Let’s talk about altars… it was always the kitchen!
“You dont need a big room filled with shit. An altar can be as simple as a shelf, a window ledge, or a plant pot.” — Lora O’Brien
“Bad information is harmful, but misinformation is dangerous.” — Jon O’Sullivan
“A House god is not cosmogonal decor for your life. They are living spirit beings with agency. They cannot be treated like servants, vending machines, or fulfillers of your desires. They are a member of your family.” — Chris Godwin
“In Ireland, the soul was seen as an insect when it left the body in sleep and returned either in the form of a bee or butterfly” — (Ó hÓgáin, 211)”
Have you ever looked at a Neopagan altar, and just had a very bad aesthetic reaction? Even though it is beautiful, and wonderful, and decorative; there is just something about it that feels too… ceremonial magic, too wiccan, too hail! i will control ABC… or… something that you can’t quite put your finger on?
For context, ive been practicing some form or another of Neopaganism since about 4th grade (circa 1998) after spending many years living and breathing the 100–300s Mythology and Occult sections in the library. Silver RavenWolf’s “To Ride a Silver Broomstick” was my very first “real-witch book” and for all intents and purposes my gateway into Conway, Cunningham, and Matthews bs. Thankfully, i found Starhawk’s activism-centered practices, which ultimately led me to find more authentic forms of spirituality and teachers (not saying Starhawk is ironclad scholarship, but she was def a majour game changer for me) like Joanna Powell Colbert who led me to Marybeth Bonfiglio, who led me to seek out Irish folk traditions allowing me the chance to find Lora O’Brien, Jon O’ Sullivan, Orlagh Costello, Morgan Daimler, Tara Tine, Geraldine Byrne, Shane Broderick, and so many others...
But getting back to the point of this article: kitchens and altars!
I’ve always had very modest altar spaces, sometimes on the floor, on my desk, on the bookshelves. I even acquired an unknown wooden saint statue, which i have repurposed as a Brighid effigy that i have absolutely LOVED over the years… but something has always just felt… off. The more i clutter the space with anything more than a candle and some flowers, the less connected i feel.
So, as a side project, but also as a nudge from our current House spirit, ive done a deep dive into vernacular Irish house traditions: construction, doors, windows, roofs, chimneys, hearths, floors, bed-alcove cailleachs (used as beds, cradles, pantries for peat/meal, loom & weaving workplaces according to Catriona Mackie), or settle-beds, kitchen dressers, and… kitchen holy shelf traditions.
And that’s when things clicked.
The Irish Holy Shelf
First, i want to say what i am not saying.
I am not saying to throw out the stereotypical neopagan, wiccan, etc. altar that looks like it was designed by Silver RavenWolf. What i am saying is that i think if the aesthetic doesnt work for you, the Holy shelf might just do the trick!
Now, it isnt that the Irish Holy Shelf isnt cluttered. It totally can be, just look at the one below next to an overflowing mantle altar.
What i am saying, is that i feel that it may be time for some of us, who are on the reconstructionist, non-wiccan, more authentic Irish polytheism track, that we can gain so much inspriation from the Irish holy shelf and mantle in ways that echo what Lora O’Brien says: “You dont need a big room filled with shit. An altar can be as simple as bookshelf, a window ledge, or a plant pot.”
And if you follow a heavy dose of Irish paganism (reconstructionist or otherwise) you can choose to not have Jesus or crucifixes, and instead incorporate more Irish cultural items with a more pagan aesthetic like the dresser shown below with the brighid cross and Biddy/Strawboy straw hats. All in all, the Irish holy shelf and kitchen dresser tradition ties into one of the most important places in Irish home: the kitchen.
The Irish Kitchen is Hearth & Home
If you read Barry O’Reilly’s 2011 “Hearth and Home: the vernacular house in Ireland from c. 1800”. WOW! There are so many easter eggs and gems for decolonial Reconstructionist Irish Paganism!
O’Reilly helps us to understand the importance of the kitchen in the Irish vernacular (and modern) home, since originally, they comprised of only a single large communal space for humans and animals alike, especially during the cold months of winter.
From the very beginning, Irish homes live in symbiosis with the land and its spirits. Irish homes traditionally are not built until permission from the spirits and Aos Sidhe is granted by either the tossing of a florin, a piling of stones (sometimes with a lamp ontop), or sticks placed at each corner of the proposed area overnight (O’Reilly p 199–200). Irish homes are traditionally also never built alone, they are a communal activity by a meitheal (work team of family and neighbors).
