Every now and then I like to take pictures of my altar space, so I have a record of how it’s shifted and changed over the years. I took some today, after a FB friend asked for altar snapshots, and I thought they’d be fun to share here.
Posts Tagged ‘fire well and tree’
Some Altar Pictures
Posted in General Things, tagged ADF, altar, cosmos sigil, Druidry, fire well and tree, paganism, shrine on January 18, 2021| 2 Comments »
Recreating the Cosmos
Posted in Initiate's Path, Ritual, tagged ADF, audhumla, Druidry, fire well and tree, recreating the cosmos, recreating the worlds, sacrifice, yggdrasil, ymir on May 14, 2020| Leave a Comment »
In the beginning, there was distance. The distance between South and North. The distance between Fire and Ice. The distance existed before the many worlds were born, and in it there was, licked from the ice by the great cow Audhumla, a giant. Ymir he was, and he was the progenitor of all of the Jotun. There in the great between, he drank the milk of the great cow Audhumla, until he was slain. Odin, Villi, and Ve slew him, there in the gap between, and from him they fashioned all of the worlds. They fashioned the earth from his flesh, the seas from his blood, the mountains from his bones, the stones from his teeth, the sky from his skull, and the clouds from his brain. Four dwarfs held up his skull, one in each of the four cardinal directions. His eyelashes became the fence surrounding Midgard, or Middle Earth, the home of mankind.
Today we stand within those eyelashes, on the earth that was once the great sacrifice that brought the many worlds into being, and below it, we find that there are three wells. These three wells are the Well of Fate, the Well of Roaring, and the Well of Mimir – from them we seek wisdom, and we hallow this well that it may connect with the sacred Wells beneath Yggdrasil, that we may speak with the worlds below.
Above these three wells, we find a great tree – Yggdrasil – the steed upon which messages are transmitted from world to world. The dragon gnaws at its roots, the stag forages on its leaves, and the eagle soars in its branches, and around it spin the nine worlds of all of creation. We hallow this tree, that it may be Yggdrasil for us, that we may be the axis of the many worlds, the sacred center of all things.
And between these many worlds, up from the wells below, riding upon the tree, we find the bridge of Bifrost – shining and bright, the fiery way that leads from Midgard, where we now stand, to Asgard, the home of the Gods. We hallow this fire, that it may be the sacred fire that transmits our messages to the upperworld, that we may speak to the worlds above.
By all the mighty kindreds three
By fire and well and sacred tree
By land and sky and flowing sea
I recreate our cosmos.
Daily Ritual and Altar
Posted in Clergy Training Program, Ritual, tagged ADF, blacksmith, core order of ritual, cosmos prayer, daily practice, dark moon forge, Druidry, earth mother, fire well and tree, incense, lamp, offerings, ritual, witchcraft on April 18, 2016| Leave a Comment »
I think it’s about time I repost and update my daily practice, since it’s been a few years since I’ve talked about it, and it has evolved a bit. First, though, my altar has some new items that I want to show off!
This is just the working surface (which you can tell is used, by the amount of ash that I continually fight to keep cleaned up). I have a shelf full of deity and spirit icons/tokens above the tree, but it’s hard to get a picture of both that looks good.
The new items are the incense burner on the left, and the oil lamp in the middle.
Both are made by blacksmith David Cohen, at Dark Moon Forge in Austin. I’m lucky enough to know David in person, having met him at the Texas Imbolc Retreat the last two years, and he is a wonderful artisan. I purchased the incense burner from him last year, and then a few weeks ago he was posting on Facebook about the new oil lamps he was making to gauge interest. Typically he doesn’t do mail-order items, preferring to sell his wares in person in the Austin area, but I asked very nicely, and he mailed me my new lamp.
I had to wait a few days to get the lamp oil in (I’m using Firefly Clean Lamp Oil, since it’s odorless and smokeless), which was agonizing, but I’m SO happy with how it looks. I’ve tried various configurations of candles for the fire representation on my altar over the years, and never found anything I truly loved. I also had problems with candles getting weird and needing to be replaced because they were only lit for 5-10 minutes at a time. This lamp will burn for any amount of time, and I just love the leaf handle (which does allow me to carry it around, but since it’s an open container of lamp oil, I’ll have to be super careful with anything like that). I still love and burn lots of candles, but for my altar, I see myself using this oil lamp for a good long time.
