Beautiful Necessity: The Art and Meaning of Women's Altars

Beautiful work that shows the souls of women, and how they arrange their personal space to display what is important to them. Many of the illustrations and texts focus on Mexican and Mexican-American women and their Catholic shrines/altars (this is what the author has studied the most), but there are also illustrations of Goddess, Celtic, African, Hindu, Buddhist, and Orthodox altars pictured in the book. The text is well written, but the pictures are definitely the highlight of the book.

This book provides a thorough and well written discussion of various aspects of women's altars. If you maintain a home altar, you may experience a deep revelation of how women across cultures and religions have similar practices and understandings of the sacred altar space. Turner's book does a wonderful job with photographic images of altars created by women practicing different traditions, including Goddess worship, Catholicism, and Buddhism. I was unaware of how altar traditions are often passed down through women in the family or that women are the primary caretakers of altars in certain cultures. Turner's discussion of techniques that are shared by women, such as collage, was wonderful to read. I thought some of the practices I had been doing were unique to me, since I was not taught them. How great to discover women share these creative practices and approaches to the spiritual realm collectively. This book is a true gift.

Kay Turner's Beautiful Necessity graces its readers with balance and bounty. In its image-filled pages, one finds scholarship and story, history and anecdote, ritual and spontaneity, tradition and innovation, honor and humor: in all, the elements of a living altar. For those versed in altar tradition and practice, Beautiful Necessity affirms the sacred act of connection to that larger than the self; for those new to the tradition, welcome after welcome is given. Anyone who has ever -- who hasn't? -- found or made a meaningful connection to the sacred through objects or images will see themselves reflected here. One surprise after another greets readers throughout the book: perhaps one of the biggest surprises is the enduring and unquestionable connection between the altars themselves, made by women separated by time, place and history. Turner focuses on the ritual gestures of offering -- physical, spiritual, incantatory, conversational-- and manages, through carefully distinct chapters, to bring together the whole of altar practice via attention to distinct aspects and traditions; detail after detail stands out, and still the different altars come together into a practice, a way of being. This is remarkable, since even the contemporary altars vary from ephemeral performance art installations in New York City to long-enduring, cherished domestic altars in homes on several continents. Buy the book. Read the book. Make an altar, or return to the altar you have, or to your appreciation of another, refreshed and restored by this wide-ranging illumination of spiritual and artistic practice and belief. You need this book.