Beneath the Surface

If you are of a certain age, you'll remember the advertising catchphrase, and maybe even the tune: "There's always room for J-E-L-L-O!" I don't know that I ever gave it much thought, but the principle seemed to be that, for something so good, no matter how big the rest of your meal, you could always manage to get down just that little bit more as long as it was Jello.

It may have been a good marketing campaign, but as a guide for life it is a problem.

Sayings like "If you want something done, ask a busy person," and "If something is important to you, you make the time for it" are also a problem.

They are a problem because they imply that if we are not doing certain things (studying, reading, performing or attending ritual, building altars, writing prayers, etc.), any number of things that we or others think we should be doing, it is entirely a matter of choice. If it was really important to us to go to that Yule rite, we would be there. If we really wanted to fit in half an hour of devotional practice every day, we would do it. If we do not do these things, it is because we don't place enough importance on them. We feel ashamed, or perhaps others shame us, calling our limitations excuses.

And sometimes that point is valid--some folks don't go to festivals because there are non-spiritual things in their life that are more important to them (although really I figure that is their business as well, priorities are a personal thing). They don't make time to pray because they don't want to (also a personal thing in my opinion). Even given the time/energy/health/money, they would focus on other things.

But that's certainly not the case across the board, and I would not even attempt to guess as to someone else's reasons for doing or not doing whatever it is they do or do not do.

Time and energy, for most of us (I won't say all because I don't know you all), are finite. Only we know how much of each we have to spare.

Sometimes there is no time. There is no space. There is no energy. Sometimes there is no room.

I am not a formal person. I spend my days in jeans and comfy shirts, no bra, no shoes or socks, hair unstyled (but clean!), and (it goes without saying) no makeup.

Most of my one-on-one interactions with deity are likewise not formal. I say my daily prayers (there are currently eleven prayers, addressing a total of 53 deities) while I am in the shower (a habit that has stuck from the days when my daughters were babies--they are now 15 and 19--and shower time was the only almost-guaranteed privacy I had). I am pretty good at staying with my daily practice, the personal, informal parts. I am less good with festivals and holidays--and when I do mark them, it's likely to be low-key.

I do, of course, celebrate the heathen high days with my kindred, and these are, of course, more structured. But they are still relatively straightforward and informal compared with those held by some other groups. That's our group, though--we are a direct bunch and we tend to like to get to the point of things.

In theory, I find complex ritual fascinating; the interweaving of the elements to form a pleasing whole is an art and there are some incredibly talented ritual artists. In practice, and this is purely personal, I find that a lot of structure tends to overwhelm the personal experience. For me, things I do in quiet corners are the most powerful.

Paganism, they say, is a nature-based religion. It's one of the primary identifiers, one of the things that's always included in "What is a Pagan" articles and lists. I think it's one of the reasons some pagans and polytheists specify that they are "devotional" or "god-focused," although most nature-based pagans I know don't actually worship nature per se, rather honoring nature and worshipping nature-focused deities. (Not that there's anything wrong with worshipping nature, of course, although some use the term "nature-worshipper" as they would use the term "idol-worshipper," dismissively implying a literal and simplistic lack of understanding.)

Hey, I like nature. I grew up in the country, playing in the woods and fields, climbing rock piles, digging in the dirt. We always had a garden (I still remember the green zinnias I planted in my own little plot as a kid). As an adult I am more of an "indoorsy" person--camping's uncomfortable, and fires on the beach don't provide a lot of warmth once the sun goes down--but I still love my rosebushes and am awestruck by the northern lights in winter.

But as far as location goes, nature is not the focus of my religion. And yes, I am deity-focused. But the place where my faith resides is my home.

I will confess that while I have a long-standing relationship with heathen gods, and a sometimes working relationship with Celtic gods, there is a special place in my heart for the gods of that bit of Europe where the boundaries between the two were particularly unclear.

Tribes are tribes, Celtic and Germanic, but there was at a certain time a lot of back and forth. Similarities in style of worship. Similarities that sometimes reach the point of sameness--all those statues of the Matronae, sometimes clearly identified as Celtic, sometimes certainly Germanic, sometimes of uncertain origin.

Interpretatio Romana helped this along but cannot account for it all, and surely not for the sheer scale of it.

There's also the dearth of information--much of what we do know is from the archaeological record. Some is linguistic, some is extrapolated from cultures with a greater (or any) mythological tradition.

