Simple Spells for Hearth and Home: Ancient Practices for Creating Harmony, Peace, and Abundance

One
Your Magical Home

Spell for Psychic Housecleaning
Spell for Moving In
Blessing and Maintaining Your Home
Spell for Safety and Security
Spell for Changing Your Home: Trust

Spell Basics

Time of month: Waxing moon
Day of week: Monday
Time of day: Second hour after sunset
Color: White, green
Flower: Carnations or roses
Herb: Basil

Whether you live in a mansion, apartment, or mobile home, your living space took on a certain amount of energy when it was constructed. The energy of intention that was used in building your house is as important as the building materials. Once in a while you'll find homes that have enormously supportive energy, such as those built with community effort and intention, the result of a house-raising, for example, still seen today in certain rural areas, or in the efforts of Habitat for Humanity. These homes have special, gentle psychic energy and stability from the spirit of their builders. Conversely, some homes are built through an "assembly line," as in prefab buildings or developments where every house looks the same. These homes usually are low on supportive psychic power, since they are replicated over and over again, weakening each home's natural strength of character and identity, and are built often with the intention of profit-making rather than shelter-providing. More typical, though, are homes and apartments that fall somewhere in the middle. These are constructed by "anonymous" workers who build houses or buildings for a living. These structures may have some individual personality and are usually made with the right intention, but will always benefit from a littlemore spell-casting to make the most of what they've got.

Your Home Is a Family Member
Your home is almost like a live member of your family, and you can consider its birth to have been the moment the lease was made valid or the title was taken. Your home progresses through its life while you evolve through yours.
You can feel a home's life and personality if you pay attention
to it. When a house is new, you'll sense an atmosphere of expectancy, spaciousness; at other times it's barren of energy and it makes you
want to leave. When a dwelling is vibrant with life, it seems as if
there's always an emotional residue in its air--warmth or companionship even when there's no one home, or vague echoes of voices or emotions. I once walked into a house just after the whole family had left for church, and I could swear that the place was filled with chattering kids playing, and people cooking and talking, but no one was there. A household's energy diminishes when its inhabitants are rarely there or slowly move out--"the empty nest" reflects a very real energetic decline in psychic and emotional energy. The stillness or quietness of this kind of atmosphere can be calming and soothing or lonely and detached.

You can keep your home's energy flowing and positive, healing and comforting, no matter what life cycle you're experiencing, but to do this, you have to do a little psychic housecleaning. If you're just moving into a place, you should "clean the house" before the furniture goes in. Before you fill up your space with your energy, clean out what may have been left behind by the last tenants, the painters, the builders, or even the real-estate agents. In spell-casting, I almost always advise a cleansing first.

Psychic Housecleaning
You will need to clean your house psychically more than once, so get used to this idea. The principle of this cleaning is to neutralize any negativity or toxicity that may have been left behind, and to clear out other people's imprints if they are not compatible with yours.

A house is typically imprinted with the energy of its former tenants, particularly if they've lived there a long time. We moved into an apartment that had been totally renovated before we got there, but I still cleared its atmosphere of energy from the prior tenant, a lovely woman who died from liver cancer. I wasn't worried about her ghost or any kind of illness we might be exposed to, but I was concerned about the air of sadness, pain, or decline that she might have felt in her last days. We were moving in with our five-month-old daughter, hoping to establish a happy, healthy, and growing household--a clearing seemed in order.

Even guests or temporary help can imprint their energy on your home's atmosphere. Although it may not be strong enough to affect you overtly, your home could harbor some residual emotion or attitude that just isn't yours. For example, you might feel someone's anger or discomfort after they're gone.

The Clearing Process
A psychic housecleaning or clearing is very simple to perform. I recommend using the Native American technique called "smudging," passing smoldering dried sagebrush around your rooms, to clear away negative energy. Sage has been historically used for cleansing psychically hostile or negative vibrations and also for exorcisms, but you don't have to have large-scale negativity in order to use it--it's an all-purpose cleaner. I often clear spaces before performing spells or conjuring atmospheres just to make sure I'm starting off on clear ground. You'll find a few different clearing rituals in this book, but the most basic form of clearing is explained in this chapter.

You should know that psychic housecleaning is not subtle.

Sagebrush has a very strong odor (some say like cannabis), so be aware that your psychic housecleaning will be obvious to anyone around.

A Word on Clearing Poltergeists and Hauntings
Ever since the book and movie about a possessed house in Amityville, Long Island, the media has relished stories of hauntings and unexplained events, attributed to poltergeists (meaning "noise-making" spirits in German) and ghosts. I'm not about to tell you that they don't exist, because they do, but they are fairly rare and often shy. Aggressive hauntings are not something you'd come across easily, nor would you move into a place that has that kind of hostility--you'd pick up that kind of negative energy just viewing the house, and you'd probably not want to return.

I do have personal experience with some menacing demons, and quite a few of my clients and friends have had their own run-ins with nonphysical energies. There is one lesson we have all learned: Just because you can't see them doesn't mean they're more powerful. Actually, the more afraid you are, the more power you give them. Start laughing at a poltergeist and it won't get much satisfaction (as a matter of fact, while I'm writing this, one of my unseen companions
has pushed over a shopping bag--I think it's taking issue with this opinion!).