Alters are an important part of many spiritual practices. This episode explores why you might want to create a personal altar.

What is an altar exactly, and what purpose does it serve? What are some tips and tricks for creating effective personal altars. How does one make offerings? What are some things that shouldn't go on an altar.

Spiritual teacher and shamanic practitioner, John Moore, answers all of these questions.

Announcer 0:29

Hello, and welcome to speaking spirit where we talk about all things spiritual. Your host, john Moore is a shamanic practitioner and spiritual teacher. And now here's john.

John Moore 0:45

Hello, hello, hello, everybody. Hello, my friends all over the world wherever you are, whenever you're listening to this. Today I am going to talk well, I'm going to take a practical, I'm going to do a very hopefully practical meaning you can take what I talked about today and put it into practice in a way that is beneficial to you. So I'm going to take a practical approach today. Today I'm going to talk about altars, personal altars. I'm talking about why you might have a personal altar, what to do at a personal altar? How to set up a personal altar, what not to do maybe set up a personal altar. Excuse me? And what are the benefits of having personal altars? And you may have more than one and what are different kinds of altars and all kinds of stuff. I'm not talking about altars today. It's a topic. It's a topic that I love, is everything I talk about. Because I get to pick the topics. It's my podcast, isn't that cool. I'm also happy to talk about things that other people are interested in hearing about. And if you contact me through my website, or social media, or however, certainly I would be happy to entertain topics, I probably would not talk about something that I had no clue about. Because that would be a very short podcast and, you know, I don't like just, I try not to just make stuff up. do my best. Don't think I ever don't think ever have on these podcasts things are certainly my opinion and whatnot. So today we're going to talk about an altar. And, you know, we we all know what an altar is. We've all seen altars maybe you've been in church or temple, or you might live in a culture where you have some sort of spiritual altar in your home. If you're not, if you're not religious, Surely you've seen TV programs or you know, whatever were movies where altars have been represented. So, you know, what is an altar? Is it just a table? You know, where religious things happen? Well, in a way, yes and no. So, um, you know, one thing that I know and notice is that altars exist in all kinds of all kinds of spiritual traditions, right? And I don't just mean organized religions, where you go to a church or a temple or mosque or synagogue or whatever, and there's there's a, you know, there's an altar up front where religious ceremony is held, but there are lots of traditions going back to the beginning of humanity, where altars you know, altars were a place of spiritual focus. I know that in you know, Indian cultures, Indian shamanic cultures, you know, they would lay out a cloth on the ground that would become an an altar. I know in Shinto traditions, you know, in Japan, you know, many many maybe even most families have a Kami Donna or you know, a shelf in their home for the spirits is of type of altar and my my opinion we could perhaps differ on whether or not that constitute an altar, but I believe that it sir serves the purpose of of being an altar. Um, in ancient Norse cultures, they would have there were, you know, there were religious temples where people would do pilgrimages to and gather and feast and do sacrifices and that sort of thing, but they also had outdoor altars, that they would, you know, that they would set up and worship and I believe they would have indoor altars where they would have images of the gods that they worshipped, you know, that, that sort of thing. So, and might I add,

