Hearth Witch Lesson: Magically Cleansing Your Home
Author: Deborah
Before we get started on this lesson, it’s true confession time. When I am on my A game I am almost as good at cleaning my house as my mother is. Almost, if you’re not wearing your glasses and you squint a little. When I am not on my A game (which is often) , my house more closely resembles a somewhat neat college student’s house than Miss Martha’s domicile.
I am not at all on my A game right now.
We had our cat, Bellatrix, fixed and she decided to deal with her enforced croning by declaring war on my other cat, Max. This has been a riveting week of feline turf wars, howling for attention periodically through the middle of the night, full on attacks that mean to injure each other and of course “accidentally” going to the bathroom all over the house. So my couch is coverless, we’ve been too afraid to vacuum for fear of incurring another full on attack, my quilt is in the wash and we have yet to disassemble the day bed and assemble the desk we got around Christmas time for me to have a work space, as Spare Oom has been declared a demilitarized zone. As of last night we called for peace treaty negotiations by separating the two powers for the rest of the week and then we will reconvene peace treaty talks on Tuesday when Her Highness has her stitches out and is released from her Cone of Shame. Naturally, I’m also sick with a cold and have an event this weekend I’m attending as leadership . . .in Boston. So be assured, this is not a glass house I am currently residing in.
Despite (or perhaps because of) all these domestic failings, I have a pretty fast way to ritually clean my house. Generally I prefer to actually clean my house first and then ritually clean it but sometimes beggars can’t be choosers. When I can actually clean my house, I try to do a really thorough job of it. We live in a fairly small space by American standards though an average sized space by European standards. I find it really does add to the house’s well being if I donate things that are not being used anymore. Books, clothing that doesn’t fit, appliances that aren’t being used, etc. Constantly “purging” helps ensure that clutter creep doesn’t set in and we don’t end up on an episode of Hoarders. It also helps to make sure that your house is accessible to you. It’s hard to feel motivated to do much of anything if it doesn’t.
I have fibromyalgia, so it’s hard for me to crouch down to look for pots so we have a pot rack. I need my crafting supplies organized and easy to access because we only have one big hall closet, so I have the supplies organized by type (sewing, spinning, general craft supplies, etc) in banker’s boxes and I keep like materials (buttons, beads, notions, etc) in zip lock bags so I don’t have to take everything apart to find something.
Sometimes though, it’s hard to be motivated to ritually cleanse my house if it’s not physically clean. I find that if I wait too long in between ritual cleanings, I’ve noticed that I start to feel sluggish when I’m at home and our household squabbling rate goes waaaay up. When the house is ritually cleaned, I feel energized and my brain is functioning and I want to be a member of society and go out of my way to go above and beyond in my significant other duties.
You would think this would motivate me to do my cleansing routine weekly, but my generation wasn’t called a generation of slackers for nothing. Here’s a simple guideline for you on how often you should do this cleansing ritual: Weekly = Awesome, Miss Martha! More than a month = expect to be sleeping on the couch
Steps to Ritualistically Cleanse Your House
1. Crack open your windows for at least ten minutes. Even in the winter. You need to give that crappy energy that you’ve been building up some place to go, like outside your house.
2. Empty your salt bowl. If you don’t have one, you should get one. It naturally soaks up a lot of less than positive stuff floating around your house. It should be in a place that sees a lot of traffic. Mine is in the cutout in my kitchen, which looks out to my living room and front door. A salt bowl is simply a bowl with sea salt or kosher salt in it. When emptying mine, I flush all the salt down my sink and clean the bowl with soap and water. I dry it and then add fresh new salt.
3. Recharge your house wards. I am awful with any kind of shield magic. I learned on Momma Starr’s Old Style Conjure podcast that using a lemon with salt also works to keep out negative energy. I cut a lemon in half and dip each half in salt and put each half outside my front door facing each other and use it as a ward to keep people who mean me harm out of my house.
4. Recharge your continuous magic. As a writer, I definitely keep continuous money magic going to make sure money keeps coming into my house. I try to burn a candle on my money honey pot weekly with symbols or words etched into my dressed candle that work to bring in whatever kind of money I need that week (a small bit of found money, writing money, new job opportunities, savings, etc) .
5. Using your sacred broom, sweep all the negative energy from every room out your front door. My sacred broom comes from Michael’s Craft store and I have it “fixed” as Hoodoo traditions would say to cleanse my house of negative energy. This is that broom’s only job so it doesn’t get confused. It stays by my front door.
6. Smudge your house with a sage bundle to cleanse all negative influences out. Make sure to smudge closets, mirrors, TVs, computers and windows.
7. Give light and water offerings to your deities. We light up our altar last and give thanks to our gods for what we have and we enjoy how beautiful the altar looks and how good the house feels.
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