The altar symbolizes the earth connected to the spirit & helps immensely with personal grounding so that you may bring your spells & rituals to fruition. Most prefer their altars made from wood, a small table if you wish, although some handcraft their own. This was more common back "in the day". These being modern times however, when technology has advanced so much as to nearly bring everything to us via one channel or another, television channel that is, it is much easier for some to simply order or go out & buy an altar. There is nothing wrong with this as long as the altar "feels" like something that you can touch base with, you know, like that ten year old recliner that has seen better days but can't be beat for comfort, because it already has your very own buttprints built right in it. That way it only takes a minute to snuggle right down into place. Something like that. lol!

Make the altar your own personal tool & treat it as you would something precious because it will be a place of magick for you in the future. The Altar is a sacred place upon which your tools are kept during worship or ritual. There are two main types of Altars: 1) round or pentagonal altars which stand in the middle of the circle 2)or rectangular ones placed against walls or the far east of the circle. Either will do fine. There is a set rule for this in some covens but for the most part, your altar is "your choice."

Altar Cloths hang about half way to the floor upon the altars. Usually an altar cloth is white, although many lunar rituals use black or deep blue altar cloths. Altar cloths are rarely colored if the candles are. The Altar cloth color is considered the same in meaning to a candle color, so use the chart for candles for cloth colors. There are no rules written in stone here.

Altars can contain many things. These are just shown as suggestions. As you can see, the lower one isn't even labeled. Make your altar as you see fit. Make it comfortable to yourself. You do not even have to have an altar unless you wish it. It is simply another tool to help you get into "the mood". As in christianity, so is it in The Craft. An altar is just a ritualistic item. A place to pray...precious to some. The use of these items, nonetheless are not engraved in stone or blood anywhere that I'm aware of.