I find working with my hands meditative, and so I enjoy creating tools – or modifying tools I am currently using – for my working alter.

Feathers on an alter can serve various purposes.

First, feathers represent the element of Air and so have a place on an alter. While some practitioners may follow a prescribed order of where elemental items are located on their altars, I just place where they feel right. I have a pottery cup that I keep various feathers on the altar, and sometimes I’ll lay one out or use with incense.

I also use larger feathers as a fan when I smoke cleanse an area or rooms in my house. This is especially helpful when I am burning incense in my cauldron – I use the feather to direct the smoke around the room.

While I have my current favorite found feather – a large turkey feather – with a flock of chickens with free range of my yard, I have several beautiful chicken feathers I love to display.

While lovely on their own, I decided to embellish their quills slightly to make for a better grip, and to add some texture and decoration to each.

While I do use some of my feathers for smoke cleansing purposes, and overall they do serve as a symbol of the Air elemental, some feathers I keep on or near my working alter more as a remembrance – almost a snapshot of a particular time or place. These feathers evoke feelings of nostalgia for me.

For example, I have a pottery container hanging where I keep several feathers, and there is one in particular – a beautiful, long, sickle feather. This feather came from one of our first chickens that we had during a time when we stepped away from everything and went to live in the woods. It was a time of respite for our family, a time where we unplugged from everything and stepped out in faith that all would work out in the end. That time and experience ran its course and we live somewhere else now, but we often speak about it and want to get back to a time and place like that again in the future. So when I look at this particular feather I remember not only my first rooster – a gorgeous Rhode Island Red who ruled the roost – but also a time when my family lived completely unplugged and were at peace.

** I have no intention of running afoul of the law, so the feathers I keep come only from my own chickens, and birds whose feathers I know – like turkeys and ducks – are legal to keep.