Samhain Season Altar

I’ve neglected my altar for many moons. Not for any particular reason - life just rushes in and gets in the way. Like everyone else’s, our family has been preoccupied by dealing with life in the Covid era. The new school year has been difficult so far. Distance learning is not going well, and it’s been exceedingly frustrating. We aren’t in lockdown, but there are still strict rules about how many people outside your own household you can see per week and how restaurants can operate and so on and so forth. It’s all exhausting. 

Last week I finally cleaned and purified the altar - and used way too much copal. The whole house filled up with resinous, fragrant smoke. I just used my turkey feather wafter to waft it all around, smudging the house basically, and then opened all the windows and doors wide and let the cool breeze finish the job. 

(Altar tools: the turkey feather fan is for wafting smoke, smudging an area. The pampas grass wand is for doing a limpia of a person - brushing their aura, for lack of a better term)

Except for lining up some squash, however, I left the altar empty. I just wasn’t inspired to decorate it. It wasn’t quite Samhain season, not quite time for the day of the dead altar, and too late to dress it for Mabon. So it stayed empty and clean for a week. 

Today my oldest daughter Rowan was visiting, and Hope asked if we could all dress the altar together. She found an altar cloth (a crocheted shawl I had just given her for her birthday) and we all chose seasonal items to place, either from the yard or from my collection of altar pieces I keep on a shelf in the kitchen. It only took about fifteen minutes and was a really nice group activity. 

The picture of the whole altar doesn’t show details, so here are a few of our seasonal items. Shed antlers, decorated with rose hips. Reminds me of a seasonal crown on Cernunnos, although he isn’t really a deity I have dealings with. 

Pomegranates, of course, are a beautiful and appropriate decoration for an autumn altar. Persephone is sinking into Hades right now, to meet her husband and take on her aspect as queen of the dead. The black corn I brought back from Oaxaca, and is there simply for its beauty. The skull shot glass has apple cider in it, for visitors. And that tattered crocheted animal is a representation of the Black Rabbit of Inlé (What? You haven’t read Watership Down? Go start it right now). 

This altar will probably stay up through the day of the dead, and we will add to it as the day approaches. We will out up photos of our dearly departed, and add flowers and fruits and sweet breads. On the day itself, we will make a big batch of hot cocoa, light a fire, and sit around the altar eating and drinking and telling stories of our ancestors and beloved dead. 

The house feels so much more homey with an altar laid.