The Home Altar: Making Where You Live a Sacred Space
If you have been on a LifePath Retreat, you already know how important we believe altars are: everyone who makes a retreat with us receives a small personal altar to use during the retreat and to take home afterwards.
The Long History of Altars
For eons, stretching back into prehistory, people have been making altars where they live, turning their domestic place into a sacred space.
Wherever archeologists have discovered evidence of human habitation, the remains of altars have also been found. Sometimes the altars are nothing more than animal sculls honored with flower petals or precious stones. Sometimes they are elaborate affairs with gold fittings and drawings depicting people worshipping the sun, the moon, and the stars.
In ancient Rome, every home, no matter how humble or grand, had an altar, and every altar held the special god-protectors of the home. These 'penates,' or household gods, were small statues or paintings of gods and goddesses whose presence in the house (usually above or near the hearth) gave the house and everyone under its roof spiritual protection. If someone in the home fell ill, or if some domestic crisis emerged, the family flocked to the penates on the home altar to ask for divine assistance.
What Altars Do
An altar is an external representation of an interior mystery -- the spiritual core of who we really are. It is a way of showing in tangible form what is happening in our hearts. When you look at an altar, you are seeing an outward expression of an inner act that recognizes our spiritual character. And it is a depiction of our own personal honoring of our spiritual selves.
An altar in the home is a special acknowledgment of our home as our safe harbor and our sacred space. It elevates the place where we live to a temple, a spiritual location wherein we, spiritual beings, dwell. We do not have to be in crisis to feel the comforts of a home altar. In fact, keeping an altar in the home and using it as a focus for simple spiritual practice may will preclude crises from visiting a household.
How to Set Up a Home Altar
Begin with a bookshelf or a dedicated small table top, then cover it with a plain white cloth, or a piece of material that might have some significance for you -- for instance, one of our LifePath Alumni uses a fringed shawl handed down from her great-grandmother as her altar cloth.
One of the ways to create a home altar is to use earth elements and imagery as a basis. The four elements are fire, water, earth, and air. Having these represented on your altar will tend to 'ground' the sacred place, and show that your personal spirituality has a profound relationship to the physical universe, and in particular to our home planet. Fire can be represented by candles; water by a bowl of water in which you might float a flower petal; earth can be symbolized by a rock; and air by incense.
Once you have grounded your sacred space, you can begin to add items that are meaningful to you: photographs of loved ones, living or departed; tokens that remind you of particular achievements or life events; objects, such as keys or jewelry, that carry for you messages of the spirit.
Your home altar can be a center for prayer, reflection, meditation, or some other spiritual practice. But it can also just BE. It has its own energy to sanctify your entire home. As you pass by your altar every day, you will be blessed by that radiating energy.
When you create a home altar, you are doing something ancient. You are getting in touch with ancestors that stretch back to the dawn of time. Humankind knew early on that it had a connection to the divine, and honored that connection by making the place they lived in a sacred space. When you do the same, you are celebrating both that spiritual connection and the ancestors who bequeathed the tradition of home altars to us down through the ages.
Share Your Experience with Altars
If you already have a home altar, let us know by email how you have created it, what you have on it, and how you use it. We will pass your comments along to others, suggesting ways they might build and use their own altars. Email your altar experience to info@lifepathretreats.com.
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