Regardless, if you happen to be in the Austin, TX area, I can’t recommend Dark Moon Forge highly enough.
As for my daily practice, I first posted about it in June of 2014 as I was working on my first pass at the Liturgy Practicum class, before I had started on the Clergy Training Program. I typically do this practice at my mid-morning “coffee” break (I don’t drink coffee, but I like to get up around 10:30 or 11 and stretch a bit.)
Not a lot has changed, but I have added to it slightly, and I still feel like it’s not quite finished.
(Three breaths to center self)
Hail to you, Hertha, Earth Mother – may I always be supported as I walk in your ways.
The earth is below me, the heavens above me,
The flame lights the way! (Light lamp)The earth is below me, the heavens above me,
The well flows within! (Fill/touch well)The earth is below me, the heavens above me,
The tree spans the world! (Bless tree)Let us pray with a good fire! (Light incense)
Eostre, Guardian of the Gates of Dawn, hold fast these gates that I may speak into the worlds.
I make offering to the gods.
May their power be with me this day. (Cense altar shelf)I make offering to the ancestors.
May their wisdom be with me this day. (Cense altar shelf)I make offering to the nature spirits.
May their blessing be with me this day. (Cense altar shelf)The waters support and surround me
The land extends about me
The sky stretches out above me
At the center burns a living flame
May all the kindreds bless me.
May my worship be true
May my actions be just
May my love be pure
Blessings and honor and worship to the holy ones.Mighty, Noble, and Shining Ones, thank you for your blessings and your presence.
Eostre, Guardian of the Gates of Dawn, thank you for keeping fast the ways.
Hertha, Earth Mother – thank you for upholding me always.(Three breaths to center self)
(Extinguish lamp)
I always think it needs a daily rune draw, but I haven’t managed to figure out a good way to do that. If I leave my runes on my altar, I forget about them when I need them for ritual or study group meetings, and though I have a journal specifically for readings, I never seem to remember to write down what I drew. (I have a working memory like a rusty sieve these days.)
I also feel like I should make some kind of offering to the deities I’m working with by name (Ing Frea, Hela, Frige), as well as to my ancestors and house spirits, but I also don’t want to have a 15 minute practice. I’ll never remember to do the whole thing if it’s going to take more than just a few minutes. Perhaps I need to have a weekly practice to make specific offerings. Or maybe I need an evening practice to do?
I’ve talked to other ADFers, and they seem to have more “built in” practices – an offering to the ancestors with breakfast coffee, and the like. I have trouble starting anything like that due to just sheer forgetfulness, but with all the beings I’d like to be building *ghosti with, maybe I need to just send myself a bunch of reminders!
Anyway, this is obviously a work in progress – I try to balance as much oomph as I can get into a small bit of time, knowing that I’m most likely to actually do the offerings that way, and so far it works nicely.
Any thoughts you might have on polishing this into something a little more “complete” feeling would be really nice!
Liturgy 1: Question 7 – Fire, Well, and Tree
Posted in ADF, Clergy Training Program, Initiate's Path, tagged ADF, clergy training program, CTP-Prelim, Druidry, fire, fire well and tree, initiate's path, liturgy, Liturgy 1, three kindreds, tree, triple center, well, world tree on June 29, 2015| Leave a Comment »
7. Discuss the origins of the Fire, Well and Tree, and the significance of each in ADF liturgy. (minimum 100 words for each of the Fire, Well and Tree)
Fire: The Fire forms one of the gates in ADF’s sacred center. It is the connection to the upperworlds, and it is most often affiliated with the Deities. It is the hearth fire and the essence of change, the spark that creates life (Paradox). Fire burns away impurities and makes things sacred. The sacred fire is the recipient of many of our offerings, which burn into smoke that feeds the deities in the nature of the Vedic sacrifices to and through Agni. Fire was highly important in Indo-European cultures, and many sacred fires are found in the mythology, from Agni (who is fire itself) to the Roman hearth fires and Vestal fires (Dangler).
