Summer Solstice: Our Home Altar

As with every spoke on the Wheel of the Year, I change the household altar to reflect the season. I find building a seasonal altar is a good way to connect to the changing year, to what is going outdoors in nature. I have a personal working altar in my study, which is more static in overall layout, and the altar I am showcasing in these pictures is our household altar in the living room. It's on wheels so I can roll it out into the middle of the space for group rituals, which is useful!

The two main aspects of Summer Solstice are 1) how the natural world is verdant and blooming in the height of summer and 2) celebrating the warmth of the Sun at it's peak (and also acknowledging that the days will then be drawing shorter again). The altar is set up to reflect those two things.

Summer Solstice Altar. Incense sticks are on a pentacle incense holder.

The altar-cloth is yellow to symbolise the bright summer sun, but yellow is also the colour of many of the flowers blooming at this time of year. I also have the yellow altar-cloth over a green knot-work and pentacle altar-cloth, but it isn't visible from this angle. I put down two altar-cloths to make sure the top of the trolley I use as an altar cloth is protected, as it's a vintage item of furniture and has already got minor damage to the surface that I don't want to get any worse. For printed altar-cloths, I buy them from a local importer that sells Fair Trade hippie goods, and for plain ones, I use scarves I've bought, usually secondhand on eBay or from charity shops. The yellow altar cloth is a scarf (and the same one I used for Imbolc).

Summer Solstice altar. Sun candle-holder in foreground. 

I like going for a symmetrical arrangement on my altar; I think the beautiful altars from the churches I went to in childhood have inspired me, as has the traditional Wiccan arrangement for an altar, and just my own enjoyment of symmetry and order. I like that sort of formal arrangement, I feel it's a balanced aesthetic. I am not so much into seeing half of the altar as 'feminine' and half as 'masculine' because I am not into the duotheism of Wicca or the gendering of arbitrary traits - the Goddess incense burner is on the left but as is the Green Man above her, and the Green Woman plaque is on the right (you can just see a corner of each in the image above). Instead, I'm going to be shifting the imagery to fire and air on the right, and earth and water on the left - I will be switching the Goddess incense burner to the right side next time, but I have salt (in a stone dish, representing earth, on the left) as well as the green lotus leaf incense holder, which I've categorized as earth/water due to the lotus, rather than as fire/air due to being an incense holder.

Roses from my garden.

I like putting plants that are in season on my altar, so I picked some of the roses blooming in my garden and put them in a little glass bowl. I actually grow a lot of colourful flowers in my garden; not a very Gothic thing to do, I guess, but I enjoy gardening, and the front garden is tiny so just has flowers in it. The front garden is actually looking a bit scruffy at the moment, so I have a plan to tidy it up in the near future, with some bark chippings in the flower beds to help keep the weeds at bay (although weeds are just flowers growing in the wrong place - I actually put pretty 'weeds' in pots; they grow happily with little attention, and some have rather nice flowers on them, like wild pansies). Some more solar flowers would be sunflowers or marigolds, if you wanted to put something really big and yellow on there and they're flowering at the right time for you. I don't like buying flowers when I can grow my own ones. Having real flowers that inevitably wilt is a good metaphor for many of life's transient things, including remembering that summer isn't forever. 

The two chunky green candle-sticks at the back are glazed in a wonderful rich green. I bought them secondhand in a charity shop. The two mottled looking candle-jars in the middle were gifts from a friend and they have little fabric leaves and charms on them. The Goddess incense burner was a gift from Raven. The sun candle-holder with a tea-light in it is another altar item that I have had for a very long time, probably nearly as long as I've been a witch. The pentagram candle holder was bought in the January sales a while back. I will soon post about our Open Circle ritual.