Dedicant Path Essay 4: Home Shrine

 Dedicant Path Essay 4: Home Shrine
by Kristy "Foxlyn Wren" Tackett
February 10, 2024

I have shrines and altars all over my home for different entities and intentions, so what's one more? My first ADF altar was very basic, as it was just a cup for The Well, a block of wood for The Tree, a tealight for The Fire, and a little bottle of silver beads for the Earth Mother offering. I set it up in my office, next to my computer, to keep me motivated to practice the COoR and keep on top of my studies and essays. Also to help me attune to druidry, my local grove, and Virtual Fire Proto-Grove that I regularly practice with.

As I got more comfortable with combining my path with druidry, I added a drinking horn for the waters and a kuksa cup for offerings. Behind The Tree are note cards with prayers and meditations, the 9 Pagan Principles, and COoR steps for practice.

There is also a Frigg figure to represent all of my hearth and seidr entities, a reindeer statue to represent my Gatekeeper for the dark half of the year (bee is the Gatekeeper for the light-half of the year), and a tarot card and prayer beads that represent Elen of the Ways. There's a river stone that represents boundaries, and in the back, there are two pouches of divination tools and a container of cornmeal offerings. Due to an unstable surface, I switched the real candle to a LED candle for safety.

Like my other shrines and altars, this one will change with the seasons, keeping the three main representations of The Well, the Tree, and The Fire constant. I also want to put the cosmos sigil on my wood block, because I love that sigil and the wood block represents Yggdrasil, my Tree of Life.

I'd also like to get something to represent Garanis Crane, since he's been a guide since the first time that I attended an ADF public ritual over 10 years ago. When I finally joined in July 2023, Garanis said "It's about time you finally joined us." Be it a feather or a pendant, it's important to me to have something for him, too.

I take photos of all my shrines and altars throughout the years, enjoying how they've changed as I have changed. It'll be interesting to see how this one evolves, too.