Study/Studio Re-Decoration Part 3: Book Nook Update

My Book Nook is in a state of constant evolution, and I've made some minor updates. The first and most obvious is that I have re-organised my altar yet again. I do this relatively regularly, so this is unsurprising. The other is that I've been re-arranging the book-shelves (which I have not shared on this blog before, but it has turned up in my Instagram stories; I'm @domesticatedgoth on Instagram too), where I've actually come to a bit of a sticking point. What I would like is to have a lovely book-case of books arrange into one of those beautiful rainbows I've seen on Pintrest and Instagram, but I tried this, very unsuccessfully, as most of my books are neutral colours: black, white, grey or brown. Currently they're organised by descending height from tallest to shortest, and in order of subject. Eventually I will be getting a larger book-case, with Gothic arches, and my book collection is always growing, so I suspect that I might be able to have this book-case eventually dedicated to colourful books arranged into a rainbow, and the larger bookcase for the majority of books which are black, white, grey or brown. Currently it just looks messy and the mismatch effect offends my aesthetic sensibilities. 

Book Nook does actually contain books

I am still seeking more of these purple fair-trade moon mirrors. I nearly found a new one on Instagram, but it was out of stock. I prefer shopping second-hand, anyway, so I am still keeping an eye out for some on eBay or for one turning up in a charity shop. I would need to re-arrange the mirrors to open up a space for the next mirror. I can see myself in the large round one at the bottom; the others are just there for reflecting light around a rather dingy and dark corner. I really like the painting style, and the 'man in the moon' is one of my favourite artistic motifs. Speaking of which, if you look carefully on the corner shelves, there's a print of one of my drawings (the original is in my sketchbook, and I had it made into a print partly because I intend to get a tattoo of it). I's a crescent moon with stars, and I drew it for Inktober last year. You can see it properly on my Instagram. 

Moon mirror on book-case

One of the moon-mirrors that is rarely appreciated because it's not on the wall with the others, and is often partially obscured by the portiere curtains is this oval one depicted above. It looked a bit odd next to all the circular ones, so I decided to put it elsewhere. Initially I intended on putting it on a window ingo, but I didn't want the UV radiation in sunlight fading the paint, so it's in this obscure place in the Book Nook instead. The tassel hanging in front is from my altar-cloth, which is too long for my altar (I should either cut it down myself, or get it done professionally by someone neater than me). 

Three moon mirrors

I have re-organised the corner shelves, tweaking the display. It isn't a major change, but it's a change nonetheless. I actually feel like this corner needs to be more Gothic. I submitted these pictures to the Gothic Home Decor Enthusiasts group on FaceBook, and they gave some good advice about incorporating candle-sticks, and maybe some skull moons. I know some lovely creepy 'skull moon' design varients on the man-in-the-moon were available in the US last Hallowe'en, but I didn't see them in the UK. If I do include something like that, I'd not put it right near the altar as that's a sacred space, but I might put things like that on the black wall next to my sword, or hanging from the brackets of the shelf opposite (not pictured). 

Corner shelf unit

I wanted to put two Gothic arch candle-sconces, a matching pair, either side of the sword. I was bidding on two tall, then almost lancet style ones being auctioned on eBay, but with faux-stone moulding of architectural details and a matching grey faux-stone paint effect. I am not keen on faux-stone paint effects, and would have painted them gloss black to match my furniture, but unfortunately I lost out on the bidding at the last minute. I am now trying to buy another pair of slightly plainer Gothic arch candle sconces, and I intend to keep looking until I can find ones the right size and style for this corner of the room. I like that it is witchy, and that it has been described as 'magical' but I would like to add more elements of the overtly Gothic into the decor, not just in the architectural sense, especially to tie it in with the rest of my study, which is more Gothic (especially in the architectural sense). 

Large moon mirror

I would really appreciate both suggestions on how to better organise my books to be more aesthetically pleasing, and on how to make my Book Nook as Gothic (in all senses of the word) as the rest of my study, while maintaining the altar as a meditation space that is about religious practice rather than displaying my spooky stuff. 

