Outdoor Altar

This post was inspired by Dani over at Magickal Mommy. I really enjoyed her post about her outdoor altar, and it reminded me of one of my favorite places to gather for ritual. I have a friend who lives nearby, and we used to get together every now and then for ritual. She has the most beautiful altar in her back yard. I have a few very fuzzy pictures of her altar all decked out for Beltaine in 2005...this is the best one I could find.



Her altar is made out of a log holding up a wooden pedestal, which displays an enormous crystal. During this ritual, we used this as the main altar, and placed all the ritual items around the huge crystal.

I don't have an outdoor altar. The #1 reason being that whenever it's warm enough for me to be doing rituals outside, my back yard is invariably infested with thousands of spiders...and I'm extremely arachnophobic. I do, however, have a lot of little outdoor things here and there that honor the Gods in various ways. I have a couple little stone plaques. One says, "Goddess Dwells Here", and is displayed right outside the front door. Another says, "Blessed Be The Trees", and this one is stationed below the twisted willow tree.



If there were a place where I felt comfortable communing with the Earth in my back yard (without being accosted by creepy crawlies, which would send me screaming across the yard), it would be below this tree. *sigh* Maybe the next home I live in, I will make sure to have a back yard that I can actually enjoy.