O’Reilly confirms Irish foundation sacrifice, like much of the work done by Claude Lecouteux’s “The Tradition of Houselhold Spirits” (an excellent resource).
“The most widely secreted items were horse skulls, most often a single skull, the choice perhaps rooted in the traditional respect for the horse as a beast of burden. The large volume of the skull made it an ideal sound-box that added resonance to the sound of dancing feet during céilidhe [Old Irish for the act of visiting, dancing and playing. This is normally the first thing you do as a house warming that helps flatten the earthen floor of the kitchen]. An old three-legged cooking pot could be suspended within the floor cavity for a similar effect. The head of the first cow to die after the building of the house might be laid under the threshold — an expression of sympathetic magic — and the killing of a hen and the burial of its head in the floor was/is believed to counteract epilepsy in children… More recent is the act of placing a coin (to record the date of construction) or a religious medal in the foundations”.
Reaching the tallest point of the constructed home results in a celebratory drink, along with sometimes flag raising, or the tieing of a bottle of holy *wellspring* water, religious medal, or a piece of blessed palm (in Ireland this was and is always coniferous or yew) to the ridge pole. Half donkey shoes are also traditionally placed at each door and window opening because iron thwarts evil and the Aos Sidhe [likewise St. Brighid crosses which come in quite a variety are used in the same way].
Lastly, when the home is ready for habitation, hearth fire is traditionally lit with coals from the parental home, a physical expression of familial continuity. The most lucky day being a Friday and the least a Monday (p. 200).
Outside the house, houseleek is grown in the Irish thatching for protection against house fires, and clay from Tory Island or from Gartan in Co. Donegal along with calf-bits (the membrane covering the calf’s head at birth) are used. Elder trees grown near the home give protection from lightning as well as horsehair. A black cock perched over the inside of the front door is said to protect the house from witchcraft, and the skin of a king otter…a black cat, crickets, or “freak eggs”… ensure luck for the house. Likewise, crickets in the hearth are also very very good (p. 212).
Inside the house, holy *wellspring* water is sprinkled, holy pictures are hung up, framed family/ancestor photos are prevelant, holy items especially the Sacred Heart lamp and a vase of flowers on a “holy shelf” near the hearth or above the settle bed is common, and installing statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary of the Gael and Child of Prague is normal, along with a holy-water font inside the front door of the home or kitchen, and crucifixes are hung in the kitchen and bedrooms. In this way, mass was normally and easily said in the house rather than all the way back in town at the church or secret holy grove during Catholic persecution (p. 200 & 210).
Curiously, corner table stands are also used in larger rooms (p. 210), normally for a religious statue — perhaps echoing the tradition that Lecouteux shares in his work about corners being the place special to house spirits…but more research is needed here!
Now… some Irish Home Taboos
- An interesting home building taboo is that a new house to replace another should never be built on the opposite side of the road.
- White stones were not to be used because they were thought to attract lightning, and stones from an old or ruined house were also unlucky.
- Materials from a sacred site, and the use of Red oak was prohibited.
- The cat from the old home was not brought with them, but the taking in of a stray cat (especially a black cat) was welcomed.
- And “warnings were called out when throwing dirty water from the dwelling in order to avoid offending one of the fairy hosts who might be passing…”.
- I should also say, the house is often oriented towards the south, away from the public road, and if a front door be built, the back door is in reality the “front door” as it is always used by friends and family, and strangers or esteemed guests use the front (O’Reilly p. 200-205).
- There are even prohibitions against sweeping dirt from the floor out the door, especially on Mondays. You sweep towards the fire instead, and fire was never removed from the house, except for lighting a family member’s new home.
- Fire prohibition is very important especially on the fire festival days of Imbolg, Bealtaine, Lúnasa, and Samhain (p. 207). So those are very important to look into.
- O’Reilly details even more taboos from p 211–212 that include the taboo against extending the house westwards, and the dead are always carried out through the back door, and the front doors of all houses remained closed as a funeral procession passes. Though, the body is kept home for a day while someone watches to ensure that the spirit doesnt come back and they are indeed dead to allow proper mourning to begin.
- Lastly, carrying, using, or pretending to use an implement within the house was forbidden, as well as the bringing in of hawthorn/whitethorn and elder blossoms is taboo as it is seen as attracting/ welcoming in invitation Aos Sidhe who are very much NOT WELCOME IN THE HOME in Irish Tradition (contrary to rampant fakelore and faery propaganda), they are kept at a distance, otherwise they will steal your luck, health, and even person.
