Wicca Altar and Tools: A Beginner’s Guide to Wiccan Altars, Tools for Spellwork, and Casting the Circle: Volume 2 (Wicca for Beginners Series)

Product Information

Since Wicca is primarily practiced in the home (or outdoors), the Wiccan altar is often tucked in a corner of a room, and pulled out to stand in the center of the sacred circle during ritual. If you have a fixed altar, you can place the items from your altar in the moonlight and then put them back once cleansed and charged. Once dedicated as an altar it should not be used for everyday tasks after this, however, so choose carefully. Blue: Blue represents the spiritual and physical, as well as peace, truth, and serenity; it can stimulate your psychic abilities.

You can have a simple candle and a rose, or you can have a full-fledged altar with many colors and candles of different sizes. Candles can be placed on your altar as a source of light and color, as well as for use during spell work and rituals.A Wiccan altar is a deeply personal space; the more time you spend at the altar, the more you will connect with it. If you do a lot of rituals with deities, you might want to decorate with their specific correspondences.

There are some guidelines that I’ll outline below about how many people like to set things up, but just because most people do it one way, definitely doesn’t mean that you have to follow suit.Above all of these items, from left to right, you shall put your Goddess statue, one or two illuminating candles, and the God statue. Keeping the altar clean and well-maintained helps to ensure its effectiveness in spellcasting and ritual work. If you have an altar cloth, it can double as a storage bag – just put all your tools in the middle, bundle them up, and tie it shut like a pouch.

When choosing a spot for your altar, think about how often you’ll be using it and how much space you want to dedicate to it. Libation bowl: this is your offering to the God or Goddess, which usually contains juice, wine, or a piece of cake.Personalizing an altar is a way to deepen your connection to your practice and create a sacred space that is uniquely your own. Cleansing the altar regularly helps to remove this negative energy and create a positive and supportive environment for ritual work. Also, that place should not be entered by any other person than yourself, except in the case that you may work with someone else or someone initiated comes for an inspection. Then, walk around the perimeter of the circle clockwise, visualizing a protective energy forming around you. Having a permanent altar helps create a daily practice as a witch, but a temporary altar may be necessary for certain life situations.

Sit down or remain standing as you meditate and think of all the great things that your altar will bring to you: peace, serenity, awareness, intuition. Incense is another common item used on a Wiccan altar, but it can also be a respiratory hazard if used improperly and can also cause fires. Represent it with stones, plants, leaves, flowers, salt, soil, bones, a pentagram, or any green or brown-colored object.Your altar needs to be constructed with the right type of wood (there are several options here) and needs to represent the various elements. Usually it’s just a table where you will place the tools you are about to use and any symbols depicting your beliefs. Find a table or any surface that is not currently in use and set it up with an altar cloth and your witch’s tools. This means that the tools associated with Earth, for example, will face North, while those associated with Fire will face South. You'll probably want to include a few things, like your magical tools, but ultimately the altar should be about functionality.