there is some evidence from prehistoric peoples of, you know, skulls of cave bears and things being arranged in ways that would indicate, you know, would indicate them being used in religious rites in a way that is similar to similar to and an altar. And so, you know, that have altars are things that are cross cultural and throughout time, and, you know, you may have a personal altar, you may not, or you may be wondering about why should have an altar. So, for me, an altar is a, you know, I always, and I say this almost every time, I always define my terms, just so that you can understand what I'm what I'm meaning to say, it is not to say that my definition is the definition, or if you looked it up in the dictionary, the dictionary might differ. Or if you asked a, you know, religious scholar from Oxford, what, what his or her definition was, the definition might differ, and that's fine. I'm not trying to present myself as, as the authority on definitions of things, I just want you to understand what I mean when I'm when I'm talking about this. So. So to me, an altar is a is a special surface. Um, excuse me, I do not edit these. And so when I, if I have a little, little coffee, go down the wrong pipe just a moment ago, I may cough a little bit, and I'm gonna leave that in because I am. I am imperfect, and my podcast will be imperfect. And I don't, I don't really, I don't really edit them. So coughs and sneezes, and I don't think I've ever burped or farted, but if I did, who knows, I might leave, probably leave that into. Um, so anyway, and alter is a special surface, where that that is a focus of spiritual activity. Okay, so if you think about, you know, in a Christian church, an altar is, you know, probably some sort of special table at the front of the church, maybe up on, you know, up on risers up above, and it is a place where, you know, communion might be prepared or, you know, special, you know, candles and flowers are placed. And, you know, you know, it's a place where ritual might take place. So it is, is a surface, a special surface where a prepared surface, that is a place of spiritual focus. And a lot of people might have little altars that they meditate in front of right, might be a little table where they place I don't know, an image of Buddha or some other, you know, spiritual figure, or light a candle or put some incense or that sort of thing, right. So again, it's a specially prepared surface. That is a focus, a spiritual focus or focus of spiritual practice or focus of worship. And why do they show up everywhere? Why do we see these in so many traditions and so many cultures across generations and generations of human beings and who knows, maybe someday they'll discover that, you know, other hominid species had alters, I don't know, I don't know enough about paleo, anthropology to speak intelligently about that, so I won't but You know, what I will say is that this seems to be an important or impactful practice having an altar seems to create an impact a spiritual psychological impact, having a special place to help spiritual focus, a specially prepared surface to have spiritual focus seems to have an impact on people enough that it has become an important if not absolutely critical part of many, many spiritual practices.

Now, if you were to walk around, if you were to walk around my house, and even outside my house, you would see many, many altars numerous, you would see numerous surfaces that I have prepared for spiritual use, or for spiritual focus. And the reason I have different altars or, you know, a number of different altars is that for me, they provide different they serve different purposes, they serve different focuses. So, for example, I have, I have an outdoor altar that serves as a way for me to focus on and present offerings, and I'll talk about offerings today as well. Present offerings to the nature spirits that are, you know, local, you know, local spirits are important, at least to me, and to many other people, but definitely, to me, and so, I place offerings there and I you know, I have a special place for them for, you know, where I can focus on them and interact and have a good relationship. So this altar allows me to be in relationship with these spirits. And that's another important use, right? It's to be in relationship with spirit if you have you know, if you were of the you know, if you practice shintoism you would have a Cami Donna, which would be you know, how's spirits in your home and it would allow you to make offerings and, um, you know, have a relationship with those spirits and in hopes of you know, providing safety and providing harmony and watching out for you. And this you know, we see this tradition, similar tradition would have different words for it, the ultra might look different, but it you know, very similar, very similar traditions throughout the world. So, I, you know, so I have alters that allow me to just the sort of keep permanently that allowed me to have an ongoing relationship and I you know, in my spiritual practice is shamanism and shamanism is all about being in relationship to spirit, and to spirits, to the different spirits that we interact with. So, it is about creating, you know, good relationships with spirits and maintaining them. And, and, you know, this particular altar does that the center of my house, I have some shelves that actually have a couple of different, let you know, a couple of different altars on them. And, you know, one is akin to material things that has some representations of deities that are provide materially and not to, you know, not to sound like, you know, money grubbing or greedy or anything like that. But this is the center of my home, and I am a provider for my family. And these are, you know, this is an important consideration if I were living in you know, if I were living in a hunter gatherer society, you know, I would have a similar altar that perhaps had images of animals that I needed to hunt for, to sustain my family or sustain my tribe. So this is a similar, this is a similar thing. This is not about hoarding, cash or you know, buying buying apples private plane, I have no aspirations to buy a private plane, anything like that, it was just about allowing me to provide safety and food and a home and clothing and material necessities for my family and myself to, to live to be comfortable to be safe and to not be threatened and, you know, that sort of thing. And it has served me very well.

