Why I Keep an Altar
A long journey into daily magical ritual.
At ten, I was somewhat consumed with the ceremony of my Roman Catholic upbringing. Going to mass. The surprisingly large and gothic church in Queens (St. Luke’s of Forest Hills) we went to. I loved the stations of the cross. I liked to kneel next to my bed and pray before bed, like I saw in the movies.
After my First Communion, things started to get tricky. I started asking a lot of questions in Sunday School/CCD. Specifically about dinosaurs and the various miracles. In the beginning, I wanted to know how these things all fit, but a few nuns really didn’t appreciate my tone and after a few heated “conversations,” my young mind switched and they became an obstacle.
Then there was Narnia. I was down for all of that. Portals to another world? Talking animals? Kids getting swords? Magic? But by the time we got to The Last Battle, the apologist metaphors started to seem pretty transparent. And then there was Susan. She became a young woman and was more interested in “lipstick and invitations,” and holy shit did that set me off. I mean, really. To this day I can’t remember being as angry about a piece of literature.
By twelve, I started reading about world religions and history and by then I wasn’t even asking questions anymore in classes and eventually I asked to stop going to religious training. I was also getting very into “the occult.”
“But what about your Confirmation? Don’t you want the gifts?”
I told my parents I didn’t believe in God. They rolled their eyes, but eventually said I didn’t have to go anymore if I really didn’t want to. In their eyes it seemed to be more about laziness than lake of faith.
I remember a cousin asking why I didn’t have to go to Sunday School anymore and I said, “I don’t believe in God.” His reply? “What does that have to do with anything?”
I’m going to skip over my teen years, because as many who know teenage atheists can tell you, we can be really fucking annoying. College me was even more so, with a little philosophy under my belt and the radical strain of New Atheism in the air, I was ready to debate. I had talking points.
Eventually, New Atheism gave way to Rationalism, and even I could see that was about as toxic as intellectualism can get.
Back when I was getting into “the occult,” I remember finding the Man, Myth & Magic: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Supernatural in the library and the glossy black books captured my imagination immediately. An Encyclopedia of the Occult?
From there, I moved to the sort of flavor of the time when it came to the late 90s: Wicca. Neo-Paganism and the sort of general Gardnerian traditions. All of which led me to Aleister Crowley, which all occult roads seem to lead to.
Ceremonial Magic rubbed me the wrong way immediately, though. While I found it intriguing, I also found it too close to organized religion. I also felt it sort of plucked ideas out of Egyptian iconography, Hebrew/Kabbalah thought, Sufi mysticism, and generally things I would eventually know to be cultural appropriation and even theft of culture by dominantly colonizer cultures.
I also dated a lot of witches. Tarot reading, pentagram wearing, spooky girls, goths, etc. There was a feeling, in fact, that magic was sort of the domain of the divine feminine, which left me wondering what my own spirituality looked like.
And then, life sort of got in the way of any sort of spiritual journey. Because my twenties were way too rough and my thirties were way too fun.
In the last ten years, though, I’ve moved into my own cobbled together tradition. Taking something from Wicca/European witchcraft ideas, a lot from Chaos Magic, then just things that feel right, I started keeping an altar and doing somewhat frequent tarot readings for myself.
My altar is a mirrored platter that my grandfather got from somewhere in Europe. Not much information, but I sort of like it that way. I never met my paternal grandfather. He died when my father was a boy, but I’ve amassed more items of his than any other family member. He was Jack, like me. I’ve always felt a magic in that mirror.
I’ve always felt a connection to Dionysus. There are always some bits of him on my altar. Three doubloons from the Krewe of Bacchus from a Mardi Gras years ago. Similarly, I always keep peacock feathers and symbols on there. To remind me that boys can be pretty too. Various crystals given to me over the years. A stone I got from the ground in front of Oscar Wilde’s grave in Paris. A Turkish Mosaic Lamp. One of my most prized possessions, my Orrery. Mementoes, champagne corks from parties, fragments of things long past I want to remember.
I often put various things on my altar to “charge” them. Including rings I often wear and cufflinks. Sometimes decks of tarot cards. Sometimes pictures of people.
Do I believe in magic? At one time I might say the altar is about setting intentions. It’s about giving me a focus. It’s about tradition. But no, it’s magic. It’s all those other things too, but it’s the magic I have found after looking for a long time and it works. It’s also beautiful and that’s part of the magic.