Samhain/Samhuinn: Our Home Altar

Statue of Badb

Samhuinn is a complex holiday - an old one, but one that has changed many times over the centuries, and the Neo-Pagan version is in many ways as different from the historical version as the contemporary commercial version of Hallowe'en. For a historically informed account of the British calendar of festivals, I suggest looking at Prof. Ronald Hutton's book 'The Stations of the Sun' which is very educational and well-researched. While I draw from historical traditions, I don't emulate them entirely, and I don't strictly follow the rituals for Samhain of Wicca or any other Neo-Pagan groups that use the Gardner-Nichols eight-fold year; in this respect I'm somewhat eclectic.

There are two specific and distinct aspects of Samhuinn for me; one is the aspect of ancestor worship, paying respects to the honoured dead, and contemplating both familial and ideological ancestors, and the other is seeing Samhuinn as the start of the Dead Time until the Winter Solstice, where light and lengthening days return. I don't think there's any historical precedent for the concept of the Dead Time, but I've seen similar ideas in other Neo-Pagan writing, although it doesn't seem that ubiquitous. 

Skulls on the altar

For most people reading this, some concept of ancestral practice will already be familiar, so I won't explain that in too much depth, especially as that isn't something represented on this altar. Effectively, the ancestral practice is about reaffirming the link between those in the present and those who came before both in terms of being mindful and thinking about them, and in terms of reinforcing a spiritual connection at a time when the boundaries between this world and the Otherworld are particularly thin, which will have different connotations depending on personal beliefs as to the nature of the afterlife/afterlives, whether they believe in reincarnation or not, etc. I personally do believe in reincarnation, but other Neo-Pagans and Reconstructionalists have different concepts of an after-life with different ideas about how fixed after-life states can be.

Samhuinn 2018. 

In the past I have had a more Morrígan based Samhuinn altar set up - the one from 2018 is pictured, with my victorious Morrígan/Macha statue centrally, on a pedestal clad in red (a colour associated with the Morrigan, being the colour of blood) brocade cloth. Badb is on the left, hard to make out in these darker pictures as all the candle-flames are above Her statue. In front of the cloth-covered pedestal is a Samhain card with overt iconography of the Morrígan that stays permanently the rest of the year at my multi-aspect shrine to the Morrígan on the mantle-piece. I now focus more on Badb as a psychopomp than on the victorious war-Goddess aspect of the MorríganThe crowned skull is on the right, my best approximation at the time of (Brythonic/Welsh deity rather than Goidelic/Gaelic deity) Arawn, King of the Underworld/Otherworldv (in Gaelic mythology, who is King of the Otherworld changes, and each King serves a term, in Brythonic mythology Arawn is the constant King)
. 

Samhuinn altar 2019 - note the lack of a statue of the Morrigan

My altar for 2019 is blacker than the previous one, with a grey and black scarf at the base and the black and white pentacle altar cloth moved to Badb's pedestal. I wanted the altar to be sombre, funereal, a memento mori. Bloodshed isn't really the sort of death I want the altar to represent, more for it to be reflective, to be a place to contemplate our own mortality and the finite time all things have, as well as the cyclical nature of things. 

Next year I would like to incorporate my figure of an Ankou - a type of psychopomp spirit, very much like the Grim Reaper, but also like a Dullahan in some ways - a corpse (skeletal, usually, but sometimes as an undead old man) that drives a cart or wagon. Like a Dullahan, an Ankou is not a personification of death, or a death deity, but a psychopomp spirit that is subordinate to Death itself. There are various different stories about who became an Ankou and why. The Ankou figure I have is hand-made clay, quite simply designed, and is also a cone-incense burner, where the incense smoke comes out from under the hood, and he holds a 'soul' (a greenish marble). 

Samhuinn altar, frontal view. 

