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Altar environs, and layers of objects and materials they contain, have long attracted the gazes of worshippers who have venerated them, plunderers who have ransacked them, and scholars who have inspected them to comprehend religious practices. However, they have rarely been analyzed in toto. Rather, historians of art and religion have combed through these assemblages to find and study individual fine-art objects, whether illustrated texts or statuary. As this panel will demonstrate, however, the overlooked accretion of images and materials heaped on altars and placed around them are central to the ontology and vitality of these sites. From hypethral constructions in public spaces to expressions featured in homes and in temples, these idiosyncratic structures serve many functions and contain diverse offerings and imagery that is organic, mechanized, handmade, ancient, and mass produced.“Altered States” examines the materiality and agency of altars as well as the people, rituals, and divinities involved in creating and enlivening them. The panel brings together four papers that analyze the totality of altar sites through visual analysis, ethnographic inquiry, oral histories, materiality studies, network theory, and critical digital studies among other approaches to reveal the larger socio-religious organization and interactive nature of these sites. Our case studies also examine how the design, construction, and maintenance of altars and the organization of offerings placed on them facilitate relationships among human and numinous realms.