Little Sacred Spaces

          Today is the Feast Day of Our Lady of Guadeloupe.   According to tradition, Mother Mary appeared to Juan Diego, who was an Aztec convert to Christianity, on December 9th and again on December 12th, 1531.  According to the traditional account,   the name of Guadalupe, as the name was heard or understood by Spaniards, was chosen by the Virgin herself when she appeared on the hill outside Mexico City.      I have created an altar to commemorate this feast day (even though I'm not Catholic!) and to emphasize the significance of this occurring on the twelfth day of the twelfth month of the year. The figurine represents Our Lady of Guadeloupe, the Divine Feminine, who is flooding the earth with Her blessings and love - to restore the balance of masculine and feminine energies to humanity and our world.      The twelve tea lights symbolize the significance of the number twelve,  a symbol of balance, ...

          A good friend of mine just gave me Denise Linn's book: Altars: Bringing Sacred Shrines into Your Everyday Life. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in creating a home altar of any kind. Many of her words echo my own thoughts about altars. Linn says: "The urge to create sacred spaces is so deep in the human psyche that we often create them unconsciously. A gathering of photos on a piano, an arrangement of personal objects on a desk or fireplace mantel, are perhaps outer manifestations of an inner desire to establish hallowed and holy spaces in our environment."     When an altar is considered a sacred space where we can deepen our connection with the Divine, Linn calls it a spirit altar. I like to make spirit altars in different parts of my home, and I frequently rearrange them, so their energy is never stagnant.      The backdrop for this altar is a mandala surrounded by symbols of the world's major rel...