I would also like to put a representation of The Cailleach on my altar next year, as she is the Gaelic (especially Scottish) Goddess of the winter, who spreads her cloak of snow across the hills, and we get ice and snow from November through to February in varying amounts (it's actually between Winter Solstice and Imbolc that we get the most snow, and there's sometimes still snow on the hills in April and May!). Samhuinn marks the transition between autumn and the depths of winter. In the last decade, it's been noticeably wetter, warmer and less snowy in the Highlands, a result of climate change; putting a representation of the Cailleach on my altar will also be a reminder of what we as a species are doing to our planet. 

The purple card at the front of the altar has a sigil a friend within our Open Circle designed to reflect our group being connected, even though we couldn't actually meet up on Samhuinn for a ritual this year due to clashing schedules.  

As I am Goth, it is very easy for me to decorate my altar for this holy-day of death, as skulls and black fabric are part of my normal household decor for other parts of our home. As a Gothic person, I probably contemplate mortality and death more than the average person, and have a fascination with the macabre, which I think makes it easier for me to connect with this holiday in the abstract sense, rather than as grieving or honouring anyone specific, although some of my deceased family that I knew as well as ancestors who died before I was born and the historical people who have inspired and influenced me are honoured elsewhere. 

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. 

Beltane: Our Home Altar

I am posting this very late; the scheduled date will be May 1st, but the actual date I'm writing this is Sept 18th. The delay is throughout May and into June I had final exams and final projects, which really did not do my mental health any good, and I had to take some time away from things to recover. I have now finished my architectural technology degree! However it does mean I was really rather busy and didn't get this blog post about my altar up on time. My graduation ceremony will be in October. I am still studying, however, as I'm doing a second undergraduate degree - History & Archaeology joint honours degree (with some electives in things like Cultural Studies... more in that in a different blog post). I will also be posting up stuff about Summer Solstice, Lughnasadh, and Mabon.

The household altar dressed for Beltane

This is the household altar again, and as there are already shrines and statues to specific deities and spirits elsewhere, this altar is used for working, and is seasonally decorated. The arrangement for this design is a very Wiccan interpretation of Beltane, and I'm not entirely comfortable with that. Wicca was my entry to the realm of Neo-Paganism, and in recent years I have become more and more interested in traditional practices and Celtic (a broad umbrella term that I don't like too much as a historian, but I know communicates the concept well enough) practices. That's not to say I dislike this altar set-up, but that it embodies a few things that don't necessarily reflect what I want out of my spirituality.

The most Wiccan thing about it is the red and green colour scheme. In Wicca, Beltane is associated with the colour green, especially vibrant greens, for the fresh green foliage coming into the fullness of summer, and red for fire, but also for passion, lust and sexuality. Beltane is seen as a fertility festival, and the May Pole seen as a phallic symbol. There's a really interesting ::article:: from Cailleach's Herbarium why yellow flowers and yellow birds, and possibly the colour yellow in general is a more traditional colour-scheme than the red of Wicca.

A lot of Wiccan practices surrounding notions of things like pan-European Paganism, or fertility rituals as the basis of the Wheel of the Year is based off Romanticist interpretations of folklore from the 18th and 19thC, rather than historical practices, and for a while I wanted something more 'authentic', by which I meant older and historically accurate, but the pendulum of my opinion swings, and I think that perhaps embracing these later interpretations, but understanding them as what they are - slightly fantastical re-imaginings of an earlier past by people not in possession of all the facts, and with a yearning for some mystical former golden age (that never was in actuality) is valid in its own way - Beltane may never have been some phallic festival of sex in actuality, but in a world where sex is often either demonised as sinful lust, or commercialised in objectifying hyper-sexuality, having a celebration of sexuality can be a very positive thing. These re-imaginings often sprang from a need for something that was missing in culture at the time, sometimes things that are still missing from culture now, and I don't see a problem with adapting practices to face changing needs, as long as we are honest and open about those changes, and don't try to pass off something merely old (even Gerald Gardener's work has been around for well over half a century now, and a lot of what he did was built off earlier 20thC, 19thC and even 18thC ideas) as something ancient.