You know, I'll do, I'll probably do a podcast on money on the spiritual aspects of money. At some point in the future, I think there are, gosh, a whole lot of misconceptions about that. But that is a little bit beyond the scope of a little bit beyond the scope of this particular episode I get because I Gosh, I could go down that pathway, at least for an entire episode. So maybe the next one I'll do about money in the spiritual aspects of money and, you know, that sort of thing. So, um, so I have that, and then there is, you know, an altar that is sort of dedicated to divinatory practice, meaning I, you know, have my decks of tarot cards there. And I have several pendulums there, and I have images of some of the spirits that I work with, you know, sculptures and that sort of thing. There. So, yeah, so and then I have, I have another altar elsewhere in my house that has representations of all the power animals that I work with, again, this is about me being in relationship with them. I have, gosh, I have a lot of altars, I have another ultra that as representations of the traditional elements of Earth, Wind, water, and fire, earth, air, water and fire, however you want to put it allows me to be in relationship to those elements. And, you know, amongst others, you know, I have a few others, I'm not going to go through all of them, I don't want to bore you. And I guess I'm kind of an ultra fanatic. But I have an altar where I do very specific ceremonies, very specific rituals. And I did a podcast on ritual and ceremony before ritual is symbolic action, right ritual is something that we do that is symbolic. So you know, when I trained, I trained martial arts my whole life when I enter a dojo space I bow, that is a symbolic action of respect, it is a ritual that I'm doing. Or a ritual might be, you know, I do a certain chance and perform a certain set of exercises. And a ceremony is something that's done to mark that a special occasion that includes ritual. So a ceremony might be like a wedding ceremony, right? A wedding ceremony might include numbers, lots of rituals or a ritual, but it marks out it marks a special occasion in time which is the creation of a marriage. And you know, other spiritual things are ceremonial, right they they mark out something something special and we have ceremonies you know birthday celebrations are you know include ceremonies at least in you know, at least in the US we have you know when not you know our our you know tradition I'm comfortable with I'm I grew up in we have birthday cake and we put candles on it normally one candle for every year the person was born, I guess up until they become a certain age and then it becomes a fire hazard. And you know, we sing to the person and they blow the they make a wish and blow the candles out. That is a ceremony marks a special occasion and includes ritual action, like the blowing out the you know, the candles representing each year of birth, the blowing out of the candles. We may not think of that as a spiritual or religious ceremony because it's very light hearted. But in essence it is because it's still symbolic action. It's still metaphorical, it's still you know, is meant to convey something through symbolism. In the ceremony aspect is That it's marks out, you know, years passing of a year in somebody's life. So anyway, that's ritual and ceremony. And so, I have an altar where I do certain ceremonies, I make offerings. And I told you I would talk talk about offerings. So why might you want to create a personal altar if you don't have one already,

there are lots of reasons there are probably as many reasons as there are people if not more, I have obviously, I have more than one altar that I use for different reasons. But again, it's a place is a specially prepared surface that allows for certain spiritual focus to take place. So, if you meditate or you want to meditate, you might create a small altar where you can, you know, that helps you focus the helps you focus your attention when you meditate or something that is inspiring, because an altar has the ability to impact us on a spiritual level and a psychological level, right is a physical representation, that allows us to focus to create atmosphere, to have a psychological impact, the things you place on an altar are important things you choose not to place on an altar are important. The size and shape of an altar aren't all that important. So, in my, when I teach, when I teach shamanism in classes, I you know, I talk to people about creating creating their own altar is fairly important practice in shamanism. And, you know, I have people from all walks of life who live in have different living arrangements, and they, you know, might live in a tiny apartment or they might live in a huge house or who knows, right and so, space is sometimes a consideration. So, a shelf can be an altar, or a window sill can be an altar. You can also have, and this is common in many traditions as well, you can also have a temporary altar, when I teach in the space where there is no no altar surface, I will set up a temporary altar, I put a I will put out a special cloth on the ground, I will set candles, it means a square, square altar cloth, and I will place candles on on each of the corners and I will put a bowl of flowers in the middle. And people will place sacred objects on and around the altar. And this becomes the altar for the time that I'm teaching the class you know, maybe a two day class or or what have you. It does not have to be a permanent fixture. Now there are advantages to having permanent altars, right? Like the more the more focus you put on something, the more sort of energy it gathers. Right. So there is there is this effect. I don't have a good term for it yet, I got to think of one but you know, if you've ever done this experiment as a as a kid, maybe you did it in school, where you took you took a piece of metal, maybe it was on a nail or a screw or something right. And you took a permanent magnet and you rubbed the magnet or you rub the nail over the magnet or you rub the magnet over the nail in the same direction over and over and over and over again. And the nail became magnetized right the magnetic like the magnet changed the configuration of the ions in the nail and it became magnetic and then you could you maybe not as strong as the permanent magnet but it did you can magnetize things that way or you can magnetize metal bypassing them through you know electromagnetic fields while that is passing through magnetic field but generated by electricity. So

