Hiding Your Altar
Hopefully, you’ll never have to worry about hiding your altar but realistically its something that many people do have to face. If you are keeping your witchcraft ways from anyone who may be in your home, you will want to keep your altar under wraps as well. But that doesn’t mean you have to forgo an altar altogether. With a little creativity and flexibility, you can have some sacred space without being obvious about it.
Temporary
An altar area that you can tuck away when not in use is the most common way to approach this. Have a special box where you can tuck all your tools and supplies, and just set it up on a table when you have a ritual or spell to cast. An nice altar cloth can turn any flat surface into a lovely piece of sacred space.
Disguise
You don’t have to have pentacles and cauldrons all over your altar in order for it to be “real”. Its actually not that hard to have a fully functional altar out in plain site and nobody else but you would even know it. If you want to represent the elements, you can easily use a few nice stone instead of a pentacle for earth, and seashells instead of a chalice for water. Use a little creativity and you can have all the representations you want without being too “Pagan”. You may have to put away some of your tools (like your cauldron or athame) but you can still have a permanent altar spot if you are careful with the decorations.
Hang it Up
This is one way to have a special hidden place, but it’s not as practical as the others as it creates a sacred area on a wall rather than a flat surface. But if you pull a table up in front of your “wall altar”, you can easily use it for spellwork. It’s a similar idea as disguising your altar, except you use artwork on the wall to symbolize the elements that you would normally have on an altar. You’ll really need some creativity here. A cork board is another option. You would even be able to put up pictures of really Pagan things, and then cover them up with another piece of note paper to hide it. Remove the extra bits and pieces at ritual time.
Just remember that having an altar isn’t completely necessary, especially if you are not practicing a Pagan religion along with your witchcraft. If your lifestyle and circumstances just aren’t right for having an altar, then don’t have one.
