Pocket Altar Workshop

​Join us in holding space for the silly and the sacred, to create pocket altars together. This workshop focuses on the pocket altar as a mental health tool, regardless of your spirituality. Beyond traditional functions, the pocket altar can serve as an anchor for mindfulness, an outlet for creativity, and/or a vessel of connection to nature.

​Though all materials are provided, we highly encourage you to bring any small items you’d like to incorporate into your altar to make it personal to you, such as:

• ​Small candles/matches/lighter

• ​Crystals

• ​Worry stones

• ​Plant medicines

• ​Affirmations

• ​Small notebooks/paper

• ​Symbolic trinkets or charms

• ​A picture of yourself as a child

• ​A picture of a loved one

​The workshop is located in the Dance Room. Signs will be posted to help you find your way.

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​History

​Portable reliquaries have served as a way to carry sacred space among many cultures since ancient history. Pocket Altars, as known as pocket shrines or portably oratories, originated as a Catholic tool to allow priests to celebrate Mass in locations without consecrated altars and began to evolve to the versions we see today in the 19th century as a spiritual companion during pilgrimage. Soldiers in WWI and WWII would make them out of bullet casings. Today, pocket altars are crafted and used by many different spiritualities and often combine traditional and contemporary elements to connect self to spirit.