Recently did some work on this alternate altar that lives in our bedroom.
Some bones foraged from our land, some foraged back in Michigan by an old friend. The human teeth belong to the same friend (one of their baby teeth & wisdom teeth, given as a gift).
The altar in our public space is a really wonderful artistic display, a story of us, blending a lot of cultural elements that we share and some that we only share because we're sharing a life together. It's full of offerings to this land, but also pulled tarot cards, sculptures, gifts from friends, palo santo & copal incense, stones and offering plates from my side of the family. Bundled pine, bundled sage, and blessed rosemary. It's public, interactive, and beautiful.
This altar, though, is very personal. Some elements have been in my possession for years, before I began this journey into spiritual practice, before I knew what their purpose was (or my own). Some elements have been added over time: the fossilized lizard tail and heart, for example, I found after opening the first studio I had on this land. The rat femurs I also found on the land, while cleaning trash when we first moved in, and all of these little things that have found me I've felt compelled to venerate and offer back to the space. The display in our living space is public: it invites guests to add to it, and sometimes they leave offerings for us there, too. But this space is in our private area, and it feels like it contains little secret pieces of us and the land. Things that people only really see if they spend enough time here to become privy to them.
To me this parallels the reality of working with such a space: many people come and enjoy the superficial aesthetic beauty of the land and the home, for a time. But they don't truly understand what it is we're doing here, or what it really means to be here. They have respect, but lack full awareness and veneration. But there are some who know what this land means just by virtue of having been here -- some needed to come often to feel it, some stepped foot on it and knew instantly that it was special. But that kind of awareness isn't common, and it's something that we hold very dear. We keep very close to us those who share our recognition of this space as liminal, as straddling time and place, of its constantly repeated history, playing out over and over each moment, and the responsibility we have to honor the spirits that exist here.
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