Building an Altar in Minecraft

When I discussed worship in November, I mentioned the possibility of building digital altars in videogames. Minecraft is a good option for this because of the sandbox nature of the game and the wide variety of blocks and items available to build with.

You could build it in any of Minecraft’s gamemodes:

Creative – a freebuild mode where all items and blocks are available to you, you don’t take damage and mobs will never attack you.

Survival – where you would have to gather up any materials you want to use by finding or crafting them, you can take damage and when you die you respawn.

Hardcore – like survival, but once you die you can no longer play your world, only spectate. If you decide to build an altar in hardcore Minecraft, remember that dying will prevent you from using your altar.

Minecraft already offers many possibilities for ways to construct an altar, for example:

Item frames as ‘bowls’ to place items on your altar.

Maps can be created which display the area the map was first used. By creating an art piece that takes up that entire space it’s possible, albeit tedious, to create custom art on maps, which you can then display on or near your altar.

Written books can be used for poetry, prayers, or spells and kept on a chiselled bookshelf or lectern.

Crafted or rare items could be used as offerings at an altar. Since in creative mode, every block and item in the game is readily available, I feel offering items from the creative inventory doesn’t hold the same weight as, for example, offering an enchanted golden apple found through exploration.

Spells and rituals can be created specifically to work in Minecraft or else modified from existing ones.

Here’s an example of an altar I built in Minecraft version 1.20.1. I made the altar in creative mode, but all the blocks are also available in survival mode and most are easy to obtain.