Traveling Altar
By: The Tender Flame
Tags: Queer, Witch, Witchcraft, Altar, Spirituality

I feel I should preface this post with this — an alter is not an altar. Alter means to change, like you altered your hairstyle for your upcoming job interview. An altar is space for ritual—it can be permanent or temporary, as mine is. I have seen people use these words interchangeably — and understandably as they are only one letter different, which is confusing, especially for people who may be learning English.

An altar is common in many religions and spiritual paths — it is the place of honoring and ritual practices, which of course can look vastly different between different practices, but most altars serve this purpose.

My altar lives in an Altoids tin that a friend of mine pulled out of her neighbor’s recycling. Some people may not be attracted to the idea of using a discarded item to house their tools for ritual, but for me, this felt perfect. As an artist who loves working with collage and re-purposing the old into the new — spray painting an Altoids tin black seemed right up my alley.

In order to spray paint my Altoids tin, I washed it, dried it, cleansed with the smoke of burning rosemary and sanded it with a fine grade sandpaper in order to roughen the edges enough so the spray paint had a bit more to grip on to. I spray painted this outside in 4°C/39°F temperature, wearing a knitted beanie, a puffy jacket with the hood up, a face mask, and extra large kitchen gloves — in short, I looked bad ass! I sprayed the tin, let it dry, sanded off any lumps, sprayed some more, let it dry, sanded off any new lumps and sprayed it once again before moving the tin into the garage where it was warmer and drier, which allowed it to dry faster. I should say that if you are interested in doing this yourself, I highly recommend doing this outdoors or in a well ventilated area—spray paint is not human lung-friendly or environmentally friendly. The whole process of spray painting the tin took a few hours and honestly, it felt worth it because now I have a lovely matte black tin to house my altar. The insides were lined with paper that I drew stars on — I am on the fence about this and may consider painting this in the future, but for now, I like it.

I am still very new to the craft, but know this much — I love oranges, bay leaves, rosemary, candles, and creating sigals — so it only makes sense that these were included in my tiny back pocket sized altar. The rosemary and bay leaves were grown in the backyard, the orange peel came from an organic orange I ate a few days ago, the candle is an ordinary basic candle from a 50-pack, matches, and a golfer-friendly sized pencil and paper for sigal creation. I could potentially fit a small vial of essential oil or a gem stone, but I don’t currently feel called to include those items.

One thing I have noticed on social media especially is the prevalence of people purchasing altar kits on sites like Etsy and then unboxing them on YouTube videos. I think some of these altars are absolutely stunning and have provided inspiration for the future and more permanent altar I hope to create once I move to a home of my own — but I also really enjoyed creating my own little altar, the items I have included all feel important to me, it cost me very little money to put together and I don’t feel like I will be wasting any of the materials. Some of these pre-made altars come with lots of herbs, gemstones and essential oils that might never be used—and for me personally, I don’t like to waste things, let alone pay money to never use something. A few YouTubers like HearthWitch have some great videos on budget witchcraft that emphasize the importance of intention over tools. And I am so thankful for these types of videos because they have encouraged me to be mindful of what I am doing and served as a reminder that I do not need any fancy tools in order to practice witchcraft. I believe it is a common misconception for people to believe they need all of these fancy tools in order to be a successful witch, that said, I also believe if you know you will use them, by all means go for it!

And now, because I am a curious little elf, I want to know — do you have an altar? Is it something you created yourself or did you purchase a kit? Are there things included in your altar that you never use? Are there things you hope to add to your altar?

Thanks for reading and blessed be!