In lieu of a statement made by Tiokasin Ghosthorse, where he speaks to the vaccinating against spirit performed by Modernity, and in line with the call to heart repeated by Gordon White and Charles Eisenstein of ‘What is mine to do?’ - I want to share some ways to be that are as anti-establishment as stealing from a bank minus the terror and rousing of the weaponised organs of the state. Ways to be that are already near at hand, but have been forgotten or have become furniture in our objectifying world, furniture whose use and style bounce off our secular-washed psyche.
Altars
Wherever an Altar is found, there civilisation exists. - Joseph De Maistre
In the offerings section I will explore the definitions of this whole piece but here I want to ground us in what it is we are doing. Because, despite some puritanical views and a sense of hormetic dismissal, or ignoring the importance of what we want as bio-cultural beings, a spirit in the everyday kind of paradigm shift is to achieve a good life.
I would define a good life as that life we lead which enriches our stores of energy for action, presence and connection, while simultaneously being contagious. One person I know, the most enthusiastic person and, non-coincidentally, the most religious, has a rich life and is contagious with his energy. He is selfless, the gold standard for judging a spiritual/religious person, in so far as things are directly related to him. He educates on being road safe because he was in a devastating accident, well several actually. He donates blood ongoingly because of that accident which required that he use up the stores of blood that the attending hospital had on hand. He promotes a life with Christ because he knows himself to have been saved. These would not typically be considered as kinds of self serving behaviours but they are, and this is the crux of what I will speak on later in the piece which is the need to choose your target force/deity/extra-physical body. Don’t worry, you don’t need that information just yet.
Now, an altar, is your spiritual workshop. Ever spent much time in your mate’s Dad’s workshop? Some are neat and effective work is done within, some are not neat and effective work is done within, some are not neat and nothing gets done except plenty of drinking and complaining. The same is true of a spiritual workshop. For most of last year my altar was crammed in next to my bed, with hardly enough room for me kneel down and pray in front of, it was set up in a way that looked useful but in fact was not. More recently I have spread my space out, thanks in large part to my partner rearranging our room and also telling me that my altar sucked.
For me, kneeling and praying, burning candles and incense, and having many objects of varying levels of importance laid out, is an altar I want. But when offerings and ceremony come into it later in this piece, the expansive and multitudinal ways that one can work herein means that altars ought not look the same. Nor are we limited to one. Nor does it even need to be at your house. The notion coming to mind for me is that dancing is both ceremony and offering but will probably take place out of the house. For some the prayer mat and wherever it is placed, is the altar. For others, church or temple is the altar, or the container of the altar.
So, to whom is an altar dedicated? This is where I will make a claim, a lot of people won’t like it and we all get to go on with our lives. An altar is dedicated to the forces/deities/extra-physical bodies that we like and that we want something from. ‘No, Ryan,’ you’re thinking, ‘you cannot petition the Lord with prayer! Devotion and worship is not about what you or I want, it is about devotion in the manners and ways appropriate to a specific force/deity/extra-physical body!’ Yes, exactly. It is about following the rules, so to speak, of each being (whose ways of relating have been made up as much as they have been discovered or told to us) toward an end. We pray at an altar so that our cousin can heal from the shingles, we make offerings at an altar so that the locusts leave our crops alone, we conduct a ceremony of fasting in order to show God that we mean business. What is so wrong with dedication in the name of an end? Peace on Earth is an end. Children being saved from slavery is an end. Abusers seeing the errors of their ways is an end. A god knowing our devotion to them is an end.
There is a word I am avoiding using here, which is a nasty slur when you get down to it - should. We should pray away the suffering of all others. We should make offerings for the selfless priority of the deity. We should appease the gods with our sacrifice. Because we should. Fuck that. In the same way that an organism entering a new ecology will alter the ecosystem so that they can fit in, but at a certain point of alteration have to be corrected by everyone else in the system, Humans too must choose their lives over others and at a certain point of this choice, will be corrected by others who are choosing their own lives, for such is how boundaries between neighbours are formed. If we are overstepping on what we desire from our target being, they will either correct us or do nothing at all.
HOWEVER - a big however - know this, a shared altar with those who are offering in the same direction, for the end of someone else yields greater results than appeasing just our personal desires. AND - a big and - it has to be done genuinely. Back to the example of my friend the contagious Christian, he isn’t advocating for road safety so that he doesn’t get in another accident and he isn’t donating blood so that he can have a supply waiting for him and he isn’t promoting Christ so that he can be more loved by the loving Lord. These things are directly related to his life and bound to his lived experience, but are genuinely for the benefit of others.
So bringing it back to the altar, on my own I have several candles in containers with names of the deceased on them. Not “the deceased” but specific individuals I have known who slipped from this mortal coil. I don’t have these hoping that I personally will benefit. I have these because I want them to remain tethered to the world, through the prayers and offerings of a loved one. It is selfless in that I do it for them but it is specific to me and mine. An altar is ours, it is yours, it is mine. I don’t pray for world peace or an end of slavery because they don’t relate to me, I am not moved by nor toward these ends. Say what you will. I pray for my friends to know what they want to do and to know what they are here to do. I pray for my family to be safe and to lead exciting lives. I pray that I may be brave and have energy to attend to the tasks that to me are important. I don’t care about what I should pray to and I also don’t take my prayers to an altar that I should pray at, I do what works for me.
An altar is ours, it is yours, it is mine. Make of it what you will.
Ryan Dickinson