… your supposed to pause at it during the day… contemplate…. fuss with it… perhaps refill the water here or light a stick of incense there… an altar is like the graphic user interface for ones deepest self and ones relation to the universe… you are supposed to use it and fuss over it and love it.

“It’s my own little altar, and I am going to love it, and squeeze it, and hug it, and call it George!”

Mother Celestial and Father Divine,
When next I craft a permanent altar, let it be one that I fuss with often! May I love it, and may it love me!

…ENOUGH with this altar sidetracking… the Circle itself last night was good… I rededicated myself to the Craft and asked for Their aid and continued inspiration. I hadn’t realized how rusty my magick was, I will be trying to Circle on each of the Moons phases for a while… I think I need to supercharge myself and re-open those intuitive channels I have let sit for so long…

Invocation went well… they didn’t have anything to say… so I read the Charges and thanked them for their attention…the invocation of Lord and Lady felt odd… part of that may be the whole not having done it recently thing… but I think part of it is the prevalence and power of the Element of Water here in Florida… even with the over population powered water shortages the earth remembers and Water is much more of a presence here than in Alaska and the invocation felt much more like Presence being poured into me rather than an sudden in rushing (inspiration in the medical sense?!) of Presence… I’m really not sure how to describe it.

I think part of this, and part of my serious and profound sense of disconnectedness when I first moved to Orlando a couple of years ago… which I am just getting over, is the connectedness that a Witch develops with Place. Grounding and Centering (please remember to do this, it’s important) all the time in the same area you develop a connectedness with the land and it’s spirits…

The same thing happens when we circle and when we call the elements, however you or your Tradition do that; we are touching the spirits of a particular place as well as a particular element. That’s my impression anyway.

When I moved across the country I didn’t spend any time preparing myself magickaly… hell I didn’t spend much time preparing myself physically…I was so deeply scared and so in denial…. my friends Michael and Mark did some heroic service helping me clean up my apt at the last possible minute so I could be ready to go. THANK YOU BOTH!!

Having done it, I could do it again; only THIS time I’d do it better and have everything boxed up and have said my farewells to the Land and the Spirits of Place…

Peace,
Pax