Pagan Parenting: Shrines for Kids.

My eldest has taken a shine to Zeus. He's fascinated by him. He offers prayers up to him in his own unique way. On the whole, he is in the process of becoming a very affectionate devotee. As such, I wanted him to have his own special little bit of altar like space for his devotions. At the same time, I needed something his brother couldn't exactly destroy.

This is where I returned to the concept of jar shrines. Jar shrines are essentially a shrine inside a jar. There may be a permanent offering inside it, like the one I saw for Freyja that had rose buds inside it. Or offerings may go near the jar. In some cases, I have even seen them made so that the offerings could go on top of the jar. In the case of the one I made for my son, I made a peg doll based statuette of Zeus. I then set it on top of a bit of cork that I colored green (to look like Mt. Olympus) and then put white sand (for clouds) around it. This was in the lid of an old olives jar (that had been cleaned and waiting for a use, amusingly they were kalamata olives) and everything has been glued together with Gorilla Glue. Then, I ran a bit of Gorilla Glue around the edge of the jar before screwing them together.

The jar set up acts like a bell jar, keeping the icon safe. I'm going to be giving him this as a gift for the Equinox. I am also in the process of setting up something that he can use to help keep track of his prayers. A bit more friendly version of a kid's prayer journal that I started doing with them back a few months ago. (We didn't get very far with this prayer journal stuff because life happened and I was having a hard time keeping on top of my own stuff.)