So the same thing happens with the same things happens on a spiritual level. That when we work with something spiritually, its spiritual essence gets rearranged over time. The more you work with something, the more sort of power it gets imbued with or the more in alignment with its spiritual purpose. And I'll give you an example of that. I may give you a couple examples. So there are lots of traditions that use prayer beads, right? I know they're used, for example, in Catholicism to count prayers, you know, they're used in Hindu traditions and, and Buddhist traditions to count repetitions of chance. There probably other traditions that have something similar where you're counting the number of chance and so you know, if you have a set of prayer beads, so, you know, in, in Hindu and Buddhist tradition, I think they're always called mala beads, but I'll say they're called mala beads. For my purposes, I could be you know, if I'm, if I miss speaking or mispronouncing, forgive me, feel free to send me a message and correct me. Um, I mean, no disrespect, I'm just, you know, using the terms I know. So you have these mala beads, and you chant and you count the number of times you chant. And so in Hinduism and Buddhism, traditionally there would be 108 of those, it's a sacred number. And so you would count you know, 108 mantra, chants, mantra repetitions with that Mallaby set of mala beads. Now, I have been taught, and people may have been taught something different, that if I recite different mantras, right, so I have, you know, one mantra will say, oh, money by my home, let's say that I chant that mantra. And then I have another mantra that I chant Ohm Naivasha via or something, that I should use a different set of mala beads for each mantra. And the reason for that is that as I'm using that over and over again, it becomes imbued with the power and intention of that particular mantra. And if I chant a different mantra over the same beads, it's sort of like erasing the work that I did before or confusing, or that sort of thing, right. So this, this object, this stream of string of beads, is no longer just a string and beads, it becomes a sacred, spiritually charged object. That helps me as I continue to do this practice. So in shamanism, we work with different tools, I might work with a drum, I might work with rattles, right. And, you know, we might do ceremony to empower these tools to be sacred objects. And that's an important, you know, important part of the practice. However, we also continually work with them, right. So the more I work with clients, and you know, I'm drumming or I'm teaching a class and I'm drumming again, I'm using this for the same purpose and it gets imbued with the energy that is around it, just like rubbing a magnet over a now you have to do it in the same direction. If you rub it in the different direction, it's going to D magnetize. The nail so so the same thing happens. So this is the thing with altars as well if you have an altar and I'm in this is not to say that you have you have to be ultra crazy like I am, and have a ton of different single purpose altars. You certainly can have an altar or an altar piece or an altar space that that serves multiple purposes, they should be sort of aligned, you know, the more you can make them aligned, the better. So, you know, if I have an altar where I meditate and I have, you know, certain deities on there, I should make sure that they're, they're compatible.

You know, I know that they're certainly in some, you know, I've heard definitely heard stories in some African African traditions and I don't know enough about it to speak about the specific Pantheon or the specific gods and goddesses but um, you know, I'm just relating something from you know, somebody who has some experience with you know, African Magic in African spiritual work and relating is a story to me. Um, and then, you know, I, you know, so again, you know the other, the other thing is that altars can quickly become you can, you know, put, you know, have sort of the kitchen sink altar and I've at times been guilty of this, where you put everything on an altar, you know, I've seen altars that are just covered with stones and Oracle cards and images of angels and images of Native Americans and images of animals and images of this and images of that. And in that case, you know, you potentially run the risk of creating a an unfocused altar. And again, you know, an altar is a, to me is a specially prepared surface that helps create spiritual focus. And so if you have a junky altar that looks like, you know, looks like your local, New Age candle store with stuff strewn all over the place, that might not provide the greatest effect, it might not provide the focus, the spiritual focus that would be most beneficial to you. So it's just something to consider, you know, have a look at it actually had this great, this great exercise, and you can perform this yourself and you can perform it in your home, you can perform it with your altar, you can perform it with your workspace. And this comes from a neurological based coaching practice, where you would do an inventory where you would look around the room with a, if you're a coach, he would take your client and he would look around the room and look at every objects in the room one by one, and just talk about what is your first visceral emotional reaction to that object. And how strong that was, is it positive or negative Smithfield goods make you feel bad. So you can do that with your altar, you can do that with each item on your altar, and then you can do it with your altar as a whole, you can do it with different arrangements of your altar, okay. And emotions are closely tied to spirits. They are, you know, they, when we perceive, when we perceive emotions, they can sometimes be an indication that there is a spiritual disturbance or, or our spirit is doing really well. I can tell you that soul loss which is a breaking away of pieces of the soul body, usually due to trauma can come with severe depression, severe anxiety, dissociate dissociation, that sort of thing. So, those are sort of like the spirit body, the soul body, bubbling those things forward into consciousness through through emotions, and through, you know, sort of cognitive experience, how we're, how we're perceiving the world. So, perceptual experience, emotional experience, all of those things. So, those things are very closely linked. So, you can have you know, have a look at your altar space. So, again, you know, if you if this, if you listen, this podcast, you know, oh wow, you know, I would really like an altar space for X, Y or Z purpose,

