When you’re living in a small space (as we are now, in our cute but tiny duplex), you learn quickly that you need to make every bit of available space work for you. In practical terms, this often means getting rid of extraneous items (we discarded a LOT of stuff in the process of packing, and are still gradually winnowing out even more things that aren’t strictly necessary), consolidating (which in my case means one Odin shrine instead of three, with a mini-shrine or just a framed picture for Anyone else who needs honoring), and multi-purposing. (A good example of the latter is the assembly-required desk we bought last weekend, which has now been assembled and which serves as my combination craft nook, writing station and working altar.)
We don’t have much furniture yet at this point, but we did bring with us our two large bookcases, several shelves of which are currently serving as our primary shrine areas (with our house wight’s area on top). This was originally supposed to be a temporary arrangement, but our Odin and Poseidon shrines look so nice cozily tucked into their respective shelves that we may well end up leaving them there. There is also a shelf for our dead pets, with the ashes of Angel and Orion in their respective boxes and the bones of my cat Amadeus in a recycled glass jar.
There will be future posts on this topic, as well as some more photos, after we’ve settled in and fixed the place up a bit more, but for now I wanted to share a photo of the new Odin shrine.
In the center is the incredible bust I found locally last year, along with an olive oil lamp I gifted Him with at Yule. To the left is His statue by Oberon Zell, with a scrying crystal, a framed picture I found online and printed out, a bear vertebra, a snail-shaped incense holder (in recognition of Odin’s links with the land wights) and some bits of yarn hand spun by me. To the right are a wonderful little beehive offering cup I found in a thrift store, a little stone bowl for libations, some stones given to me by a seidhr querent, some iron keys Jo got me years ago as a present on His behalf, my drinking horn, hand-carved with the runes and some of His other symbols, which I commissioned from an artist back east, an amanita mushroom needle-felted by Jo, some of my locally found feathers (yes, I know what many of them are, but won’t go into detail here for obvious reasons) resting in a nest of lichen, a piece of driftwood that will become a wand (for working with Odin’s watery aspects, and with Frigga and Saga), and the antler piece which will become the top of my stang. This time I chose to use furs in place of an altar cloth, in honor of Odin’s role as Master of the Hunt, which is so central to my own spirit work practice.
Of course, I have ALOT more Odin-related shrine stuff (as you can see from some of the spill-over on the shelf above this one), but there simply isn’t room to display it all in our new place, so I had to pick and choose and keep many things in storage for now. (We’re excited about setting up outdoor altars too, since we have a good-sized yard, and will be doing that as soon as the rainy season abates.)
