Altars & Rituals

You may be inspired by the Puja video, and/or by your visits to various temples, to create your own altar and ritual. What you design need not relate to the religions you are learning about. The use of altars and ritual apply to any spiritual path, to any religious tradition. You may draw on the symbolism of your own belief system or religion and incorporate it into a personal altar and ritual that you develop for yourself.

Some questions to consider as you design your sacred space:

• Where will you set up your altar?

• What will serve as the base?

• What special objects and/or images will be placed on your altar? (if you have also created a mandala you might incorporate that as a part of your altar - a mandala can be used as a backdrop for an altar or you might even use it as the surface upon which you arrange the other objects you place on your altar)

• How and when will you use your altar?

• Describe the ritual(s) you develop that are performed before your altar

To share your work with your mentor for evaluation you may submit a video, draw a picture/diagram, or take photo(s) and write a description of your altar and ritual.

The grade weight for this project will depend on how much thought and effort you put into this project. Describe not only your altar and ritual but also the process by which you developed it. If you make use of any informative resources, e.g. books or Websites, to learn more about altars and rituals, be sure to mention this in your write-up: what were your resources? how and why did you use them? what did you learn from them? how did they inspire you?:

As a part of your research for this project, you might look around as you visit various places. Take pictures of various altars to illustrate a paper. Your local Chinese restaurant, hair, or nail salon may have a small altar near the entrance. You might question the manager or owner about this altar and include this information along with other resources to inform your investigation and learning.

Some useful resources to get you started:

• Books on personal altars and sacred space 

• more books

• Get some ideas