Personal Altars

The youtuber Áine Órga has some excellent videos about designing a personal altar, and the reasons for her own choices.

She's had a Buddha statue on her altar at times even though she's not Buddhist, and it seems this led to some discussions about cultural appropriation and why she had it there.

Personal altars are about personal symbolism. It's not about what the wider world thinks the "authentic" meaning of the symbolism is, but about what it represents to you.

My own eclectic altar could be very misleading if you take it at face value. The cross doesn't represent Jesus, the triple moon goddess doesn't represent a typical Neopagan understanding of that figure. They're personal symbols and therefore it would be wrong to assume they mean what someone else thinks they mean.

Although the Rosicrucian cross usually has four arms of equal length, and there are symbolic reasons for that, mine doesn't — and there are symbolic reasons for that too. Mine is more masculine and phallic in design, because that's a presence I like to connect with. The triple moon goddess is me, more or less, the seeker. She represents union with the masculine presence. It has to with my own inner alchemy, and not some "objective" meaning that somebody else might try to discern.

The world is more interconnected than ever before, so people are bound to come across images from outside their nature culture(s) that speak to them. All that matters is that they get some personal value from it.