you know, you can create one anywhere, almost anywhere you are, it does not have to be permanent, a permanent one is, is, you know, has some advantages, and I talked about that and how the spiritual energy sort of rubs off, it creates a vibratory field, if you will, or a field of spiritual energy. If you worship at the same altar day in and day out, you, you know, it becomes easier to worship there because there's sort of this, you wind up in the the aura of this object and objects do have aura. If you know of like psychics who do psychometry or find lost people or things or animals or you know, what have you. Frequently they'll hold an object that belonged to the person or the person war. And this is the same thing, the signature, the energy signature is rubbing off on the things they become, they become sacred. So an altar does not have to be a big thing doesn't have to be a ginormous table with a white cloth on it and you know, three foot tall pillar candles and gold plates and what have you does not, it could be simple. It could be surface with one thing on it or a surface with nothing on it. Frequently, we place things on the altar that help us denote the purpose that that put us in that create a psychological effect. And so want to talk a little bit about psycho spiritual effects of place and, and things and that any of that sort of thing. And this is, this is important. And it has been important to humankind forever. So when we find cave paintings that are 30,000 years old, you know, they're created in a way that creates a psycho spiritual effect, they're almost 3d by by torchlight, they appear to be moving, be created effect on the mind, which then creates an effect on the spirit. I remember that I have had there have been several occasions where I have noted almost being overcome by the psycho spiritual effect of place by the environment. One was I was visiting Cologne, Germany, and the the cathedral there is, gosh, breathtaking, unbelievable. Peace that's been, I don't know, I don't want to misspeak. But I think it's like 700 years old or something like that huge stone edifice. And when you walk into that place, it's dark, dark as a cave. And just immense and echoey. And there's, you know, flickering candlelight, and it has, it has a palpable effect on you. Even though I'm not a practicing Christian, I don't identify as Christian but the place the of the effect of the atmosphere on me, is you know, can be felt it could be felt. And undoubtedly, you've experienced this at some time in your life. And it happens, you know, when we're out in nature and we observe a beautiful sunset or we go to a you know, a special mountain or we view a an incredible Canyon or we walk into you know, we walk by a waterfall or what have you, the sight the sound the atmosphere creates certain psychological conditions that are, you know, can be felt that has an effect on spirit. So, your altar space can be like a mini version of that, okay. And so, when you if, if and when you create an altar, or you look at an ultra that you have,

