My altars are on a shelving unit made up of 35 x 35cm shelves, of which I have 6. Four of these are dedicated to specific pantheons of gods, usually focusing on one or two I specifically work with, while the bottom two are made up of a book shelf and my ‘tool’ shelf. Pictured are both my Norse shelf and ‘tool’ shelf.

As I consider myself as working with the whole pantheon, my Norse shelf features physical items I have offered the gods, of which there are few as I most often offer perishables. It features a spider-shaped candle holder for Loke, a hand-made Mjølner for Tor, my hand-made runes for Odin, a vial of fur for Fenre, a jar filled with miscellaneous small objects (most visible is a large bone for Fenre, and a bottle cap for Loke), and a pin/necklace for Fenre. My other shelves for different pantheons are quite the same.

My ‘tool’ shelf is where I conduct my work when offering/rune casting and generally practicing, it includes a bone wand, an incense holder, a censer, a Fenre box containing an osteomancy kit, a jar of bones, my tarot cards, and altar cloth for working on. I use this shelf to initially do offerings before it gets moved to the relevant shelf for the gods’ enjoyment, whether it’s a keepsake or perishable.

I do not have an ancestral altar as I am not interested, at this time and for personal reasons, in working with those related to me. Instead, I keep a family tree and yearly I take out a subscription to do a large amount of work on it and consider this my ‘offering’ to my ancestors in a way that is at arms length for the rest of the year, but pleasant enough when I do go back to working on it. I do hope, eventually, to gather all the pictures I’ve found and print them for use on an ancestral altar, but as I said I’m not ready to engage with this work yet.