In recent years, India's ''sacred groves,'' small forests or stands of trees set aside for a deity's exclusive use, have attracted the attention of NGOs, botanists, specialists in traditional medicine and anthropologists. Environmentalists disillusioned by the failures of massivestate-sponsored solutions to ecological problems have hailed them as an exemplary form of traditional community resource management.
The Day of the Dead is the most important annual celebration in Oaxaca, Mexico. Skillfully combining textual information and photographic imagery, this book begins with a discussion of the people of Oaxaca, their way of life, and their way of looking at the world. It then takes the reader through the celebration from the preparations that can begin months in advance through to the private gatherings in homes and finally to the cemetery where the villagers celebrate together -- both the living and the dead. The voices in the book are of those people who have participated in the Day of the Dead for as long as they can remember. There are no ghosts here. Only the souls of loved ones who have gone to the Village of the Dead and who are allowed to return once a year to be with their family. Very readable and beautifully illustrated, this book provides an extensive discussion of the people of Oaxaca, their way of life and their beliefs, which make the Day of the Dead logical and easily comprehensible.
Jacob Kinnard offers an in-depth examination of the complex dynamics of religiously charged places. Focusing on several important shared and contested pilgrimage places - Ground Zero and Devils Tower in the United States, Ayodhya and Bodhgaya in India, Karbala in Iraq - he poses a number ofcrucial questions. What and who has made these sites important, and why? How are they shared, and how and why are they contested?
Asen, metal sculptures of southern Benin, West Africa, are created to honor the dead and are meant to encourage interaction between visible and spiritual worlds in ancestral rites associated with the belief system known as vodun. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in the former Kingdom of Dahomey, Bay traces more than 150 years of transformations in the manufacture and symbolic meanings of asen against the backdrop of a slave-raiding monarchy, domination by French colonialism, and postcolonial political and social change.
In contemporary Western culture ritual spaces are preserved, destructed and reconstructed. Examples are the rearrangement of churches, the rise of multi-religious urban ritual spaces, the remarkable vitality of places of pilgrimage and war cemeteries, and the growing popularity of lieux de memoire in general with their accompanying forms of 'topolatry' and 'geopiety'.
Ancient spiritual traditions - Goddess, Celtic, African, Hindu, Buddhist, Catholic, Greek Orthodox - are being revived and remade by women who create amazing altarpieces. Kay Turner has been exploring the subject of women's altars for over 20 years. She has found them in the studios of artists in Detroit, New York or San Francisco and kitchens and bedrooms in Mexican-American homes in Texas. The statues, flowers, pictures, photographs, amulets, stones, shells and other things that make the altars represent their makers' histories, beliefs and desires.
N.B.: This is a guide - a start to supporting your research journey about altars. It is not all-inclusive, but contains resources that can inspire you to conduct more research!
Photo by Paolo Nicolello on Unsplash
What is an altar?
Altars can serve a multitude of purposes in a variety of different contexts. One concept that commonly relates altars to one another is intentionality. The intention of the altar is often what drives its creation. Altars frequently serve a spiritual intention or purpose, but this is not always the case. For example, some altars are memorials, some altars commemorate major life events, some altars celebrate the changes of the seasons.
How do I begin the process of making an altar?
First, ask yourself some framing questions:
Ancestor Reverence in Altar Creation*
From Professor Chireau:
"The shrine differs from the altar in that both are sacred spaces, but one functions as a house or a location for the sacred object, being, or energy, while the other functions as a kind of table or a doorway." (emphasis mine)
While the excerpt from Iya Teish below presents somewhat of an oversimplification/conflation of a shrine and an altar, the concept of what a shrine or altar can do is still relevant for comprehension of the concept of developing a sacred space like an altar. Professor Chireau reminds us in the quote above that the house of the object and the doorway to it are two different things, but part of the same project. As you read Iya Luisah Teish's definition below about altars and shrines, please keep this level of distinction in mind.
One type of sacred space is an ancestor shrine. This shrine is created specifically to honor the dead or pay tribute to those who are no longer with us. Scholar Luisah Teish describes the building of this type of shrine in her book Jambalaya: The Natural Woman's Book of Personal Charms and Practical Rituals (1988):
The first step in communicating with your ancestors is building a shrine. Your ancestor shrine is an all-purpose altar. By adding different things in varying proportions, it can become a shrine for any element or attribute you desire - meditation space, abundance altar, oracular chamber.
One of my greatest pleasures is witnessing the variety of altars built by members of my extended family. Here everyone's artistic ability comes out. People mold, carve, arrange, and combine until they have an altar that is useful and pleasing.
Shop in the Mother's market for altar objects - driftwood, seashells, stones, and so on. Begin to see the beauty in things you might have called trash before. Understand that "They - the ancestors - are in the whimpering rocks," and bring them home.
Altars move themselves (inspire you to move them) from room to room, change levels, take on different dimensions.