[Aside: a celebration of sexuality is a good thing, however some people's idea that they're somehow entitled to sex on Beltane and you're not a good Pagan unless you're participating in some orgy to which they are invited needs challenged; you'd think this would be a rare phenomenon, but I've come across this attitude more often than I would like! Usually from older Pagans who think this is still the '60s and '70s free love scene.] 

I'm still not really Wiccan any more, as I've moved away from the duotheism of Wicca and a lot of its liturgy, and I'm more of a pantheist/animist exploring notions of polytheism now, and while I like a lot of Wiccan ritual structure, I've been incorporating other elements into my practice for quite a while now. One of the great things about Paganism is that as an umbrella for many faiths, it tends to allow for a lot of personal spiritual exploration - the notion that we all have our own individual paths is quite prevalent, so there's not really a sense of orthodoxy and heresy as with some other faiths. 

Flowers from my garden

One of the things I love to do with my altar is to decorate it with flowers from the garden that are seasonal - not so much in autumn and winter when it's not the time of year for many flowers, but certainly for spring and summer. All of the flowers were picked from my garden, with the cherry blossoms wreathing this little posey vase from the cherry trees outside my house. Early summer is when my garden is most colourful, and as this summer I planted a lot of bulbs, it is likely that next spring I will have even more flowers to dress my altar for Vernal Equinox and Beltane. I live in the Scottish Highlands, so some of the spring flowers bloom a little later here than they did when I lived in England because of how much further North we are and the colder winter, shorter days, etc. Pansies bloom from spring to late summer here, however. 

Ornate chalice

This is the last time I used this particular chalice. It is glass with some sort of red lacquer, and I bought it in Homebase in their January sale a few years back, for a very reduced price. Unfortunately, the red has started to flake, so I am concerned it is no longer food-safe, and I will be retiring it. It has been very pretty sitting on my altar with its ornate red moulding, but its time has passed, and it will go into the glass recycling.

In Wicca, the chalice is used for the Symbolic Great Rite, representing the reproductive/creative union of masculine and feminine energy, which for a lot of Wiccans will be an important aspect of Beltane, however this is not what I use mine for. Mine represents the element of water, and is also used for drinking a toast to the departing spring, and to the incoming summer. My toast is non-alcoholic as I cannot drink alcohol with my medication so am tee-total now. 

Rock-salt in a soapstone dish and tiny cauldron

This soapstone (I think; it's definitely carved stone, anyway) pentacle dish is full of rock-salt, both which are used to represent the element of Earth, which to me is the literal, mineral ground rather than nature, plants and leafy things (I see all living things as a combination of the elements). I use salt for consecration and representation of both life and death - without salt we would die due to the lack of transmission through nerves, and with too much salt we, and a lot of other things, die.

The small cauldron behind is the terracotta container from a tiny candle the equivalent of a tealight in size that I bought in a Fair Trade import shop in Wales and lit for the full moon during spring last year. It is made by ::Dalit Candles:: who are a social enterprise that employ people from the Dalit ('untouchables') in India to make the candles and their holders, and who help fund schools and hospitals in districts with severe poverty. The terracotta cauldron is a perfect size for inclusion in my travel altar, where it is also a symbol of water, and of fecundity. It was on the household altar at Beltane because the altar was otherwise crammed with candles, cherry blossoms, and other things, and it was small enough to cram in between everything else.

Candles on the altar

This altar had a lot more candles than any previous altar from this year. This is because after I had consecrated their use on the altar, I extinguished them and then arranged them, and some more candles in candelabras too large to put on the altar, into two groups on our living room floor (cats safely shut out the room!) and used it as a way to have the two Beltane fires for blessing and purification indoors, without setting our house on fire and without setting off all the smoke alarms. Usually I only use beeswax and soy candles, but I was bought some red dinner candles - the three at the back - made from paraffin wax (unfortunately a petrochemical) but which as they are already made and purchased and given to me for the purpose of Beltane, I would use anyway. The two really tall candles are vintage candles decades old made of stearin, which is an animal by-product (definitely not vegan-friendly), and which are older than I am. They are looked after very carefully and only burnt on special occassions. All the tea-lights are beeswax, and the votive candles in the pentagram candelabra are soy. The red rolled candles in the curving metal candelabra are beeswax. I am trying to reduce my use of petrochemical-based materials, especially single-use plastics and candles which are effectively single-use plastics I set on fire. Due to the deforestation for soy plantations and the methane generated by livestock, currently beeswax seems like the most sustainable alternative.

