Altars- Our Sacred Spaces
A photo gallery of personal, group, and public Druid altars and sacred space.
To follow in a line of other posts asking for examples of altars (from John Beckett and others) here are my altar photo offerings. I wanted to start with pictures of the sacred spaces we had growing up with my family; but in days past, expensive and tedious film photography meant you didn’t take many photos of things around the house. I just remember having various statues and plants around the house that were described as ‘gods’ or special places. I’ve included a couple of photos from then, but most of my old photo albums are packed and – shock- all hard copy.
So after these two old photos I show some of the altars I’ve had recently. When I first started my druid training I did strive to have my rituals outside- which delayed my studies somewhat- but I did end up with lots of outdoor altars!) I also had a number of outdoor spaces that I cleaned up between ritual uses or meditations.
While I show several stages of formal and informal indoor altars, there were those times when I had very simple versions of them. Like my family I tend to also have meaningful grouped items around the house that are sacred to me. (You should have seen the creative use I put the top of my dresser when I was a child! I think most of us have a space that is special when we are young, but then we lose this connection.)
I’ve been lucky enough to participate with and see group and public altars, so I am also including photos of them. My definitions are- a group altar is for the use of a an allied group of people, and public altars- while set up by ‘believers’- are also used at events by members of the public. The photos end with examples of what I perceive are casual but devotional changes to the landscape or a public area by waves of individual people. So like the special artwork or plants I personally consider my altars, I believe there are times and places where we feel the need to express reverence by changing our common spaces.