But what it comes down to, for me at least, is that the line is finer than we sometimes think between what is Celtic and what is Germanic.

Which, for me, works out pretty well. I can see where the mileage on this would vary.

One of the things that drew me first toward paganism was that faith was not required. As a likely-related note, one of my issues with Christianity was the focus on faith--the need to believe. Belief is not a thing you can force, or a thing you can choose. It is there or it is not. Faith is there or it is not.

So the notion of a religion based on practice--on things that are under your control--was huge for me.

Ten years down that road and suddenly, the faith was there. (Thank you, Aphrodite.)

Funny how that works.

I got my first set of tarot cards when I was twelve years old, a knockoff Rider-Waite deck I think, a Christmas gift from my parents. I'd just gotten a book on fortune-telling from Scholastic Books (for those unfamiliar with Scholastic, you could order cheap paperbacks through your school, usually every few months), and while I had a palm to read and could make my own I Ching from popsicle sticks, making a set of tarot cards was well out of my artistic range.

I read for myself as a teenager; when I got to college I'd read for friends as well and got a great deal of practice. Even in my 20s and early 30s I kept up with it. I certainly acquired a sizable collection of tarot cards, although I always did prefer the ones that used the Rider-Waite symbolism.

But eventually I stopped. I've tried a few different methods of divination over the years--runes, ogham, etc.--but none of them have really stuck with me, either.

The older I get, the less interested I seem to be in divination. To some extent that makes sense--I think the older we get, the more control we feel we have over our lives and perhaps we feel we can handle what comes our way--but I'm also less interested in the analytic sorts of readings.

Maybe I just had my fill of the whole thing?

I am a semi-reconstructionist, multi-faith pagan. That means that I honor several groups of gods, each more or less within the parameters of their own custom. Those several groups of gods include (in order of appearance) the Greek gods, the heathen gods, and the Egyptian gods. I honor the heathen gods with my kindred, while the rest is wholly a solitary practice.

There's another group (I won't call them a pantheon because they really aren't) of gods, though, with whom I have a more complex, less definable relationship. I'm a little hesitant to use the word "relationship" because that seems to imply a constancy and consistency that is not there, but I think it's a broad enough term by definition that it applies.

Many years ago, my spiritual group decided to split the year between the Celtic and the heathen gods to reflect the current focus of group members. It's not an uncommon thing among mixed groups, solar festivals done with the Norse gods, fire festivals done with the Celtic ones. After a while, it became pretty obvious to all that, apart from Brigid, most of the Celtic deities were simply "not all that into us" while the heathen gods were readily and clearly present. We subsequently became solely a heathen group, which has worked well for roughly the last decade and a half.

In the mean time, I have continued to honor the Greek gods, and later the Egyptian deities, as an individual. The last gods I expected to hear from, ever, were the Celts.

So you can imagine my surprise when, not all that long ago, I started to find my attention drawn in that direction. Pretty soon I found myself writing prayers to them--first to the Irish gods, then the Welsh, and finally and most extensively to the gods of old Gaul and Britain, the gods we know so little about, whose tales are long gone, whose names are dug up from the dirt by archaeologists every so often. I'll admit that I have never been immune to obsessive fascinations, but this was a new level of all-encompassing, and I wrote and wrote and wrote for months, and in spite of the dearth of research material it was fast and fierce and the inspiration was steady. It was simply like nothing I'd ever encountered.

And then when it was done and I had written it all down and made it as available as I could, that was all. For a while I maintained a practice of saying the prayers, but then there was a point where that was no longer...I don't know, no longer a thing I was to do.

And apart from the prayer I say each day to Brigid (and not one of my own composition), that is where that relationship stands these days, and I am fine with that. I sometimes think of it as "work for hire" where I was paid in inspiration (and believe me, inspiration is excellent pay!). More often, I think of it as representative of the fluidity of the god-to-mortal relationship.

Balance is something I strive for, in my life and in my spirituality. I don't always succeed at this; I tend to focus (obsess?) on one thing to the exclusion of others, and that seems to be the best way for me to be productive. In the short run, I may not always be in balance; hopefully in the long run I am.

Mind: I have a weakness for study and scholarship. I'm not a full-blown reconstructionist by any means, but I like to be well grounded in the historical worship of my gods, regardless of how closely I adhere to it in my own practice. And I am at home with books and research, so it's easy for me to slip into student mode and stay there.