Also on my altar are some items not individually photographed; the rectangular Celtic knotwork lantern belongs to my partner Raven. I bought it for him as a Winter Solstice gift last December. I have two incense burners. One of the burners is a censer held up by a Goddess figure, made of metal and bought by Raven as a souvenir from one of his trips to Glasgow, from the independent occult retailer ::Enigma 23::. The other burner is a wooden pentacle, which is the one I use most frequently on the altar to burn incense as offerings. Neither wand not athame are present on the altar due to space; they were temporarily put on the shelf under the altar for this ritual.  

Witching corner; the altar in context

The altar is on wheels, but when not brought out into the middle of the living room for group rites, it remains in this corner, where I have a Green Man figure from ::The Maker's Mark:: in Castell Newydd Emlyn/Newcastle Emlyn in Cymru/Wales. I make sure to visit every time I go through the town, especially as it is near a very picturesque castle. I have unfortunately forgotten the sculptor's name, but the plaque is based off an old London church's Green Man. The Green Woman plaque is also hand-made, and was a gift from a friend in Peterborough, many years ago. It is signed, with a mark rather than a full name but I don't know whose mark it is. The pentacle shelf above is a custom piece from CAS Design in Berlin, and has been reviewed in the past on this blog. I think it is an excellent piece of furniture, and thoroughly recommend them.

Spring & Equinox Altar

As I have mentioned before, this year I will be blogging about the Neo-Pagan festivals of the eight points of the 'Wheel of the Year', celebrations shared by Wiccans, Druids, and some other Neo-Pagan paths, based off four solar festivals which, being based on celestial events, are common celebrations many cultures (the two solstices and two equinoxes), and the four 'fire festivals' or 'cross quarters', which are tied to folk festivals of Britain and western Europe. The Vernal Equinox is when day and night are equal, in spring. Many Neo-Pagans celebrate it as 'Ostara', named after a celebration mentioned by the chronicler 'the venerable Bede', and which may be named after a Germanic dawn goddess, and which is likely the root-word for 'Easter' in English (most other languages have a name deriving from 'Pascha'). I just celebrate it as the Vernal Equinox. 

Full Equinox altar.

I think I do the Equinox a bit differently from many Neo-Pagans as I don't incorporate rabbits, hens and eggs. Neo-Pagans now regard these as fertility symbols, and I think that's a very valid perspective, but their association with Easter had more to do with which food were restricted during Lent - meat was forbidden, as were eggs and dairy (Thomas Aquinas wrote against consuming these), and so of course once the fast was broken on Easter, people wanted to consume them. Lambs are very much an important Christian symbol, with Jesus as the Lamb of God, and I can't help but think of the rather beautiful Pre-Raphaelite inspired mural that graced a church I used to go to of the adoration of the lamb when I see lambs in a religious context. My rejection of these symbols because of their Christian (and particularly Catholic) associations is not a protestation against Christianity or an act of my disliking Christianity, more that I wish to separate my current faith from my old faith, and I feel awkward doing things that remind me too much of Christianity; I feel like I'm misappropriating, or somehow trying to Paganise things, which may or may not be a valid concern or just a manifestation of my anxiety and over-thinking.

