CEC founder, Egypt Brown worked to help organize the Healing and Spiritual Practice Space at the recent U.S. Social Forum in Atlanta (https://www.ussf2007.org/), taking responsibility for the conceptualization, design, and construction of the five indoor and outdoor altars. She also served as a primary shrinekeeper during the Forum’s five-day proceedings.
Altars are found in almost all faith traditions, and provide a means of achieving concentration and energetic connection to the non-manifest world. Altars mounted by the Healing and Spiritual Practice Space (sponsored by the Health, Healing and Environmental Justice Group) at the U.S. Social Forum offered attendees a variety of opportunities to focus their energy during the Forum proceedings. The altars established and held sacred space at the Forum, with a primarily functional rather than devotional intent, and served as a place of contact and encounter for both personal and ceremonial observance. The intention was to provide opportunities for participants to ground themselves and recall the larger purpose of their work amidst the frenetic energy of the Forum’s events.
Memorial Altar
Location: Renaissance Park, Circle Formation encompassing Stone Wall
Purpose: To pay homage to beloved deceased who inform and inspire our work.
Form: Half circular stone formation, containing black bamboo Spirit Sticks adorned with cloth bearing the names of those to be remembered with honor
Ancestor Altar
Location: Renaissance Park, Circle Formation encompassing Stone Wall
Purpose: To commemorate attendee relations with ancestral past, and their place within a grander cosmic order.
Form: Half circular stone formation, encompassing two trees linked by an arc of raffia
Abundance Altar
Location: Task Force for the Homeless Artistic Exhibition Space, 477 Peachtree Street
Purpose: To celebrate and express gratitude for the abundance among us, to encourage continued and expanded abundance for the good of ourselves and all those touched by us.
Form: Small stepped altar structure surrounded by symbols of water, crowned overhead by a money mobile
Healing Altar
Location: 139 Ralph McGill Blvd NE, near southwest kitty corner of Civic Center, at Piedmont Ave NE and Ralph McGill Blvd
Purpose: To celebrate and express gratitude for our experiences of healing, to encourage continued and expanded healing for the good of ourselves and all those touched by us.
Form: Elevated wooden structure on adorned table
Release Altar
Location: 139 Ralph McGill Blvd NE, near southwest kitty corner of Civic Center, at Piedmont Ave NE and Ralph McGill Blvd
Purpose: To encourage those entering Space to pause, center themselves, and release the internal barriers to establishing contact with their higher selves. Also, to encourage participants before exiting the Space to further release based on the insight gained that session.
Form: The consecrated space of the release altars will be the actual building entrance, corridor, and doorway threshold of the Space. In this case, the ritualized experience of entry and exit transition will hold the symbolic significance of an altar.
The U.S. Social Forum hosted an estimated total of 15,000 participants in its five days, hundreds of which utilized the altar spaces. The process of organizing and creating the altars as part of the Forum’s Healing and Spiritual Practice Space was an incredible learning experience and great success in that it forged the beginnings of meaningful relationships between the Creative Empowerment Cooperative and like-minded organizations such as: Stone Circles, Deeper Waters, Buddhist Peace Fellowship, Center for Law and Social Justice, Spirit in Motion, Into Afrika, and others.