As part of my personal and semi-public practice I have an altar to the Twelve Gods. I made this altar about a three weeks ago after I realized two things.

One I have a nasty tendency to only honor a handful of Theois. The Theois I tend to honor a lot are Hestia ( by default since she always get the first offering ), Hermes, Apollo, Artemis, Tykhe and Zeus. I tend to neglect all the other Gods to the point that some Gods like Hephaestus and Ares I discovered to my horror I have not honored, let alone pour a libation since my last hymn to all the Gods nearly six months ago.

Two I do not have a space to set up Twelve separate Altars on. I have altars for my home practice ( ie:- I have small altars to Zeus Ktesios, Zeus Herkeios, Apollo the Averter of Evil, a Herm to Hermes, a shrine to Hestia and a shrine to the Agathos Daemon ) and I have an outdoor altar to Demeter and Artemis and a really small one to the nymph but I have no other places to viably place altars the size I have to Demeter and Artemis. I also discover that if I am going to end up moving deeper into any major city my space I will have will decrease.

Now theoretically the ancient Greeks used to set up one altar or one portion of a shared altar to each God. The commonest set up was either a few separate altars in one temenos or a long table with portions of it divided up to various Gods.

With my current limitation this is not viable. Though my two other large altars are inconspicious, I cannot set up a long table outside the house or a large pile of stones set in a rectangle outside my house without my neighbors looking across and wondering what is going on.

My inspiration came from the Greeks in Athens who had an altar to the Twelve Gods in their Agora. What we do know of the altar of the Twelve Gods is that the Altar is a circle. It shares a common fire place in the middle with the circle being divided up into Twelve portions for the Twelve deities. There are conflict as to how it was divided. Some writers say that the name of the Gods were engraved on the side, some says that it was the face of the Gods on the side.

We know that offerings were all placed into the common hearth flame, though people who wanted to pray to certain God will move to the side corresponding to that certain God. So in effect there is a common offering area ( though some later writers actually state that incense were burnt on the portion belonging to the particular God and libation poured on that side, though some people postulate that what might have happen is that the altar was made much larger during the later Hellenic age as demand grew )

With this as my inspiration, I have set up something similar.

I bought a 12 inch in diameter flat circular brimmed porcelain pot ( it is a specialized cactus pot ). I bought two type of gravel, a white gravel and a river stone gravel.

I then divide the two gravels. In the center of the circular pot filling about half of the radius I filled it with the river gravel. On the outer part I filled it up with the white gravel. The river gravel ( very homely looking color and looks like the old hearth floor of my grannies house ) circle in the centre represents Hestia and it is here all libations are placed and all offerings are placed and all burning of incense etc.. takes place.

The white gravel fills the outer half. This is where the symbols of all the 12 Gods are placed. I do not engrave or write the name. That will just leave too many questions for visitors.

For my simple of the Twelve Gods I represent Zeus using a piece of “thunder rock”, a piece of rough igneous stone that glistens a little gold ( the ancient Greeks during the Archaic era had cults of Zeus where the holiest representation is a rock in the sanctuary and some home cult used a rock to represent their Zeus Herkeios, though for many the altar represents the God ). I represent Hera with the white armed with two White Yangtze River Stones, one of the whitest stones around ( Hera is called White Armed Hera ). For Poseidon I represent him with five bluestones. For Demeter I represent her with five jades, I represent Apollo using a single upright, long stone jutting upwards ( as he is represented in home practice, Apollo is symbolized either as a long pole or an upright rock ), for Artemis five clear quartz, for Athena a whitish, yellowish stone of some sort ( five of them ), for Hephaestus five Hematites, for Aphrodite five rose quartz, for Ares five bright red stones ( don’t ask me what are they but they are not rubies, they are just very red, hard, smooth stones ), I built a very small herm for Hermes using small river pebbles, and for Dionysius a single purple obelisk shaped amethyst that also jut upwards.

I then purify my altar.

Now the altar is now part of my semi-public practice. I now go to the altar once a week and offer libation to the Twelve Gods plus Hestia and also burn incense. In such a small space I now have an altar to most of the major Olympians. Of course I do offerings on a daily basis now to one of the Twelve Olympian Gods on a daily basis there also ( unless it is Zeus, Apollo or Hermes where I would make offering on my home altar, if I make offering there it is the second offering of the day. Hestia always gets at least two offerings a day )

I recommend making a circular altar to the Twelve Gods for all Hellenics. It is one something quite easy to make ( and if you are balking at the number of semi-precious stones on it don’t .. I got them all for 20 cents per stone plus my stone for Zeus, Hera, Apollo and Hermes were found in nature ). Plus you have a permanent altar to most of the major Gods.

Plus you will like me end up developing rituals to honor the Twelve Gods regularly.

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