Instead of these animal symbols, I prefer floral ones - picking what is in bloom in my garden at the time. I don't rear chickens, rabbits or sheep, so it seems a bit disconnected for me to celebrate lambing (which is often quite a bit before Easter in the UK, anyway), or their lifecycle in relation to the agricultural year. The birds nesting in my garden are more seasonally appropriate to me than chickens. [Interestingly, chickens need about 12 hours of daylight to signal the summer period for laying eggs - so the Equinox is actually directly relevant to chickens. Some will lay in winter even without an appropriate light source, but egg production goes up with daylight hours. I do, however, grow flowers (and vegetables, herbs, etc.) so I feel more personally connected to flowers.  

Another photograph of the altar as a whole 

Daffodils

You can see on my altar a bunch of hyacinths and daffodils in the centre. I changed my altar set-up from its Imbolc set up to this pre-Equinox set up at the start of March, and it is definitely geared more to a visual celebration of the changing seasons and the greenery and flowers of spring. Daffodils and hyacinths are both poisonous to cats, but this set-up was before Archimedes arrived, and was dismantled before Archimedes left his acclimatisation period in the spare room, with any pollen hoovered up.

I have two altar cloths again, layered over each other. The bottom altar cloth is a printed light green one with a leafless tree, an image that makes me think of a tree about to spring into life, rather than a dead tree. The upper altar cloth is actually a vintage table-runner I bought on eBay because it reminded me of my grandmother's handicrafts. She used to make things very similar to this, and as the item seems entirely handmade, I can picture someone else's grandmother making this the same way. I wish I had inherited some of my grandmother's embroidery, but I was a child when she passed, and did not end up with anything like that. I found some daffodil doilies secondhand that I tend to use for tea-parties, but I put one under each of the candle-holders to protect the altar cloth from any wax drips that ran off the candle-holders, because it is an old and fragile embroidery, sold to me as being from the '50s, and I don't want to damage it. The embroidered flowers are somewhat stylised, but they remind me of marigolds, which are currently flowering in my garden.

Daffodil doilies to protect vintage altar cloth.

The wreath at the back is a hand-made house decoration some students at my college were selling as a charity fundraiser. It has lovely spring colours, so I use it as an altar decoration each year. I really like using circular symbols for solar festivals, simultaneously representing the sun and the cycle of the seasons. I don't have space on my altar for both the pentagram candle-holder and the wreath, so the pentagram candle holder has been moved to in front of our fireplace. To represent the elements, there is a jar candle on the altar; it has five layers in different colours, made from the melted down stubs of past elemental candles used on our altar. 

Pink candle, daffodils, wreath, Goddess censer

The left side of the altar is used primarily for the symbols traditionally associated with the Goddess in Wicca once again as with my ::Imbolc altar::, but this isn't a strict attribution. Incense is used to symbolise the element of Air (and to be burnt as an offering, and to create a ritualistic atmosphere through scent), and many traditions see Air as a masculine element, associated with 'masculine' attributes, but I don't see the point in gendering an element, or even more so of gendering characteristics like logic, clarity of thought, communication, etc. I have an incense holder with a Neo-Pagan style Goddess figure holding up the incense censer, but that does not mean I see the element of air as feminine, either; I just like the figure as a sculpture representing the divine feminine, and it happens to also be a perfectly good censer at the same time - I have another incense burner that is a pentacle (visible in the photographs of the full altar). I think it's probably a bit cliché to attribute pink to the divine feminine - especially as a girl that hated the colour pink growing up - but I chose it to represent Bloduweudd, who was made of flowers, specifically oak, broom and meadowsweet.. Now, I somehow thought oak flowers were light pink, which I am quite wrong about; they're a greenish yellow. Broom flowers are yellow, and meadowsweet flowers are white, so I would have probably done better with a pale yellow candle, in retrospect!

The daffodil picture is not a Goddess symbol at all, it is actually a card I gave Raven for St. David's Day - the saint day for the welsh patron saint, who is St. Dewi in Welsh. St. David's Day is seen more as a national celebration than as a Celtic Saint's day by many, including Raven. I have mentioned before that he is Welsh-Irish. Daffodils are Wales' national flower; the national plant symbol is a leek, and daffodils are 'cennin Pedr' or Peter's leeks in Welsh, which is presumably where the connection comes in between the two plants. Anyway, the card was placed on the altar as another mark of the passing seasons, and a nod to Raven's Welshness.

