This is one of those things that comes down to preferences. Altars in bedrooms are fine, keeping everything in a separate room is also fine. It depends on your personality, training, living situations and a million other things.
I prefer to have that extra psychological kick that lets me shed my mundane self when I walk through a door. But then again, if I am not mistaken, The Eye practices an ATR and I believe those spirits are seen more as “part of the family” than something that is summoned, questioned, tasked, then dismissed.
That is the reason why I posted my xp : because there’s no rule. When I read “you have to do this” or “never do that”, I’m always dubious. Not because this is crap, but because nothing in magic is just set up in stone.
To each his own practice.
Let’s keep ourselves open minded and experiment and see what fits best to us.
I think it depends on the person, in this place we tried having a bedroom set up just for sleep for a couple of years, with no screens, no LEDs on appliances, total blackout blinds for sleeping, nothing much in it like the experts all recommend, and it was annoying somehow… now, ever since last November the main room in our flat is a combined bedroom/temple/TV & computer room (another thing conventional wisdom advises against) and it’s excellent.
And when I had a seperate room for magick, I used to not want to leave, I used to stay chilling out there, and a couple of times fell asleep on the floor… I’d spent ages yearning to have a whole room for this stuff, and ended up just kind of slowly moving the rest of my life into it. Lesson learned!
Having been lucky enough to have tried all those different set-ups, I think it’s just personal preference, although I’m lucky my partner also prefers this, it may not be an option for everyone just for that reason. Might change if there are kids as well, that’s a game changer for everyone isn’t it!
It can be hard to spell out why what we do works so well for us, without appearing to be putting down someone else’s choices without meaning to; I know for me I don’t like to compartmentalise magick, spirits etc., but that doesn’t mean no-one should, it’s just how I like to do things.
I like intensity and lean towards obsessive with my personality, and the benefits and drawbacks of that are things I’m used to handling, but other people might operate better with more balance and that in no way makes them less committed, able or dedicated.
For awhile it’s been important to me to have a special space set aside for ritual/meditation/etc. It can help immensely in slipping into the right frame of mind, ‘because this place is for x’. But right now I’m making an effort to, yes, use my dedicated ritual space, but also make a conscious effort to conduct meditations, rituals, etc. wherever the hell I happen to be. In effect I’ve found it important to -wean- myself off of -relying- on a dedicated ritual space, the better to be able to do whatever I will under whatever circumstances.
I think this is where bleed-through occurs for me from martial arts training that has an emphasis on street rather than cage fighting. Train, train, train in familiar ways and favourable circumstances while you need to learn the basics: but then begin to mix it up and challenge yourself with surprises for when you have to defend yourself that time when you are surprised in the most disadvantageous situation.
There’s nothing to condemn in any of the above approaches, of course - this is just why -I- approach this the way I am right now.