When setting up an altar it is nice but not necessary to have a lot of magickal tools.
A basic altar can be set up using different colored tea lights or candles to represent the five elements, Spirit, Air, Fire, Water, and Earth. To make the candle burn a little longer and drip less keep them in your freezer until you are ready to use them. You can put your personal candle back into your freezer after it has cooled down for at one hour after use. Place your elemental candle in the shape of a pentagram. You can use a piece of chalk to draw the outline of a pentagram wherever you are setting up your altar. When you are done with the circle and have removed all things off wherever your atar was set up just use a wet paper towel to wipe off the chalk. It may take more than one depending on how hard use pressed with the chalk when drawing the pentagram. When I to this I either bury the paper towel in one of my gardens or burn it in my outdoor fireplace as a sign of respect for the remains of the pentagram it holds.
You can take a glass r cup and a small plate of some kind from your kitchen that you rarely use to consecrate for use as your chalice and offering dish.
Your personal candle you will want to use a bigger candle so you do not have to dedicate and personalize one every time you use it in a circle. I have a 12-inch (30.48 cm) taper candle works very well for my personal candle and lasts about 2 to 4 months depending on how often I make a circle.
As for your Book of Shadows being on your altar or not is up to you. I keep a couple of pieces of paper and a pen on my altar when doing a circle, especially if it is a circle meditation, just in case something happens during the circle I want to remember. My BOS is a three-ring binder with lots of empty pages in it so I do not have to cleanse them before using them on my altar or placing them back into my BOS.
WAND: Your do not absolutely have to have a wand to do a basic altar. But if you live near a park, forest or have trees in your yard look on the ground for a fallen branch. Ask the tree if you can have it for your personal use as a wand and leave a small token of appreciation such as a little water, a small stone or whatever else you feel might be appropriate.
SIDE NOTE: Left handed people sometimes put their Personal Candle on the left and BOS on the right.
Rosemary (for remembrance of our ancestors), Mullein (abundance), mugwort (to aid in divination), calendula (to encourage emotional warmth and tolerance, compassion and the ability to truly listen to what others are saying) and a dash of Florida Water to banish negativity. I was going to include some acorns but couldn’t find my stash of them!
At Samhain, witches once gave one another acorns as gifts. During the Burning Times, giving someone an acorn was a secret means of telling that person you were a witch. Acorns are fruits of the oak, one of the most sacred trees to the ancient Celts. They are symbols of protection, fertility, growth, values, and friendship.
Beltane Altar in a cup with Forget Me Not, Fern, Rose, Sweet Woodruff and Salt. Forget Me Not gives comfort through dreams by opening up contact with beings in another dimension and comforts because we realize the spiritual nature of these contacts. Fern is for mental clarity, cleansing, purification, and dispelling negativity and is a powerful auric protection. Rose includes attracting love, beauty, clairvoyance, domestic peace, happiness, and promoting the joy of giving. Sweet Woodruff is associated with healing, victory, protection, and money. The main metaphysical properties of salt are: Abundance, manifestation, and anchoring spiritual energies. Connecting to the ocean, the Moon and its cycles, and grounding spiritual energies into the material plane. Devotion, spiritual development, and an alchemical return to wholeness. Hospitality, house warming, and domestic harmony. Purification, spiritual protection, and releasing unwanted influences. Insights on life, death, and spiritual rebirth. Intuition, balancing the emotions and altered states like dreaming. Traditionally used for physical well-being, vitality, and longevity.
There are so many great ways you can decorate your home for the Yule season. Adapt store-bought Christmas decorations, or make your own Pagan-themed home decor for the season. Here’s how you can put together a Yule log of your own, some fun and simple ornaments, a Pagan twist on the “manger” scene, some seasonally-scented potpourri andincense, and more!
The Yule log is an ancient tradition, but you can make one for your own family’s holiday celebration. Put one together with items you find outside, and include it as part of your Yule ritual.
I set up this altar as an example and for cleansing my new small cauldron. on it is starting with the pentagram, I made this out of branches from five different trees (Red Maple, Sliver Mapel, Pine, Mulberry and Crabapple ) in my yard it is knotted together with my hair I gathered from my hair brush then covered each know with white glue. For the God symbol the r are pine cones. The Goddess is represented by a birds nest holding a small fake bird, silk rose buds in various colors and 2/3 of a bird egg shell. I found the egg she’ll broke open under the Crabapple tree. I cover it inside and out with white glue to give it some strength. For the elements there is an Angel (actually made as a yule tree topper) for Spirit, an incense burner and Blue Jay feather for Air, a candle in a holder my husband and I bought on a vacation for Fire, a suppose to be volvite candle holder that has salt and a stone for Earth, and another suppose to be volvite candle holder with melted snow for Water. To the right is my Athena closest to pentagram and sword to its right. On the left is Mt Red Maple wand closest to the pentagram and my personal candle. My candle was inscribed using the Ogham alphabet with my witch name (it is different then my pen name on here) dedicating it to help me to stay centered when it is lit, and help in anyway it needs to during a ritual. The wine glass on the right contains juice and small plate on left holds crackers. These are an offering to the God and Goddess I inked to help cleanse my things and for my celebration after the ritual.