I have a light green candle to represent the Green Man, a vegetative spirit (or even deity to some) that I associate with the changing seasons as visible through plant life. New spring leaves are slowly emerging, light and vibrant, not yet darkened to the richness of summer. I light the pink candle when invoking the divine feminine, and light the green candle when invoking the divine masculine. The central, multicolour candle is represented of the divine as simultaneously transcendent of material existence and immanent within it. I am a pantheist that sees individual deities as spiritual aspects or manifestations of the greater divine that is in all things, and that candle made of all colours seems like a good representation of that. It is a lovely hand-made textured candle, but I can't remember where I bought it. I think it might be from 'The Maker's Mark' in Newcastle Emlyn, but it could be even older - a souvenir from a lovely witchy shop I found behind a record shop in Henley on Thames over a decade ago. I have kept it safe in my wicker basket store of candles for a long time, but felt like this is the right time to burn some of it. I must admit I'm sort of clingy about candles, and don't like burning the prettiest ones, especially all in one go  - I want to stretch it out so I can appreciate them for longer! Quite silly when candles are intrinsically transient, made to be burnt. Perhaps I'm a sentimental fool.

Ceramic cauldron over tealight.

The blue cauldron hanging over a flame is Raven's. It's meant as an oil-burner, but as many oils are toxic to cats, we are no longer using the oil burners for their true purpose. However, watching the water evaporate off as misty vapour is rather aesthetic, so I am still putting water in them. We will need to look further into what oils can and can't be used around cats, as we don't want to poison Archimedes. I chose this blue cauldron to represent the element of water on my altar. It's purpose is more symbolic than practical for my Equinox ritual, unlike the bigger copper cauldron I used as a temporary planter, and as a receptacle for any drips after I watered my snowdrops from the Well of the Spotted rock for Imbolc. 

Marigold and salt in pentacle dish.

I have a carved stone dish for salt, to represent the element of Earth. It is interesting that salt is what we use when 'salting the earth' is something done to make it infertile. Salt is sometimes used for drawing a circle on the floor, but I think that's a waste of good salt. I am thinking of replacing the salt-as-Earth-representation with sand, fine gravel or soil. Salt as ritual ingredient is still useful, but I associate it more with sea-salt (I know rock-salt exists) and the ocean, and I want to change things around that I no longer connect with. Neo-Paganism is -in general - quite a flexible path, and while we practice similar things, there is room to alter things in accordance with what works best for us. We're a non-dogmatic religion, with each Pagan being their own Priest or Priestess. We tend to be closer to orthopraxic ('right practice') than orthodoxic ('right doctrine') in that we are more connected by ritual practice than theology or cosmology, but even within ritual practice there is plenty of scope for variation. 

I hope this blog entry has been useful and informative as an example of one Pagan witch's practice. There's a lot more I could say about each thing, but I think I am rambling on quite a bit already. As I have said before - I'm just one person, and I will do things differently to other witches and other Pagans, but I don't consider myself much of an outlier in terms of my practices. I am doing this to counter some of the stereotypes about Neo-Paganism and witchcraft - especially those about it being a dark or evil practice. Most of what I do is making a ritual of ways to connect to the natural world and changing seasons; mine is definitely an Earth-based spirituality.

My regular readers might be surprised at the colours - especially green wall paneling in my ritual space, and plenty of yellow and pastels for this seasonal celebration, but I don't think my religious practice necessarily has to reflect my Gothic aesthetic - some of it does, especially my work with the Morrigan and Her aspect as Badb, and with the Cailleach of winter - and these are things you will see on my Samhuinn altar and my altar in the 'Dead Time' between Samhuinn and Winter Solstice, but for the rest of the year, the colours reflect the seasons more than they reflect me - after all, my spiritual practice is more there to connect me better with nature, rather than for me to express my personal style or aesthetic.

The pentacle shelving unit is by CAS Design and I reviewed it ::here::