Working Your Woo: Building Your Inner World Temple 1.1
When you don’t have the safety or resources to make an altar, use the best tools you have.
For all my attempts to stay fully rooted in what is real, I admit I’m a sucker for a good photo and filter on places like Instagram or Tumblr. Back when Livejournal was still a thing, myself and my pagan kinfolk were all pasting Goth imagery into our feeds of what we wished our altar spaces and aesthetic looked like. Little changes; everyone loves a good aesthetic, and we may even try to bring that into the real world if we can. However, it also creates the problem of feeling inadequate if you can’t achieve an artfully crafted photo with your meagre altar offerings, or you can’t afford to do anything flashy — anyone remember the kerfuffle about the offering of a storebought spongecake topped with squirty cream on an altar a few years back? Exactly. Don’t match up to the status quo of an ‘influencer’ and you will end up questioning everything you do from henceforth.
There were times in my life when having an altar or any form of ritual space was not only impossible due to expense, but downright dangerous due to the abusive company I was in. I was stuck in the quandary of needing to do spellwork in order to break the noose around my neck, but I couldn’t afford everything the spellbooks told me I needed, nor did I dare put anything that looked out of place anywhere it could be seen or potentially found.
So I did the only thing I could; I built my Temple in my head, and I worked there. This is something everyone can do. This is what it means to work in the Inner Worlds.
The Inner Worlds isn’t just a place of your imagination — it may start out in a ‘fake it till you make it’ sort of way, but over time it develops an existence of its own. With practice, it will connect you to infinite universes, infinite possibilities, Above and Below. It will develop as your own ability develops, in ways you were not expecting. These Inner World connections is where a Witch’s woo comes from, and how we are able to shape the world we live in.
I have walked in spaces created by other people and, later in life, met the people who built them and was able to describe the space in minute detail. I’ve started spaces which took on a life of its own, being shaped by thousands of other people till it has become a bustling metropolis I visit from time to time. I have built, torn down, and rebuilt my own temples time and again like people move furniture in a house. I reshape as my needs change, and rewire the energy into the new form. This way of doing work always guarantees I have a place to go whenever I need it, to draw from wherever I am, and costs me not a single stick of incense. It’s so familiar to me, so wired into my Work, I can go there in my sleep.
In our persistent pursuit to make altar spaces and photo session practices, I feel as the community of Woo forgets what we do without ourselves is merely so we can connect with what is going on within. It’s been a subject of frustration for me every time I stumble across a blog full of someone trying to make Woo look cool but feel dead (I’m looking at you, Sephora Starter Witch Kit). But I admit I didn’t really know how to say what I wanted to say, nor how to describe the process of making an Inner Altar space work. Surely there’s a bunch of meditation information out there, a bunch of visualisations written in countless pagan books? Yes, there are, I’ve used them myself…and then discarded them, because it was mostly rooted in imagination, and imagination is not the Inner World.
It’s approaching Halloween, which is the time of year I want to buy ALL THE GOTHLY THINGS and bedeck my house until around March. I used to do this in the US, but now in the UK and living with a decidedly un-Woo partner, there’s no way I can indulge. I’ve felt rather bummed out, to be honest: when did I give up my candles (when I had an autistic child) and lace draped on the ceiling (I got cats) and hanged herbs on the ceiling (dust allergy)?
Once the reality of my life and its limitations reinforced itself, I had a bit of a laugh and remembered why I used inner world spaces as my altar. It was an easy thing to forget, to be honest. I hadn’t worked in my inner temple space in years. So I settled into my meditation posture, and went to visit it. Immediately upon my approach, I realised why I hadn’t been there in so long: the space no longer worked for me. It didn’t connect where I needed it to connect, and didn’t reflect where I am in my practice. It wasn’t the first time I needed to rework the space and start over, so I decided to redo it.
And now I know how to write about it. Since I am going through the process of rebuilding my Inner Temple workspace from the ground up, I can describe how I go through the process, and give a rough description of what to do, what not to do, and how to connect everything probably so it’s not just a bit of brain theatre, but functions as an actual workspace to Do Woo. This is safe, effective and only requires you to have a bit of time.
Ready? Come Dance with me, and let’s create a space to Work.
