survey about sacred spaces in people's homes

[firecat]

A friend of mine who is not on LJ is setting up a sacred space in her house. She sent me the following questions. If you have a sacred space in your home please consider responding in a comment. Feel free to tell other people or relevant communities about this post. I will pass along any responses. Thanks!

I'm interested in hearing about sacred spaces people have set up in their homes. By sacred space, I mean any place dedicated to your spiritual being or practice. It could be an altar in a corner of a room, or a whole room. Or a whole house.

• If you do have a space dedicated to your spirituality, do you have a name for the space? Did you consecrate it in any way?
  
• Do you have a name for your particular spiritual orientation? Do you practice alone, or do you belong to a group of some kind? If both, how much do you use your own space to practice?
  
• What sorts of objects are in your sacred space? Where do you find these objects? (E.g. the beach, a metaphysical bookstore, religious supply house, eBay...)
  
• Do you use incense? What kind, and where do you get it?
  
• Do you use musical instruments? Recorded music?
  
• Do you perform rituals (in your sacred space or elsewhere)? What kinds of objects and music do you use?
  
• How do you determine what kinds of objects/incense/candles etc. you need? (Follow a list in a book, just stumble across 'em, use your intuition, etc.)
  
• Have you made any objects yourself for use in your spirituality? Would you be willing to describe them, and how you came up with the idea for them?
  
• Do you allow people into your space who are not into your type of spirituality?

Comments

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

I do not have a sacred space in my home.

However, growing up, my friend's family had a prayer room. This was considered pretty extravagant by us, who could never afford to dedicate a room to it and had to use a hallway. We did have a designated prayer area, but it was also a hallway (one of those square ones that connects all the bedrooms together, not a long narrow one).

These were for Muslim prayers. Our friend's prayer room was not adorned in any particular way other than that it was carpeted and I think also had prayer rugs, and it had bookshelves with religious texts on them. Our hallway was obviously not particularly adorned. It had a cabinet with the prayer rugs in it, and we'd take them out and lay them down when we used them and put them away after. (There were also shelves but they had both religious and nonreligious books on them, and this was true of almost every room in the house.)

Our friends didn't consecreate their space, had no special objects, didn't use incense or instruments or music of any kind and the only ritual performed was prayer which didn't use objects or music. This was all part of the organized Muslim religion and so it was to the requirements thereof -- not intuited or anything.

We obviously let people into the hallway, since it was a hallway. I don't know if they let other people into their prayer room, but I don't see why they wouldn't have if they were giving people a tour of the house.