VIRTUAL ALTAR
Drag-and-Drop Shrine Builder
Place offerings, candles, and sacred objects on your altar.
The Virtual Altar is Grimoire's drag-and-drop shrine canvas: a place to compose altars when the physical conditions don't allow, when a working calls for a layout you'd like to plan first, or when a memory of an altar is worth holding onto in its own right. Choose a scene background (candlelit hearth, moonlit windowsill, forest clearing, stone altar), then place candles, offerings, crystals, herbs, sacred objects, and symbols freely on the canvas: resize, rotate, layer, save.
The Altar is not a replacement for physical practice. It is a parallel record: a planning canvas for the rituals you'll work through, a memorial shrine for a person or a pet, a fully-set altar to a deity you cannot keep one out for at home. Inscribed altars save to your My Craft journal as a Shrine entry, with the SVG embedded directly in the entry body and the moon phase stamped at the time of inscription.
What's Inside
Drag-and-Drop Canvas
Place items anywhere on a square altar canvas. Drag with your finger, resize from the corner, rotate freely. Items in front sit on top of items behind; any item can be brought to the front or sent to the back.
Four Item Categories
Ritual (candles, athames, chalices, bells), Decor (statues, mirrors, sigils, runic plates), Flora (bundles, sprigs, dried flowers, wreaths), and Furniture (pedestals, shelves, cloths): four libraries of altar items, each with the variation a real altar would have.
Scene Backgrounds
Several scene backgrounds set the mood and the surface: a candlelit hearth, a moonlit windowsill, a forest clearing, a stone altar, a domestic table. Switch backgrounds at any time without losing your placed items.
Private Gallery
Save altars to your gallery with the name you give them. Build several for different intentions (a sabbat altar, a deity shrine, a memorial) and reload any of them to the canvas to edit, duplicate, or rebuild.
Inscribe to Grimoire
Inscribe an altar to save it directly to My Craft as a Shrine entry. The SVG of the altar is embedded in the entry body; moon phase and planetary hour are stamped at the time of inscription. The altar lives in your record, not just on your canvas.
Export as SVG
Download the altar as a 1000×1000 SVG containing the scene background and every placed item. Save the file, print it, use it as the cover image of a related entry, or share it however you'd like.
The Four Categories
What can you place on the altar?
Four libraries of altar items, each with the variation a real altar would have. Place freely, layer however you want, save when the composition feels right.
| Category | What it holds |
|---|---|
| Ritual | Candles, athames, chalices, bells: the working tools of formal ritual |
| Decor | Statues, mirrors, bowls, sigils, runic plates, the visual grammar of your tradition |
| Flora | Bundles, sprigs, dried flowers, wreaths: the plants in your apothecary made visible |
| Furniture | The surface and structure of the altar itself: pedestals, shelves, cloths |
Definition
What is a virtual altar?
A virtual altar is a digital composition of altar elements: the same candles, offerings, crystals, herbs, and sacred objects you might place physically, arranged on a screen instead of a table. The work is not a substitute for physical practice; it is a parallel and a planning canvas.
Many witches do not have a permanent physical altar. The kitchen table doubles for too many things; the windowsill is shared; the cat won't leave the candles alone. A virtual altar is the place where the altar your conditions don't allow can still be tended: an offering composition you'd like to remember, a sabbat layout you'll work through later, a memorial shrine for a person or pet, a deity altar a busy life cannot keep set out at home.
I use it primarily for deity work that can't have a permanent physical home: a shrine for a specific working that needs to be packed away by morning, a Hecate altar I want to plan before setting it out. The canvas is also where I test compositions before committing them physically. It is considerably cheaper in effort than moving candles around a table at midnight, deciding the layout was wrong.
Connections
How does the Virtual Altar connect to the rest of Grimoire?
Inscribed altars save to your My Craft journal as a Shrine entry, with the full SVG embedded in the entry body. The altar can be linked to a working composed in the Spell Builder, to a deity in your Deity Journal, or to a sabbat in the Sacred Calendar. The altar is the visual record; the rest of the app holds the relationships.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions.
What is the Virtual Altar?
The Virtual Altar is Grimoire's drag-and-drop shrine builder, sitting inside the Practice section. Choose a scene background, place items from four categories (Ritual, Decor, Flora, Furniture) on the canvas, then resize, rotate, and layer them freely. Finished altars save to a private gallery on your device; from there you can reload, edit, duplicate, or inscribe them to your My Craft journal as a Shrine entry with the moon phase and planetary hour recorded.
Why a virtual altar at all?
The most common reasons: no space for a permanent altar; shared living situations where a table or windowsill belongs to everyone; a need to plan a composition before committing to it physically; and the need for temporary or portable sacred spaces: a working altar that must be packed away by morning, a memorial shrine for someone who has died, a composition for a place you will only visit once. The virtual altar holds what the physical altar cannot always hold.
What can I place on the altar?
Items are drawn from four working categories: Ritual (candles, athames, chalices, bells: the working tools), Decor (statues, mirrors, bowls, sigils, runic plates), Flora (bundles, sprigs, dried flowers, wreaths), and Furniture (pedestals, shelves, cloths: the surface itself). Each item is dragged onto the canvas, then resized and rotated freely. Layer them however you like: items in front sit on top of items behind, and any selected item can be moved to the front or sent to the back.
Can I change the background?
Yes. Several scene backgrounds are included: a candlelit hearth, a moonlit windowsill, a forest clearing, a stone altar, a domestic table, and others. The background sets the mood and the surface; everything else you place sits on it. Switch backgrounds at any time without losing your placed items.
How do I save and reload altars?
Tap Save to add the current altar to your gallery, with the name you give it. The gallery holds every altar you've made: open one to load it back to the canvas, edit it, save changes, or duplicate it as the starting point for a new composition. Stored in local storage on your device, so the gallery is private to you.
Can I export the altar as an image?
Yes. The Virtual Altar exports as a 1000×1000 SVG containing the scene background and every placed item. Save the file to keep, print, or use as the cover image of a related grimoire entry. Inscribing the altar to your grimoire embeds the SVG directly into a journal entry, so the altar lives alongside the working it accompanies.
How does the Virtual Altar connect to the rest of Grimoire?
Inscribe an altar to save it as a Shrine entry in your My Craft journal: the SVG is embedded in the entry body, with the moon phase and planetary hour stamped at the time of inscription. An altar built for a working in the Spell Builder can be linked to that working; an altar built for a deity can be linked to that deity in your Deity Journal.
What you'll find inside
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