Help with my Altar

I love the idea of making your own image for the deity(ies), since my drawings would look like stick figures I use a seashell to represent Aphrodite that ive had since my childhood.

altar candles, black, white, 2 white, correspondence colors for god/dess honestly, you cant go too wrong here. some would add a correspondence color based on your sign for yourself too.

for the boline you can sub for it, but then that item should only be for that purpose and initially dedicated for it. What did you have in mind? hopefully not a hatchet or sword lol

anyways, sounds like you are well on your way!

Happy Casting!

~Thor

Thank you :) I'm slowly getting everything together, but it's getting! I finally finished making my wand for the most part. Still have a few things to perfect on it, but I'm feeling good about everything I'm doing :) I have a two year old that pretty much roams wherever he wants so i had to find time to clean out an old room to use for my rituals and meditation. I've been working so much lately that it has put my practices on hold. It feels good to work towards getting everything in order again.

I am going to make an assumption here that you're talking about creating a Wiccan altar since you've mentioned Wicca a number of times. If that is the case then what goes on your altar is really up to you unless you are practicing within a specific Wiccan Tradition. If you're working as a solitary then you can choose whatever feels important to you to put on the altar. There is a wonderful book called "Circles, Groves, and Sanctuaries" by Dan and Pauline Campanelli that talks in depth about altars.

The altar is the place where you interact with the Gods so it should represent that interaction to you in whatever way you find best.

"Traditionally" an altar would hold a representation of the God and Goddess, symbols of the four Elements, some candles to see by, and your working tools.

In many Traditions the altar is placed either in the North or sometimes the East of a room. But again this is not a hard and fast rule. If the way your room is set only gives you room to put your altar in the West then do it that way. We Witches may be traditional, but we are also practical and we can work with what we are given.

Your altar cloth would typically be made of a natural fabric such as cotton. When starting out check out places such as Walmart for inexpensive table cloths. I recommend inexpensive because sooner or later it's going to get dirty or have candle wax spilled on it and you're going to want to replace it.

For representations of the God and Goddess you can either use candles or you can use statues of the Deities. In the beginning it is probably easier and less expensive to go with a couple of pillar candles such as the black and white ones you have. The white would be the Goddess and the black the God. Using pictures of the Deities will work just fine as well. The Goddess candle goes on the left upper corner of the altar and the God candle on the upper right.

To represent the Elements you can use the following:

East/Air - incense, a feather
South/Fire - red candle
West/Water - chalice or cup of water
North/Earth - a small dish of salt or dirt

There's a pretty good you-tube video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1a9mAaESiQ that might give you some ideas as well.

Since the boline you mentioned is the knife that is used to cut herbs, and nice sharp kitchen knife can be used instead of the traditional curved blade. My first boline was a small kitchen knife with a light maple handle.

Thank you very much. :) That makes my set up much easier to accomplish now..
Also, last night I finally finshed my hand made wand, how can I charge it?