Making Your Own Sacred Space

I actually follow a formula for setting up shrines, and it’s the same formula I established for setting up my temple space. For those of you who are unaware, I actually established a consecrated temple space in my garden, that serves as “neutral” ground where I can hold festivals and make offerings in honor of any of the theoi. This formula works on any scale, from a shoe-box shrine, to a temple space, as something permanent or temporary. So, with no further ado, how I make my own worship space:

Step one:

Decide on a space, based on the functionality and the desired use/purpose. Are you make a shrine to pray at? Are you wanting an altar where you can make offerings and have work room? Do you want a small sanctuary or temple space? Decide what you want, the room you have available, and what you want to do with that room. 

For this example I’m going to talk about the shrine I set up to Aphrodite.

It’s a dresser top shrine in my bedroom. I wanted a shrine to worship at, but I also wanted to go ahead and turn the whole bedroom into a sacred space. I didn’t consecrate the whole room though, since I wasn’t wanting to make it temple space.

Step Two:

Clean and Cleanse the space. When knotted-vines and I made our temple space outdoors, we actually timed it with our spring clean up of the garden. We had just pruned back all the plants that needed it, we re-sealed the deck, and pulled all the weeds, it was a whole big deal. For my Aphrodite altar, I had just painted my brand new dresser and nightstands, the room itself was pretty clean already.

For cleansing, I’m actually a big fan of using khernips for cleansing in ritual. I made a bowl of khernips, and walked around the room sprinkling the khernips. I also took a cloth and wiped down the top of the dresser with khernips. I then wiped the dresser with a clean, dry cloth; and ran the vacuum over the carpet. 

When I had my shoe-box shrine for Dionysus, I cleansed the box by running it through incense smoke.

Step Three:

Make your actual shrine, altar, or temple space. Do this however you want. Put up decorations, use symbols or icons of your deities, or establish items of use in your practice. My temple space has a fire pit in the middle and decorative lights and benches on the deck in our back yard. The shrine to Aphrodite has candles, sea-shells, bath pearls, glitter, pretty jars, and silk flowers. My shrine to Dionysus has a floral arrangement inside a lantern right now, with a candle and two glasses for libations.

Once the space is clean though, I establish my actual worship space.

Step Four:

So, this step get’s a little complicated sounding when I break it down into everything I do, but it’s actually straight forward. My fourth and final step for establishing new sacred space, or re-affirming old space, is to ask the deity the space is dedicated to, to bless the space. The way I do this is to:

• invoke the deity through poem and/or hymns
• make an offering to them
• explain that I’ve cleaned, cleansed, and decorated this space in their honor, as belonging to them, and to better serve my worship of them.
• ask them to bless this space and keep it sacred
• do something dedicated to them in/around the new space
• thank them, and sing another hymn or say another poem for them
• make a parting offering

So, how that looks as an actual series of events, and not just generic statements is pretty simple. Sticking with my Aphrodite shrine, I invoked Aphrodite. “Aphrodite Praxis, who loves whom she will. Aphrodite Pandêmos, who is with all of us. Philomeidês Goddess, I call your name with love on my lips. I bring you into my bedroom, to partake of all my romances, to share in all the love I share here.” I then made my initial offering to Aphrodite, which is the lovely bath pearl in one of those terrarium jars. Then I basically said, “I establish this shrine in your name and honor. Lovely Goddess, I ask that you bless this space and keep it sacred to you. May all my actions and devotions before this shrine please you always.” I performed a dedication action, which I’m not going to go into detail, but……Aphrodite, devotional actions, safe to say I enjoyed myself. I thanked her, and left an offering of apple juice on the dresser for a day, before pouring the juice in my garden.