Ritual For A Dream Pt. 2 (The Altar)

I create altars often as places to focus my energy and intentions. Altars can be simple or complex, temporary or as permanent as anything can be on this mortal coil. 

I created an altar as a way of working with the energy of my dream figure (the abused woman). It became a middle ground for the making of the healing salve, and the book I made. The altar changed continually, as it was essentially a place for containing the pieces of the processes before they were integrated into a new form. Herbs that would ultimately be cooked into the salve or images that would be glued into the book found a temporary home there. I lit the candle and burned incense before beginning work on any of these related projects. 

The photo in the upper left corner of this post contains an image of a woman who has been badly beaten and is lying in a hospital bed. I placed her in the bowl of comfrey, calendula, and St. John's Wort. Later in the process, I placed an image of a healing goddess on the altar, as I was very ready to incorporate her energy into the process. Working with the images of abused women for the book was very difficult, and having a place to contain them, as well as an antidotal image of the feminine (a healing goddess) was essential to my sense of well being. Darkness with no light is intolerable. With a little light, things begin to shift. You can see enough to do the necessary work. 

Part of what made the process so powerful for me was that it allowed me to concretize and externalize my feelings of woundedness and my desire to be healed so that they became things I could see and hold and move. In this way, all the actions I took were affirmations of both the grief and sorrow of being badly hurt, and the powerful possibility of healing.

Altars are containers for transformation. Even without making the salve or the book, I could have very successfully worked with the narrative of the abused victim coming into contact with, changing, and being changed by, the divine healing presence, just by placing images and symbols on the altar. It is hard for some people to believe that this could actually change us in a profound way, but this is the essence of effective ritual.