you want to look at it with that in mind, thinking what is the it doesn't even have to be sort of, you know, really able to be put into words but you want to think about what is the effect you want to create on yourself with this altar, so when I'm, you know, when I'm teaching and I create the temporary altar, which is an altar cloth on the floor and lit candles and a vase of flowers. I want when people to come in to my class, to feel comfortable to feel like it's a place of beauty, to feel welcome, see the lights, see the candle light and have that sort of you know the effect of you know, we think about light as effect of feeling hope and positivity and all of those things. I want people to I want people to experience that. And so the altar, the altar space I create is designed in a very specific, conscious way to create a certain effect on people when they come in and to be a focus, it's in the center, when I teach, we set up in a circle, and it is in the center of the circle. So it becomes, you know, becomes an area of focus in the class, you know, when people are, you know, aren't focused on what I'm teaching, you know, some of their focus is drawn is, is drawn to this thing. And the collective energy of the class or the circle adds to adds the spirit of the altar, and then people put their sacred objects on them, and they become empowered by the group, and then when they bring them home, they carry that power with them. So you can do the same thing you can create, you know, in creative space and think about intentionally what's the space that you want to create, I have an ultra space that I use, particularly for New Moon ceremonies, in particular, you know, particularly with certain types of ritual and things that is much darker. And again, this, you know, dark doesn't necessarily mean, demonic or evil or bad, I think that is, gosh, that is just not a great way of looking at things. And I, you know, I think it was one of my first podcasts, it might have been the very first episode, where I talked about dark and light being two sides of the same coin, really. So, um, New Moon, which is when you know, the moon is dark, right, it's, you see nothing of the moon other, you could potentially see the outline of the moon, but you know, there's no Crescent showing, it's the opposite of a full moon is when the moon is going from its waning phase into its waxing phase. So it's a time of, you know, a time of rebirth. It's a time of fertile manifestation of, of change of all of these things. And so if we don't just read the darkness of we're scared of things we don't see and so we're going to project our demons into the darkness then it becomes it becomes it takes on a much different things so I have you know, I have work that I do with a new moon and a lots of people do full moon stuff. But you know, and I do that as well but I also do work with a new moon and I have an altar that is much darker, because it is meant to represent the darkness of the moon and the transition from waning to waxing and the transition from decreased to increase so is a very good time to do things like wealth rituals, or rituals around material sustenance, that sort of thing. So you know, it's meant to create a certain psychospiritual effect for me and it's something you know, creating specific effects with looks and music and incense and all of those things is is an area and you know, this is gonna sound like a brag and it is it's a little bit of a brag and I apologize, but it's something that I'm I'm fairly good at, at least from at least for myself, I don't know if anybody else looking at my alters would feel the same way that I do. But I'm I'm I've gotten better at creating the effect that I want using

using visual stimulus using different kinds of incense or using all of the senses. So you can do the same. You can use all of your senses. You can you know, if you can if it's safe to do so you can burn incense on your altar. You pay attention to what scent of you know what the scent of incense is what's the effect you're trying to create. You know you can reference all kinds of material out there that this incense is good for this and this incense is good for this. But I think like again, like with visual inventory, you want to use your senses if you don't if you don't like a particular kind of incense or you're allergic to it, I found out the hard way that I am allergic to burning mug words and some technicians burn mugwort as a way to smudge an area, and it causes my eyes to swell up and to turn bright red and look like I got punched in the eyes and, you know, my nose to run and become completely congested, it's very uncomfortable, so I don't burn my word. I don't mind the smell. But the smoke is really bad for me. Um, so you can choose things like incense, or even, you know, essential oils, or you know, what have you so you can use scent you sent, I'm in the process of creating my own instance at this point not to sell but for my own purpose, creating my own instance, based on based on an ancient Egyptian recipe that I love all of the components of. So I think together will be really nice. And I'm going to play with blends and things. So you can create scent, you can create visuals, when you're using your altar, you can potentially think about what sound you want to use there. If you're meditating, depending on your tradition, maybe you might have some music or chanting, playing, or you might chant or sing, or what have you. And all of these things can create a psycho spiritual effect. So if you think about religious ceremonies, you know, Buddhist or Catholic, or what have you, you know, they're burning incense in sensors, there's candlelight, you know, if you're at a temple, there's images of the gods and goddesses and there's, you know, there's people chanting, or there's people singing, very, you know, special songs, and that sort of thing. And all of this creates this effect that helps us focus, it helps us become feel closer to spirit, it helps us achieve particularly particular spiritual goals, or align our energy with a particular story, spiritual reality, or deity or what have you. So we can think about all of these things, when we think about our altars or creating an altar. I think it's a good thing, even if you don't have a, if you don't have a permanent space, or it's not convenient for you to create a permanent space. You know, if you have a shelf, or a drawer that you could use even temporarily, once in a while, you know this better than nothing, or if you have a cloth you can put down on the floor and put a couple of sacred objects on representations of things. Whatever you can do, I think altars obviously are good thing. I've got an altar crazy, but I, you know, I really I like them. And I think I think personal altars have such huge potential, because you create them to be, whatever, whatever you want them to be. If you want an ultra to help with meditation, have a meditation altar and pay attention to how it makes you feel when you sit in front of that altar. When you look at the objects on the altar, when you look at the placement of the altar, where is it? Do you have candles burning? Do you have incense burning? Do you use essential oils? For sense? Do you put fresh flowers on there? Do you make offerings. So offerings are another thing and I speak

