Altars can manifest themselves in so many different forms, and for many different reasons. Even for different religions. Here is a brief history on altars.
here are a few other pages on altars:
Create An Altar
Altar Pieces
Types of Altars
The yearn to create a sacred place may be a part of our spiritual inheritance. From deep within the psyche we still hear the voices of our ancestors, it is a subconscious remembrance of the power of the ancient rites at hallowed altars.
The oldest known altars in the world were made by Neanderthal people in cave high up in the Alps approximately 75,000 years ago. During excavation in the 1900's, altars were revealed that were made for rituals celebrating the Paleolithic cult of the bear. Carefully arranged cave bear skulls and bones were found. Some of the skulls had bones or stones placed around them while other ceremonial arrangements were created from various combinations of cave bear bones.
Home altars have been found dating back to 8000 and 6000 B.C. in Turkey. In West Africa and ancient Nordic religions, altars were thought to symbolize the "throne of god" and were made of a large stone or a heap of stones. In the Hindu tradition, altars were places where the gods were invited or summoned. Some cultures used burial mounds as altars symbolizing death leading to life and rebirth. Fire altars were used to represent this cyclical link between life and death, because fire can die down and rise again.
The word `altar' is derived from a Latin word meaning a high place. Altars are usually on elevated platforms, tables or hilltops. These are where celestial beings are honored. Some altars were placed in low areas, such as fireplaces and excavated pits. The hearth was considered to one prototype of a low altar.
Surviving the destructive forces of time, some of the world's most breathtaking altars have survived. From the lofty Xisnfeng (Fairy Summit) Temple on a sacred mountain in China, to the altars in the Great Pyramids of Egypt and at Newgrange in Ireland, altars and shrines throughout the world continue to speak to us of the majesty of Spirit (the Creator). You can imbue your own home with the spiritual energy that surrounds these sacred altars by learning about altars and understanding the underlying principles.
Why Altars Work
Mostly the underlying power of the altar lies in the visible
appearance. Giving form to the formless through structure and objects of the altar provides a visual representation of the Divine. When objects are thoughtfully placed on the altar, they physically represent things and make the difficult easier to comprehend.
Just by looking at your altar, can change the way you feel at any given time by the colors, the images on it, the smells coming from it, and to things it conjures up from the memories it invokes.
Altar items are physical objects, yet each one represents an ideal, belief, relationship, concept or idea. Together, they are not symbols but are a synthesis that is far more that the sum of its parts. It impacts the subconscious mind.
Components of the altar are reflections of our spiritual side. In some cultures, objects representing the gods were not considered to be symbolic, they were actually believed to BE the divinity they represented. While most people don't share the literal view, symbolic objects play a very important role in shaping our beliefs and our experience with it.
A visible, physical form of the altar can help to strengthen our connection to our past and our future by the ceremonies or rituals which accompany the use of the altar. Most rituals of our ancestors consisted of anything from birth to death. These were performed solemnly, in front of an altar, reinforcing the fact that the individual is not alone and is an integral part of the larger picture or community which extends both backward and forward in time. By using the object(s) on the altar as focal points, we help to put ordinary experiences into perspective within the greater panorama of life and help us to step out of the ordinary into the sacred and spiritual realms.
Altars and the Connection to Spirit
An altar can fill the need to reconnect to the sacred elements of life by being a visible representation of the spiritual energy that surround and sustains us. It can be a effect means of forging a connection to higher powers and be a gateway between the seen and unseen which in turn connects us to the rhythms of nature and the universe.
An altar dedicated to increasing our spiritual awareness can become an energetic point of convergence for symbols that propel the human spirit forward. It can bring grace and beauty into your life. Here, you can pray and ask for divine guidance, listen to messages from the spiritual realm and give thanks for things received.
A simple ritual of lighting a candle at an altar can infuse ordinary moments with sacred meaning.
Prayer and Devotion
The universal function of an altar is a place of worship and devotion and can offer much needed dimension to modern life regardless of religious affiliation. It can link your personal hopes and beliefs to a higher context and refuel spiritual reserves. A home altar used for prayers can help instill a feeling of not being alone and can function as a reminder that there are beings in the realm of spirit
close to us waiting to help providing courage and comfort we need to face obstacles that seem too large for us to handle alone.
Listening
The altar is not only for supplication and prayer, it is also a place for listening to our own intuition. The art of listening can be as profound as worship and listening to our inner selves is just as good as listening to the spiritual realm. At the altar, tune into your inner messages and the messages sent to you from the Creator. There will be times when the answers come but we are too busy to hear them
or to notice. But they are answered. Taking the time to be at your altar and listen for the answers connects us to the Divine and helps us to see the answers we seek.
Giving Thanks
Prayers of gratitude and thanks were among the most common and central functions of an altar. Giving thanks for our bounty, the hunt and blessing in life creates a kind of bond and attraction that more blessings should come your way and helps one to be more receptive to the life forces of the universe. Placing things on the altar that you are appreciative of (fruits/vegetables for bounty; seashells for
water, feathers for air, etc.) we are attuning ourselves more to the spiritual realm and we thank the Creator for these things in order that they may continue to grace our lives.
Altars for Personal Integration
By placing objects on our altars that characterize various aspects of your life, we can integrate all of the different personalities that we must use in our mundane lives. How you arrange these objects can serve as a metaphor for integration and harmony within our lives. Example, a paintbrush for the artist in you or a silver spoon for
the mother/nurturer in you. This is where you will bring together various disparate elements of your life so they can come together and unify into a coherent whole. By arranging and rearranging various objects on your altar can help
you to symbolically reorder your own life. The human psyche can register these symbolic acts and help to integrate into a personal cohesion.
Altars for Life Transitions, Continuity of Life and Manifestation
Traditionally, an altar was used as a place for memorializing the turning points of our lives. This is very valuable today because there is a lack of places where we can express and celebrate life experiences. Whether the events are happy or sad, there is always an appropriate ritual for commemorating the loss or success.
Today, people are only given one day off from work for a funeral and few acknowledge that the period of mourning extends far beyond the funeral. The end of a marriage is marked by the signing of the papers and maybe an appearance in court. The home altar can be a place to give proper homage over a longer period through the use of ritual and ceremony. This will help you to process acknowledge and fully experience these important issues and events in your life. You are giving these feelings a physical form and honoring these feelings so that it is easier to deal with them and let them go.
An altar can be a wonderful repository for memories, both personal and cultural. It can be where we honor ancestors or heroes. You can have visual representation of the people we love, both living and dead. It offers us a place and a means of symbolically honoring our connection to our past and our present our hopes and our children and our feelings about those no longer in our lives. This is where we can find the courage to face the problems of the future.
A home altar can help you to achieve your life goals, it's where you can sit and sort out your life, values and desires. If you sit in stillness and think on your hopes and dreams it becomes easier to manifest them. By placing things on your altar that signify your goals, it becomes a sacred template enabling you to achieve those goals in accordance of the higher good.
Creating and meditating at your altar can bring about unexpected and happy coincidences in your life. It becomes a gathering point for positive energy which is subconsciously directed toward areas of your life where changes need to be made or where you want to achieve results.
Altars and Transcendence
Every step in creating your home altar can be an extraordinary process. You will decide its purpose, assemble the objects for it, construct it and use it. This can be a transcending and transformational process. Transcendence is the ability to begin anew, to enter into a state of grace, with the awareness that, no matter what your past has been right now you are creating a new beginning; your home altar will transport you into this state.
The home altar will project a radiant energy throughout your home and will be a constant reminder of the greater realms of spirit within and around us.
