The Cauldron: A Pagan Forum

What's the general

What's the general feeling towards online shrines?  (as per sample: http://nshrine.com/shrine/sulis)

Thanks so much, guys - I'm really pleased to hear the opinions that've come up in this thread.  (And I apologise profusely if I've offended anyone by calling their online shrine tacky!)

I am planning, eventually, to have a decent write up on my site with scholarly knowledge, archaeological study and some UPG.  It'd be nice to incorporate a shrine into that, and I feel a lot more comfortable doing that since reading the responses here.  (Now I just need lots of nonexistent spare time to actually make this a thing!)

I think I have a lot of hangups about my own practice because back when I was a young fluffy bunny, my only contact with other people of a paganish persuasion were some folks who were very... hardline... about how things should be done.  The sort whose offerings were things killed by their own hand or honey hand-gathered from their own bees, for instance, and who would consider stuff from the supermarket a slight.  I can't see them thinking very highly of online worship!

But I just don't live the sort of lifestyle where I could ever work 'their' way, and have always felt somewhat inadequate as a result.

Thought I'd chime in, as someone who's kept a virtual shrine for Sobek on my site, Per Sebek, as long as it's been around, a good eight years or so. It's been through several platform and host changes, from Angelfire pages I coded myself, to a free hosting site, to Wordpress.org to Posterous and then back to Wordpress.com, which is its current form. Because it was always meant to be a devotional site mainly about Sobek, as well as my own religious practices, it made sense to have a small devotional space for Sobek, for any visitors to leave their thoughts and prayers, if they felt so moved.

This is the current version of the shrine. I've got links to nshrine deity shrines so people can light candles. Previous versions were linked up with a guestbook, and I had many people leave prayers there for Sobek. I never went for the whole autoplay background music, nor anything like the Flash-based fanceh Yinepu/Anubis one with doors and offerings you could place on His shrine, though. It was just simple graphics and heartfelt words.

I also like the nshrine pages, because they're useful for having (temporary) shrines for Gods I don't have the space to keep physical shrines. And, likewise, for anyone else who might only have a casual relationship with a God, and who still wants somewhere to leave their prayers, without having to keep a physical shrine for Them. Being a polytheist can mean A LOT of shrines for Gods, so having virtual shrines can be useful in trying to handle that when you don't have a lot of space. Also useful for travelling, when you can't take physical shrines with you, but still want to use them for devotions.

I mean, sure, it's not the same as a physical shrine, and I'd never pretend it was, it does its job nonetheless, as part of a devotional website dedicated to one of my primary Gods. I can't see why you can't do the same sort of thing for your site, once it's up and running.

What's the general feeling towards online shrines?  (as per sample: http://nshrine.com/shrine/sulis)

I'm in the very early stages of building a website to house my paganism-related stuff - guided meditations I've written, spirituality-themed art, that sort of thing.  I'm wondering about linking to ones that are relevant to deities I work with, or ideally building my own so I've got control over quality and fluffiness.  Part of me thinks that'd be a sweet little way to show respect, but another part of me is thinking 'ewww, tacky, tacky!  What ARE you thinking?!?!'  I'm really undecided.

I'm worried it reduces deities to sparkly .gifs and trivialises the whole concept.  But, realistically, I spend more time online than outdoors (don't knock it, it's been freezing here since May) so having little digital worship space makes a kind of sense.

ETA: They'd be in addition to whatever real-world work and tribute I'm doing, not a replacement.  I also don't know that a deity would consider an online candle or prayer to count as much as a real one or at all..

Thoughts?

There also seem to be two types of online shrines - the basic nshrine style, and shrines like those on http://www.northernpaganism.org/, which contain praise and reflection as well as candle-lighting. The latter take more effort, and I think that the effort itself can be a devotional act. I think to be meaningful it has to be maintained, just like a physical shrine, if that makes sense.