More Irish Home Charm
“Charms, Charmers, and Charming in Ireland” (2019) edited by John Carey, Ciarán Ó Gealbháin, Ilona Tuomi, and Barbara Hillers is something you really want to invest in, but absolutely you can look for charms on duchas.ie or Kevin Danaher’s “The Year in Ireland: Irish Calendar Customs” as well.
Irish home charms are not always said to be metal talismans, they can be anything from green sods, to medicinal herbs, to pieces of meat, crosses made from charred sticks, or using a burning bush held over an animal or touching the animals back with it, or special spoken words of power. Marion Dowd says in her amazing 2018 article “Bewitched by an Elf Dart: Fairy Archaeology, Folk Magic and Traditional Medicine in Ireland”:
“Traditionally, a wide range of rituals were observed to protect the vernacular house in Ireland. Rituals existed with regard to choosing the ‘right’ location at which to build a house; the appropriate stones for construction (usually, for instance, white stones should be avoided); and the lucky day/time to start building a house (Ó Súilleabháin1970 [1942], 15). Luck and prosperity could be achieved by placing a coin, bird or animal under the house foundation stone; hanging objects in the chimney, such as part of a cow’s leg; inserting objects into the house roof [like early Bronze age copper axes, late Bronze age swords, spear heads, and neolithic stone axe head thunderstones], including herbs, animal legs, cow dung, eggs or meat; and by displaying certain objects inside or outside the house, including ‘freak’ eggs, iron, a human caul, an otter skin, or ashes from special fires (Ó Súilleabháin1970 [1942], 8–15).”
Some from Danher’s collection include: on page p. 42 (meat is hung in the chimney/kitchen roof on shrove tuesday); 113: (water sets charms), 146: (ashes, embers, charred sticks placed in the dairy to bring good luck and keep butter/milk safe from evil magic; burning bush), 192: (ortha an fhaoir edge charm is recited over implements to take a keen edge), 199: (last sheaf), and 203: (plain cross of wood fixed overhead on the thatch inside the housedoor to keep off evil spirits, or on the ground outside the front door, holy *wellspring* water sprinkled on the door, spit used to banish).
If you look for “protection of house”: 16–23 (a cros Bri’de or bogha Bri’de cross+ fresh shellfish are used in the 4 corners of house), 68 (Palm Sunday confir/yew sprigs are hung up in house and byre), 88–91 (The May Bush, yellow flower posies or flaggers or May boughs with fresh green leaves are used), 135 (jumping over the fire after striking eachother with hocusfian and throwing it into the fire is done), 144–145 (jumping over the midsummer fire as well is helpful), 147 (you bring back communal bonfire cinders, ashes, embers or charred fragments of turf or wood into domestic hearth for luck and protection), 203 (cross and holy *wellspring* water on door), 230 (fresh killed animal blood sprinkled on threshold & four corners of house at Martinmas 11/11).
These are all seen as syncretic customs by Irish practitioners that see Irish folk tradition as a conglomeration that incorporates catholic & protestant folk magic with native Irish practices that have lasted for centuries into the modern day! These practices can be seperated from the abuses of the church which tried to outlaw such practices to very little avail.
*i really wanted to highlight the importance here that the holy water we are speaking of is almost always from Irish holy wells. Doing the patterns, and such around Irish holy wells, is an incredibly syncretic magical tradition; and i feel more American neopagans need to tap into this concept not only to help heal some spiritual abuse and trauma from the church, but to fully grasp Irish context and fully understand Irish witchcraft and Irish paganism as a worldview.
Recovering From Imperialism
For me too many neopagan solitary practitioners are missing out (like i did for soo long) on so much because they either a) focus too much on the deluge of eclectic appropriative bullshit or b) focus too much on a strict standard of what to “actually do” (which i was both sucked into as well).
But, to be fair a) capitalism is rife in neopagan spirituality and b) the authentic dos are a wonderful basis to start from and should definitely be a good place to start and build a foundation — but, like me, too many people fall into the i wont do anythinig bc i dont know whats best, or will fall into the trappings of doing very surface-level only-one-proper-way thing. This then stunts your practice because it prevents you from diving into the very natural county/village variation and DIVERSITY of customs. This then prevents you from the even more curious and diverse absolutely do-not-fecking-do-this TABOOS! Which is sad because taboos tell us so so much about a diverse culture and its diverse authentic practices. If you do not embrace diversity and authentic variation, you miss the point and just end up succubing to the toxic white colonial supremacy mindset of previous spiritual abuse that led you to neopaganism to begin with.
