EastWestNorthSouth
Four doors, four prayers, and the four seasons of a life they hold between them.
What an altar is
We open these doors so that everything we are related to can be brought inside the circle, from the people beside us to the generations standing at our back.
Cloth on the ground. The staff and the rattle laid across it, tobacco and cedar lit, feathers and crystals in their places. Everything the prayer will pass through, gathered close enough to hold in the eye at once.
An altar is what gives a prayer its aim. The four together are also a map: each holds a stretch of a life, and laid end to end they run from the day a person is born to the day they die.
The four
Every altar carries a direction, an element, an animal, a season of life, and a prayer of its own. Each one keeps opening into the next.
The first altar
From birth until around thirteen, and the attention turns inward. The puma is presence, the animal entirely where it is.
The second altar
Youth: no longer a child and not yet fully grown. The attention is still turned inward. The eagle opens the view and teaches surrender.
The third altar
Adulthood, and the turn outward. Here we stand among the generations, seven behind us and seven ahead, carried in the blood both ways.
The fourth altar
The elders. The snake grounds, crawling before anything walks; the spider weaves, and goes back for the thread that came loose.
Which altar is nearest
People usually find one of the four standing closer to them than the other three, and it is often the one holding the season of life they are in. That is a good place to begin.
The other three will keep.
They play, they carry things, they move around the fire, and nothing is asked of them.
Next
The altars are opened out on the land, on Spirit Walks and Spirit Circles.