all speak really briefly about offerings because that again, that could be a whole other podcasts. But I do have I do have altars that I use for offerings. And the offerings that I make are usually relatively traditional, for the you know, for the spirits that I'm working with. So offerings are always made to Two Spirit or to spirits, right? It's not just, you know, I'm going to throw some stuff on the ground or you know, what have you throw some stuff out there and whoever wants it can can want it like, your your offerings, you know, will be most effective if they are intentional, and there's lots of reasons to make offerings. For one thing, there is an exchange in spirit, right? One thing you might offer spirit is prayer. Like when you offer praise and prayer to daddy or spirits That is a type of offering, you are giving your attention and spiritual energy to that spirit. Okay, that is a form of offering. But usually when people are talking about offerings, they're talking about material things and certain spirits, like, traditionally, certain types of offerings. So I know very little about the practice of Voodoo. But I do know that there are spirits in Voodoo that are, you know, appealed to, or worked with, that traditional offerings are things like cigars and rum. And so, if you offered flowers to that spirit, it might not work the way you want it to work. When I make offerings to nature spirits, I, you know, I normally offer things that the, you know, the animals in the area will eventually, you know, potentially come and eat as well. So I'll offer things like seeds, I might offer corn meal. I don't I, you know, some people will do to, you know, offer tobacco to nature spirits, and that, you know, that's fine too, especially in the Americas, that's a traditional offering cornmeal and tobacco, or are really traditional offerings to spirits of place, and that's fine. I will offer tobacco too. If I'm, if I do a ceremonial fire, I will offer things to offer things to the Spirit of Fire and tobacco was one that I offer there pretty frequently. And I use, I don't use like cigarettes and stuff I use, you know, big tobacco leaves, because actually smells really good when it's burning, as opposed to the way cigarettes smell to me, which is nasty. So I use forms of tobacco and but that's really traditional, where I live. So spirits of place are really important and traditions of offering are really important. So for example, there are places where spirits of nature you would offer milk and honey, something I also do, I certain times make offerings, will say to the Goddess Hakata, which is a Greek goddess of sorcery, and many other things. And so, traditional offerings for her that I have done are frequently like eggs and honey, and incense. And obviously, you have to like if they're food offerings, you have to be careful about you have to be careful about you know, hygiene, things like that you don't want like rotting food. And there may be traditional ways of disposing of food if you're, especially if you have them on an indoor altar for any period of time. And you want to pay attention to that methods of of offering. So when you make offerings, there's usually a prayer that goes along with it that says, I mean, I'm dedicating somehow I'm dedicating these items to you.

But I do you know, I would encourage you to consider keeping a personal altar as part of your spiritual practice. And consider the ways that you can do that. And, gosh, we live in the internet age where you can go on to Pinterest or you know, 100,000 other websites, and see images of people's altars and take inspiration from them if that is the thing you need to do. But to give you some guidelines about you know, really consciously thinking about what you might place on your altar, and paying attention to the psychological, emotional and spiritual effect, each item plus the collection of items if there's no more than one thing on your altar, really pay attention to that and the effect that it has on you and you can become then it becomes like a machine like a technology that can be tuned like that it's spiritual tech. Right can be tuned like a radio. But your what you're tuning is your feelings. you're tuning your psychology, you're tuning your spiritual effect, the altar, the altar is a tool. It is one of many tools. I'll discuss more in future podcasts. But this is a really powerful one. And when I was inspired to talk about today from some altar work that I had done with that, I will wish you all the love in the world. You deserve more love, not less and that doesn't matter who you are. I love you and you deserve more love, not less. You are beautiful whole and complete, just as you are. I would ask you not forget that and I will talk to you next time.

You have been listening to speaking spirit with your host, john more. For more info or to contact john go to MaineShaman.com that's maineshaman.com