Due to rapid and painful changes in my personal life, I decided to dedicate this altar project to Syn.   Syn guards Frigga's hall and is seen as a goddess of justice, restoration, and judgement.  She also according to widely accepted peer corroborated personal gnosis among those that worship her, is the goddess that sanctifies and wards forbidden relationships.   This fit my circumstances on a number of levels.  The process of creating this altar has been one of deep personal reflexion and self-analysis.  I've enjoyed working with Syn immensely.

 

I'd originally conceptualized this installation to be held at a booth in a Flea Market among the old and unwanted junk being put to new life on the grounds of a Greyhound track and Casino in the style of an American Roadside Memorial.  I went as far as to book a table, but logistics prevented me from seeing this vision through.  I went to install the altar at sunrise, and unfortunately security guards warned me away from installing it in the Flea Market Area.  Instead, I found a hidden spot behind a construction trailer on Casino grounds next to the Flea Market area that has a better chance of remaining undetected.   The reason that this venue was so important to me was that the place stinks of poverty, ill luck, pain, and destitution, but even among the lowest of circumstances, it draws these people under the guise of hope and a willingness to look for gain and improvement.  When one falls apart, breaks, and hurts, the only way to transcend the situation and move ahead is the idea of hope.

 

The altar was made up of sort of a hodepodge of things, many created for the project, some given, some released.  Four tall glass encased 7 day candles.  Two were specially made for me for this altar project by my extremely talented dear friend Silence Maestas.  His contributions really made the piece.  One of his candles is a drawing of Syn with her name in runes.  The other is done in old carnival style lettering and says "Sustain the Heart.  The other two candles I obtained at an area Santeria Botanica and decorated myself.  One was red and contained an image of a bound heart and contained a prayer to Syn (see below) which I read aloud during the istallation.  The other one I made had the altar project logo on it with a brief explanation about Syn and explaining why the altar was there and what it meant. It was green. I decorated two glass votice holders.  One said "Past Pain" and contained love letters from doomed relationships including my own I had collected from several friends for this project.  The letters were wrapped up in black handmade paper with a prayer to Syn to release the owners of the letters from their heartbreak.  The other said "Rebirth" and contained a gold tealight candle symbollizing hope, fortune, and illumination.

 

Between the votives, I placed a basket.  I had been gifted excellent quality hand grown organic sage from Kachina of an excellent Pagan owned herb shop in Dania, FL called Kachina's Herbs upon telling her about my project.  Sage is used to clear space and to aid in healing along with other medicinal uses.   I had created an altar with a student a week earlier for Nanna.  We cut out 30 hearts out of rice paper.  I saved the scraps of the paper and used it to cover a large plywood heart that included a graditudinal prayer to Syn. I then bound it with pink Icelandic Lopi wool that had been given to me long ago from somebody I'd met in Iceland as so to represent the fetters of the heart.  The heart went into the basket. I then covered the floor of the basket in turkey down, where I buried things from my past.

 

Underneath the feathers, I buried things from a recently ended very serious long term relationship I'd kept out of sentimentality:  A print out of the first email she ever sent me, a handwritten note with a little cartoon she left on my pillow saying she loved me for the first time, a lock of her hair, the keys to her SUV, a plastic ring she'd bought me from a 25 cent machine at Ocean Palace resturaunt in Brooklyn, my favorite photo of her from our trip to Puerto Rico for my 30th birthday, a lighter from the Smokey Mountains we bought on our last trip together, a birthday card she had made for me this past year with really bad poetry she wrote for me, and a pair of earrings she bought me for our 1 month anniversary.  Around the altar, I sprinkled decaying red rose petals and transleucent heart shaped confetti.

 

It was hard to leave those things behind.  I drove away watching the flame from candles and my memories flicker in the distance.  I literally felt a crushing weight lift from my metaphorical shoulders and a willingness to move forward and end the mourning process.  Hours later, I feel cleansed and truly emotionally prepared to look forward and to let go of old pain, really and truly ready to look ahead.  I am sure that Syn heard and responded to my prayers, and I am extremely grateful to Her for it.