Altars and Altar cloths
The Altar is the sacred space upon which tools are kept. Two main forms of Altars exist, round or pentagonal altars, which stand in the middle of the circle or rectangular ones, placed against walls or the far east of the circle. Both are fairly simple to make, although a pentagonal altar requires more work. Decorator tables are good, cheap altars, but can’t hold much weight. Chief among the “bonuses” of decorator tables is the fact that they either fold up or have removable legs for storage and transport. Some decorator tables are all wood instead of wood and metal, fulfilling the requirements of some traditions.
To make a round altar simply, take a wooden crate and glue a round piece of plywood to it, or attach three, four or five equal length “legs” to a single piece.
One modern Book of Shadows suggests five decorative posts, cut at slight angles, glued with silicone to a plate glass mirror. If you have a root worker who twists willow roots into stands and chairs, which would make a sturdier stand for a mirrored altar. Mirrored altars are fairly new, although The Sacred book of one Family Tradition has a reference to a two hundred year old one. As a practical matter, mirrored altars double your light, but they also scratch, break, and weigh a lot. They are wonderful stationary altars outside or in, but terrible if you plan to move a lot.
A “T” altar is easy to make, simply glue three pieces of wood together, for strength, add a fourth or fifth. They tend to tip when built too narrowly, so be careful.
A 6 piece “T” Altar for stationary use. Can be Glued, Nailed or assembled with a sliding joint assembly.
Altar Cloths are circular or square and hang about half way to the floor. Usually an altar cloth is White, although many lunar rituals use black or deep blue altar cloths. The Night Sky cloth, or Universe cloth is studded with small stars that is either “nail heads” bead work or embroidery and is sometimes used in fancier rituals.
If you are going to use an untreated cloth, make sure it’s cotton, because cotton doesn’t tend to burn quickly. To be safe, either put a piece of glass (round table glasses are available at many department) on top of the Altar or sprits the altar with water before the ritual.
An altar glass is a wonderful thing if you wish to use your cloth more than once, since wax is very difficult to remove from many materials.
A Glass is important if you intend to use velvet! Velvet burns fairly easily, reacts poorly to salt water and is nearly destroyed by better waxes (Like beeswax.) The Altar glass, backed by black velvet, can be used for Scrying, and, while not as effective as a mirror, does improve the amount of light your candles give. It’s not a staggering investment, and if you can keep it in one piece it saves money in the long run.
Make sure to felt the bottoms of very hard (like iron) candleholders before keeping them on the altar, and if your Athame is to rest unsheathed place a small square of cloth beneath it.
Altar cloths can be plan or coloured to match candle colour. Or be of a complementary colour personal choice is important, but most traditions use a coloured cloth with white candles or coloured candles with a white cloth. The Altar cloth colour is considered the same in meaning to a candle colour, so use the chart for candles for cloth colours.
”An Altar should be made from wood, no metal, excepting those Altars with compartments in which to hide the Blessed Book, which may contain metal if the metal is needed for the hidden space.” -A Fam-trad.
Family Tradition or “Fam-Trad” Witchcraft
The practices and beliefs of those who claim to belong to (or to have been taught by members of) families that supposedly were “underground” Paleo- or Mesopagans for several centuries in Europe and/or the Americas, using their wealth and power to stay alive and secret. The overwhelming majority of the people you will ever meet who claim to be Fam-Trad Witches are simply lying, or have been lied to by their teachers. Family Tradition Witchcraft is also sometimes called “Hereditary Witchcraft” or even “Genetic Witchcraft.” These latter terms are used by those people who think they must claim a witch as an ancestor to be a witch today or who think that such ancestry “proves” them to be better witches than those without such ancestry.
”We crafted our Altar from an old tree stump and by the second year it had been sprinkled so often that the wood had somehow sprouted a new tree….S suggested a mirrored Altar for the moonlight rituals…..this felt to us like it doubled the full moon that night.”-Wolf Moon Coven
Wolf Moon Grove is a Traditional Wiccan Coven, based in the Fort Lauderdale, Florida area. Wolf Moon is first out of Mystic Moon Coven, based in Davie, Florida.
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