Witch Quandaries and Freud's desk

I don't do clutter, myself. I find I clean more & get less stressed if there isn't loads of Stuff hanging around. What I do collect, though, is what I like to call Weird Shit. I always have either been attracted to, or attracted to myself, objects with what I suppose you would call a bent towards humanity's search for connection. As a child I had a museum of these things in my bedroom, & I remember reading somewhere about scarabs & badly wanting one. I once flatly refused to leave a craft fair without a statue of Shiva. My adult interests obviously appeared in me fully-formed at an early age.

This isn't in itself the cause of my quandary, which is actually that today my collection of Weird Shit has overflowed the shelf allocated to it! I'm not going to throw anything out, just let it carry on for now & see what happens. I want it to remain a collection of things significant to me rather than just random hoarding. I'm delighted to see that I'm in great company doing this; the witch's wide-ranging & (so to speak) often iconoclastic search for inspiration & connection was also carried on by the father of psychoanalysis:

'What you realise, standing in Freud's study, is that his theory is rooted in his feeling for the entire history of art and culture. The anniversary exhibition draws attention to a singular fact: whenever Freud sat down to write he was confronted by statues covering his desk.

'Freud's collection is truly staggering. He acquired hundreds of antiquities, including fragments of Roman fresco paintings, a Roman portrait sculpture and several parts of mummy cases. The cultural legacy of Egypt, Greece and Rome filled his waking hours; no wonder it filled his sleeping ones, too.' (http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2006/may/09/1)

I'm also pleased to find HR bought his antiquities from dealers. In the poor man's version, my stuff tends to come from charity shops; things demand to be bought when the time is right.

'The Study is also filled with antiquities from ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt and the Orient. Freud visited many archaeological sites (though not Egypt) but most of the collection was acquired from dealers in Vienna. He confessed that his passion for collecting was second in intensity only to his addiction to cigars. Yet the importance of the collection is also evident in Freud's use of archaeology as a metaphor for psychoanalysis. One example of this is Freud's explanation to a patient that conscious material 'wears away' while what is unconscious is relatively unchanging: "I illustrated my remarks by pointing to the antique objects about my room. They were, in fact, I said, only objects found in a tomb, and their burial had been their preservation.' (http://www.freud.org.uk/about/house/)

My sense that this act is different from the building of altars, which have a more specifically devotional or ritual purpose is heightened by the discovery of the book about Hinduism & psychoanalysis. On the other hand to the witch, for whom a major preoccupation is the crossing of traditional boundaries between sacred & secular, there may not be that much difference.

Pictures include (I can't guarantee they'll appear in this order) my weird shit shelf, Freud's desk & an installation at his house (credit: Freud museum website), & credit is needed to OUP India. The final picture is a collection of objects found the mud of the Thames by mudlarkers (presumably thrown into the river for ritual purposes, but another interesting example of the hedge taking & returning) - I've lost the source I'm afraid, but as usual will be glad to reference/remove if anyone asks.