Make Your Own Mobile Travel Witch Altar

With some planning, creativity and ingenuity, you can make an altar to take with you, carry it in your pocket, backpack, luggage, carry on bag, or purse. The size will depend on the container you can find to hold everything in. From there just keep thinking small.

I would like a special container, a small metal box I think. I could see the metal box as my element for Fire. So that serves a double duty without adding a thing inside the box.

What do you really need for your altar?

Make a list and whittle it down. Literally and figuratively. Decide what you need and what you can do without, for a day or two, or when you’re not at home. What can you scale down, bring less of, or find a smaller alternative?

For me, I would always have to bring at least one small rock, pebble. The Earth element is easy that way.

A sealed container can hold a little water. Another can hold air, nothing but air. If your water leaks, test it before packing it up, you could keep a second empty container to fill with a little water later. Air and water are not hard to find, even on the road.

Wrap everything in a soft cloth, which can double as an altar cloth, to keep it from jiggling, making noise, or breaking when they are in your pocket.

Get a little creative for other tools you want to have in your little box. Add a leftover (or new) birthday cake candle, or four. Use a penny as a weight, melt a dab of wax from your candle to stick it to the penny so they are less likely to tip over. You may already have a small pentacle, a necklace, for instance. Substitute for tools you can’t fit in the box. Get more than one use out of fast food containers, for example.

Pick up things along your journey: seashells, flowers, a stone, a button, a pack of matches, a postcard or other souvenir. These can be great additions to a mobile altar. They can be temporary and are no problem to recycle.

Don’t forget some salt, or whatever you choose, when you close circles, and end rituals.

Go through and use your mobile kit once at home so you don’t realize you missed something once you are using it somewhere else.

I found kits online, but as you can see from these, it really isn’t a stretch to make your own. Something personal will have much more personality and meaning for you. Buying one made by someone else just isn’t as much fun. Think of it as a challenge, see how miniature you can go.

A Pocket Travel Altar – from Etsy shop – The Whimsical Pixie11

Another, called a Witch Kit Box – Etsy shop – The Ridgeville Witch

Which Element Speaks to You

An element speaks to you…
The spirit of the wind carries your mind.
The tides of water rush through your veins.
The vitality of the flames feeds your soul.
The solitude of the earth comforts your body.

This comes from an online quiz. Which would you pick and why? I struggled to choose between the wind and my mind or the fire and my soul. I went with fire in my soul as being the best choice for me. Of them all, comfort appeals to me the least.

Write a Witchy Spell

First of all, this is a writing exercise, something to try in order to start your flow of words. Although you can write a Witch spell, you should not believe writing and then saying the words will make things happen as you want them to. Real magic comes from inside of yourself. I think using a spell (especially one you have written yourself, one you have put your heart into and given time to consider each word) can bring about your own magic through focusing you fully on what it is you want.

Having said that… write a Witchy spell. Think about what you want from the spell: love, hope, fame, fortune, a new car? Begin by calling on some outer force like the four directions, the elements, the moon, your Grandmothers. Pick something that suits you. Then write the words to say what you are asking for and give some information about the who, what, when, where, why and how. Keep it light, just have fun. Give it rhymes, rhythm and a pattern in the words themselves. Speak them aloud to see how it all sounds. Change anything that feels in the way. Have fun with it.

Whispers to the wind

Shouting into the fire

As I call out my ire

Dancing over the dirt

Walking in the puddle

As I feel in a muddle

Clear my thoughts

Help me to see

Me as I want to be.

How does mine sound?

Where the Wild Things Are: The Whole Circle

The magic circle, sounds so mystical… But it’s like many things in Witchcraft, it’s adaptable to your own style, your whims and personal needs of the moment.

Witch/ Wiccan rituals take place in a circle. Not always, it’s not written in stone with blood or anything really dramatic. But, it does make things tidy in it’s own way. You draw in power and you keep it to yourself, out of the way of others. Then, when you’re done you release it. It goes back to nature and the powerful parts of yourself.

We draw the circle and then we close it. Some people cast the circle and banish it at the end of the ritual. I tend to think of it as drawing and closing the circle. When you draw your circle take a moment to bless each of the elements at each of the 4 directions. Yes, you might need a map to know where north, south, west and east are in relation to your location. If you choose, bless the goddess and god too. Then bless the Earth and life, those are most important to me. When you close your circle just do the steps in reverse order. Gather your pebbles, erase your chalk, whatever you used as you go around in the 4 directions again. Sounds too simple? Why shouldn’t it be simple. You’re welcome to make a bigger production out of it. I like it simple.

You can use chalk, hemp rope, embroidery thread, pebbles, sand, dust bunnies, anything really. Consider a circle of jack o lanterns for Samhain, wouldn’t that be fun! It depends on how fancy you want to be or how close to natural elements. My personal choice are pebbles. I love them. I collected them from a beach here in Ontario. Took my time to find stones I especially liked for their shape, colour or some markings on them.

The circle represents wholeness, the cycles of life and the seasons, the wheel of life to make it simple. In theory it is without beginning or ending and perfect in it’s completeness.

To draw the circle is to make a place set apart and sacred. Where ever you are- living room, backyard, beach, clearing in the woods – the circle becomes a place where we focus on magick in ourselves and the Earth around us. The circle is a pure place where we can think, make notes in our Book of Shadows, create and practice rituals, anything. It doesn’t have to be dramatic and you don’t have to feel you must do something special. It’s your circle, your dime.

This summer when I have a road trip out to the beach I want to cast a circle on the beach. Using a piece of driftwood to draw my circle and some stones to point to the directions. I don’t even know what ritual I might do. I just want to sit in a circle of my own creation and enjoy the world, life and being alive.
–

“In wilderness I sense the miracle of life, and behind it our scientific accomplishments fade to trivia.” -Charles Lindbergh

I take thee, herb, to cure my ills
or perhaps while dancing pon the hill.
I’ll dip you in the cauldron fine
Then asperge a circle in the pines.
I’ll make you into teas and brews
when picked from ‘neath the morning dews,
or hide you in a pillow seam
to guard me close, come night and dreams.

– Marian Loresinger

Originally posted to ‘BackWash: Where the Wild Things Are’ newsletter, March, 1, 2004.