Well: The Well forms one of the gates in ADF’s sacred center. It is the connection to the underworlds, and it is most often affiliated with the Ancestors, who go “below” and from whom we get wisdom and memory. It is also affiliated with chthonic deities and their underworld realms. Water from the well washes away impurities and makes things sacred. The well is represented in the mythology by the three wells that feed the World Tree Yggdrasil, from which Odin gains wisdom and the Norns get the mud that repairs the world tree’s roots. It is also similar to the watery otherworld that the Irish see as the home of the Ancestors. (Paradox)
Tree: The Tree holds fast the ways between the worlds. It stands at the center and connects all the worlds, and it is most often affiliated with the Nature Spirits, who live in and among its branches. The tree spans the worlds, from the watery depths of the well to the fiery heights of the sky. It is particularly well represented by Yggdrasil, the great World Tree, whose inhabitants include the dragon (Nidhogg), the squirrel (Ratatosk), the unnamed eagle, and the four stags (Dáinn, Dvalinn, Duneyrr and Duraþrór) (Paradox). The Irish also have an ancient sacred tree, the Bile, found growing over a holy well or fort (MacCulloch).
Liturgy 1: Question 3 – Center and Gates
Posted in Clergy Training Program, Initiate's Path, tagged ADF, CTP-Prelim, fire well and tree, gates, Liturgy 1, sacred center, study program on September 17, 2014| Leave a Comment »
3. Describe the concepts of the Center and the Gates in ADF’s Standard Liturgical Outline. (minimum 300 words)
ADF’s ritual structure revolves around a recreated “sacred center” that exists at the center of all worlds (rather than between the worlds, or in a liminal space, as most neopagans do). This sacred center is the axis mundi – the axis about which all the worlds revolve, and through which we access the magical and energetic currents found in each of the worlds (the number of which usually depends on the hearth culture, but most often three or a multiple of three). The sacred centers that we use in ritual allow us an orientation in the world and a fixed point from which to observe and participate in the cosmos (Dangler). The axis mundi itself, the axis of the world, can only exist at the center of the universe and “all things extend about it”, it’s presence is not an ordering force, but a break that “allows the sacred to pour into and destroy the homogeneity of space” (Dangler). In this way the axis mundi is both a type of sacred center, and a type of gate through which we encounter the otherworlds.
This central axis is represented by the sacred fire, which transforms offerings so that they may be consumed in the upperworld, the sacred well, which transmits offerings so that they may be consumed in the underworld/lower world, and the sacred tree, which forms the pathway across all the worlds and holds the ways open. These three “hallows” are recreated in each ADF ritual as part of the ordering of the cosmos and creating the sacred center, transforming an ordinary fire, well and tree into their sacred counterparts. The fire, well, and tree together form the Center of All Worlds, the creation/recognition of which is recognized as a crucial part of ADF liturgy. (Paradox)
Once we have affirmed the Center, we then open the gates. The gates function as a way to “tune” the groupmind’s psychic powers to whatever “wavelength” the ancestors, spirits, and/or gods will be communicating on” (Bonewits “Step”). Depending on the ritual, there may be one gate (or portal), or three, or more. Some ADF rituals open one central gate in the center of the ritual space, while others call upon both the fire and the well to open as gates, with the tree holding them open as the axis between them or opening as a gate to the far reaches of the middle realm (or both). These gates are the portals to the otherworlds (however many of them you need) through which we make our offerings and from which we receive blessings. The gates can be considered plural insofar as they are triple (Fire, Well, and Tree) or singular insofar as they together open a single portal (Newburg). When we make offerings to the well or to the fire, their energy passes through those gates and is available to the Ancestors, Dieties, and Nature Spirits to consume as sacrifices. In return, They give of Their energy and nature to bless us in return (Newburg). This transaction happens through the open gate(s).
While the gate(s) aren’t strictly necessary – you can communicate with the otherworlds without them – they make that communication easier, much like phoning ahead before you go to visit friends and family makes it more likely that they will be home to receive you and will not be elsewhere or busy or sleeping. In ritual, when we want the specific attention of the powers and spirits of the otherworld, it makes good sense to open the gates and inform Them that we want Their presence and attention.
Little Druid on the Prairie 