Before I put it away for the winter holidays and local solstice celebrations, here's my little pop-up altar, complete with offerings. Sharing in response to my friend @jehan-the-necromancer who has been curious for a while now and the lovely @chthoniclakewitch who asked about it.🥰 (I thought I might as well put the pics in a post, I hope you two don't mind being tagged. 🙈)
Mostly I'm working with Apollo and Aphrodite, Gods of Love, Sexuality, Queerness, Healing, Muse, Poetry, Inspiration and Beauty!
The reason is mostly my own queer gender identity and sexuality, as well as a life-long love for art, music and writing.
But also my experiences with CSA, depression and hurt are relevant in regards to many of these topics, as well as the struggles that come as a result. Apollo and Aphrodite give me security, capacity to practice self-love and consider the love others have for me, when anxiety threatens to lie to my heart and make me doubt it. They are also who I turn to for comfort and where I seek refuge when these things get hurt or when it's difficult to navigate them.
And they are the ones I pray to, when I want to extend my love to others or when I hope to see people I carry in my heart protected, healing and cared for. Especially in situations where I directly help a person with these things...
Aphrodite helps me learn how to think, act, speak and connect with deep love and care for the human essence.
Apollo helps me learn how to see the light and beauty of things and how to tap into my healing potential through creative expression.
Both these things are life long journeys.
I also pray to Ares and Hecate.
Ares because I am a very sensitive person who experiences others and their own emotions very deeply and easily gets very deeply impacted by them. It can be like I absorb the emotions of others and then have to work through them and understand them in all detail myself, even if they don't even fathom that or don't have to do that themselves. So I often carry lots of fear, sadness and hurt in my heart, or need to untangle the anger of others or sometimes also myself, because it mostly servers as a protective response.
Simultaneously I have a profound inability to take in and hold the emotion of anger very well, due to complex childhood trauma where people with unresolved anger issues would lash out in life- and safety-threatening ways due to their lack of self-control and and cause both physical and emotional damage. Therefore it was equally life-threatening in this environment to express anger or any other emotion or to protect myself by removing myself from situations that overwhelmed me.
To this day, there is nothing more terrifying to me than a person who cannot control their anger, who cannot communicate an issue, fear or a hurt in other ways than by lashing out. It still feels life-threatening, it gives me mortal anxiety and I can't process and react to that in real time. I will always shut down and struggle to comprehend even my own thoughts and memories in this moment. I am reduced to pure fear and survival instincts at this point.
And it took me many years to learn from Ares that I am allowed to protect myself, guard my peace and well-being by taking breaks when this become too much, especially when I'm under intentional attack.
Ares reminds me that it is okay to feel and express my own anger, but also that I do not want to follow examples of toxic, unhealed anger expression, by reminding me of the warrior's honor.
He reminds me that unfiltered emotion equals war and destruction. And in collaboration with Aphrodite and Apollo, that such things have no place in healthy, loving connections. That there is always a hurt or a fear underneath such strong and violent emotions, that seek to be protected. And that it is important to step back, to process my anger, yes, but to write it down, over and over until I am calm and understand the essence of what I want to express, without hurting the ones I love. And that others are equally responsible to do moderate their own emotions and that I don't have to expose myself if they have not been responsible enough to put in the work and effort it takes to learn how.
Ares is also who teaches me to enforce boundaries. That I am worthy of divine and earthly protection and justice. That it is okay to fight injustice and mistreatment, instead of quietly tolerating it. That my well-being, my rights and my existence are worth fighting for. That my life and I am worth fighting for. Worth defending.
That if nobody stands up for me, it is okay if I do that.
That peace is fought for, negotiated over, not merely tolerated.
He and Apollo are who I pray to, for strength and endurance in my battle against depression, chronic illness and now cancer.
He is the first god I ever prayed to, who I ever recognized as a god, when I was a child.
And Hecate is... Hecate. The mother, the maiden and the crone.
The witch goddess. Protector of the crossroads.
Those who know her, know her. Those who do not... fear her.
I pray to her for protection, for guidance. And to help me heal the witch-wound. The wound all people carry who have been othered or unjustly accused and punished out of fear for their knowledge and powers, rather than being honoured, heard and understood.
She is also known as the goddess of Boundaries, the Underworld, Plants and Herbalism as well as the Moon.
I'd like to say that my connection with her is much more... obscure and yet personal than with any of the other gods. I refer to her as mother, when I pray.
i wasn’t in the path of the total eclipse and the picture i did get did not get the entire vibe of the grey desaturated lighting but i still had a wonderful eclipse! i set out cards for Apollon and Artemis on my altar and because it finally feels like spring more than it has since the equinox, i lit some pink candles and rose incense. i also made some eclipse water to cleanse my altar with and do rituals with. i hope everyone had a good eclipse if you could see it!!