Body: I'm relatively healthy, but this is really my weak area. I'm in lousy shape, and I don't get enough exercise. This is definitely where I am most off balance.

Spirit: I pray, I write for the gods, I keep my altars, I make offerings, I hold ritual. I do what is within my capability. I do not do what is not.

So I may not be the best example of a balanced individual, but as I said I do strive for it. I recognize that it isn't an easy thing, and I recognize that I will always be imperfect in this respect. It is a process, not something to be achieved, a constant sliding back and forth of weights on the scale.

I am a big fan of altars, I truly am. Just click on the "altars" tag attached to this entry to see pictures of some of the altars and shrines I've had over the years.

As a visual person, I find a lot of inspiration and comfort in having these physical signs of devotion in sight; they are a frequent reminder of the role of the divine in my life. Technically I have seven altars or shrines upstairs and three downstairs, which sounds more overwhelming than it is. I use them all differently and relate to each in its own way.

For this post, though, I am going to talk about some of the practical aspects of having an altar or altars.

The finding and using of space.

Most of my altars and shrines are on top of furniture--chests of drawers and bookshelves, mostly. A couple are inside furniture that isn't being used for other things, and I have one small dedicated shrine cabinet. The main issue with this is that there are only so many surfaces in any home, and unless you live alone, some of these surfaces will be required by other people who need flat spots on which to put their keys or loose change or hairbrushes or coffee cups. There will be complaints if you try to claim too much territory, and it won't be pretty.

If you do live alone and/or have the space, you can have more dedicated pieces--I have seen pictures of tables, desks, cabinets, many pieces of furniture all being used to wonderful effect as shrines and altars. I've heard that some folks have an entire room dedicated as temple space, which would be lovely but not really doable for most of us.

A shelf hung on a wall can also be a good altar if it is in a low-traffic area. (I recommend against the wall directly beside one's bed, speaking from the personal experience of having a constant bruise on my right hip until I moved it elsewhere. :))

A plaque or wall-hanging or picture can be a shrine, depending on how you plan to use it--the hekataion at my front door is a plaque, and I say a prayer there every night. For these, you won't be able to leave offerings (or candles or incense) at the site but offerings and prayers can be made in other ways.

The finding and using of stuff.

If you looked at any of my altar pics you will note that I do, in fact, have a lot of stuff. However, I did not get it all at once; I accumulated it gradually over the decades. Some of it, I made. My Aphrodite altar is probably my oldest continuously-maintained shrine, but it is much, much fuller now than it was fifteen years ago. My Unknown Goddess shrine is my newest, but it contains a lot of things I already had on hand. Sometimes you can have a thing for years before you know why you have it.

What goes on my altars, anyway?

This really depends primarily on how I plan to use the space. I do keep a multipurpose working space; most of what is on it at any given time is whatever I am using. I don't tend to leave tools on an altar--usually I bring them out if I am going to need them, and keep them stored away otherwise. It's on the top of a chest of drawers and I keep tools and so forth in the top drawer (the rest hold clothing).

I like god-images. I really like god-images. Did I mention that I like god-images? Not everyone does, YMMV.

If it's a dedicated long-term shrine there will probably be gifts on it; Aphrodite has quite a bit of stuff, statues and jewelry, scented oil, books, stones, shells, shawls, jars, things I made for her and things I bought for her. My general Greek altar is made up of statuary but has gifts on it as well for some of the deities, likewise for my Kemetic altars. However, the "stuff" in the Kemetic altars stays there and is not used elsewhere, while the "stuff" on the Greek altar that isn't a gift (i.e. incense burners, candle holders and so forth) can be used elsewhere; gifts, of course, belong where they are and stay put regardless. (That difference is based primarily on my own UPG and sense of what's wanted.)

And just because this has been covered a lot online lately: food and drink offerings for the Kemetic gods, I consume after some time has passed; food and drink offerings for the Greek gods, I pour out.

I've always built altars visually, but my most recent one (the unknown goddess shrine) has insisted that everything that's not stuck on a wall be something I can pick up and touch. I'm not sure why that's important, but it is. I can use it in the dark or with my eyes closed. :)

An altar doesn't have to be forever.

Not only can altars change over time, they can also end. If the reason for the altar no longer stands, it is all right to (respectfully and mindfully) take it down.