O’Reilly says:
“This essay has sought to present some of the salient aspects of domestic life in the vernacular house. At once intensely local and universal, this tradition has provided links to our ancestors, as well as to contemporary cultures across the globe. Since about the mid-twentieth century, however, this key component of Irish tradition and house culture has been side-lined in favour of standard designs produced on the drawing board — a worldwide phenomenon that is adversely affecting cultural diversity.”
Not only do standard designs adversly affect cultural diversity but they do so because standardisation is large and part assimilation and cultural imperialism brought on by (English& Church) colonisation!
O’Reilly points out how at the end of the essay the Irish home has changed physically — but i want to talk about how it has changed socially and emotionally and spiritually.
Because assimilation structurally impacts us and how we communicate & spend our time!
Again, as O’Reilly says, in Ireland it was always and STILL IS the kitchen, for everything, and now modernisation has exchanged us intimacy for privacy, humorous untidiness for hygiene, hearths for furnaces and stoves without horseshoes and keeping-holes of salt. It has exchanged us conversation-over-cards for complicated board games or worse: militaristic propaganda infused video games. It has taken away our fresh clean wells, rivers, lakes, and waters (that personify deities and spirits) and given us undrinkable polluted corporate monopolies — and not only in Flint or Honolulu or Jackson!
One of the biggest reasons spirituality exists is to force us to look inside of our society & ourselves and share those truths with the land and deities yes, but also with eachother. Rugid individualism is killing us (Neopagan and “Im just spiritual” suicide is a very real crisis) and the planet (hello capitalistic colonial anthropocene ecological abuse) because before, where communal living was respected, we have all been forced to make it all on our own, by our selves — living and practicing completely seperate and scared and isolated from community. Which is where marginalisation and exploitation and oppression runs rampant!
Witchcraft/Paganism is supposed to like any other religion, force us to spend time together not just to connect with the ancestors or gods, but to connect with eachother and build right relationships to all things.
Irish witchcraft/hearth magic is a worldview — not a single act. It happens continusouly between you and the TDD, Sidhe, ancestors, sky, water, land, and house spirits — if you put in the work to build such relationships. But assimilation and colonisation has been proven to not only structure our homes — it structures our lives. These systems & structures however, can always be abolished, decolonised, and adapted: consensually, authentically and syncretically. Without compromising culture for contemporary living.
So, i say you dont have to go all the way and get yourself an Irish cottage with dirt floor and sleep in the kitchen. What im saying is look more into these cultural taboos, into some older and wiser Irish structures of socialising and connecting with the land and home around you. These structures, though they are old, are not draconian. They are useful and allow us kitchens, and doorways, and even “holy shelves” into communicating with this and the Otherworld alot more authentically.
Resources
- Mackie, Catriona. (2013). “The Bed-Alcove Tradition in Ireland and Scotland: Reappraising the Evidence.” Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. Section C: Archaeology, Celtic Studies, History, Linguistics, Literature, vol. 113C, 2013, pp. 309–40. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/42751277. Accessed 3 Nov. 2022.
- O’Reilly, Barry. (2011). Hearth and home: the vernacular house in Ireland from c. 1800. Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Section C. 111. 5–50. 10.3318/PRIAC.2011.111.193.
- https://www.farmersjournal.ie/the-importance-of-dressers-in-traditional-kitchens-648674
- https://donalskehan.com/rediscovering-the-irish-kitchen-2/
- https://thedresserproject.ie/The_Irish_Dresser_and_Folklore_Calendar.html
- https://irishpaganschool.com/p/hearth-magic
- https://ihwcbc.omeka.net/
- https://heritage.clareheritage.org/category/places/holy-wells
- https://www.mayo.ie/heritage/holywells
- https://www.creativeireland.gov.ie/en/event/holy-wells-project/
- https://www.uwp.co.uk/book/charms-charmers-and-charming-in-ireland/
- https://lairbhan.blogspot.com/2016/08/morgans-basic-guide-to-dealing-with-non.html
- https://www.patheos.com/blogs/agora/2016/05/irish-american-witchcraft-is-it-a-haunting-or-fairies/
- https://www.patheos.com/blogs/keepingherkeys/2019/10/living-in-a-house-of-spirits/
- https://www.patheos.com/blogs/3pagansandacat/2021/01/creating-spirit-ally-relationships-with-your-home/
- https://www.patheos.com/blogs/heathenatheart/2015/10/making-friends-with-house-wights/
- https://www.patheos.com/blogs/fromacommonwell/2019/09/domestic-cult-in-gaelic-polytheism-part-ii-house-gods/
