A home is made of more than bricks, wood, and concrete. It’s not just a structure that shields us from the elements or a place to keep all of our stuff. A home is, in itself, a living being that requires exactly what all other living beings require: love, cleansing, feeding, and care.
How can a home be a living being? From the perspective of Spirit, everything is alive, and everything is interconnected. A living being is a system of energy that functions as a whole to create a person, place, or thing, and our homes are absolutely a dynamic energy system. This is sometimes called “the spirit of place” and has been recognized by cultures and traditions across the world.
It’s pretty common today to hear people talking about the Chinese art of influencing the energy of place known as Feng Shui, and while that is a precise and powerful method for tending the energy of your home, I tend to work more intuitively (surprise!). I still use and teach various methods that I’ve learned along the way, some traditional, some purely innovative, but all of them require the same kind of empowerment as your altar: sacred intention.
(Check out my previous blog about altars and the sacred home here)
So now that you have an altar that invites the sacred into your home, and honors the spirit of the place, we can start using that altar to care for and enhance the energy of your home. The first step of tending the sacred home is to cleanse it, ensuring that only harmonious energy dwells within.
The simplest, as well as very effective, way to cleanse your home is with salt and water. Water is universally regarded as an element of cleansing, and even a quick reflection on our uses of water can confirm that it is indeed our first resource for cleansing: washing hands and clothes and dishes, showers and baths that wash our bodies, even drinking water that flushes our organs. Water also carries a lot of life-force, as all living things need it to survive. So, as you can see, water alone is a powerful elemental ally that brings freshness, life, and of course, cleansing.
Salt is such a common item in our homes and kitchens that we barely give any thought to it other than to flavor our food, but in ancient times, salt was considered more valuable than gold because of its ability to preserve food, protect against decay, and its uses in sacred ceremonies. Originally coming from the sea, salt already has a natural connection to the power of water, and together they make a magic that is undeniable in its influence. A day at the beach isn’t just relaxing, it literally cleanses and heals!
By combining salt (preferably sea salt, but table salt will definitely do) and water at your home altar with the sacred intention of cleansing and blessing, you create a spiritual solution that washes away toxic energy, encourages flow, and draws healing energy in.
Once mixed and infused with sacred intention, which you can do with a prayer or toning or visualizing a bright light suffusing the mixture, take your bowl of salt water to the front door. Starting there, begin walking around your house clockwise, entering each room and walking around the room clockwise. Use your fingers to gently sprinkle the salt water around, experiencing the cleansing energy flowing to every nook and cranny.
There’s no need to really wet anything; small, gentle drops will do. You may want to repeat a prayer or affirmation as you walk around, such as “With salt and water I cleanse this place and make it a home for the sacred.” Feel free to come up with your own and change it up if it feels right.
Once you have made it around your entire home, you have a few options of what to do next. You can leave the salt water on your home altar to absorb any unhealthy energy and evaporate blessings into your space. You can pour it down the drain or into the toilet, or you can even pour a little down every drain to cleanse these portals into your home. Lastly, you can put it under your bed for a night where it will absorb harmful energy from you as you sleep. This last one is particularly useful if going through an especially stressful time, but in this case, make sure you pour it in the toilet to disperse and take away the energy it has absorbed.
It’s become very popular to use the smoke of a burning sacred plant to cleanse the space as well. Smudge sticks of white sage (and other sages) are found nearly everywhere, and while that might make them more tempting to purchase because of their availability and popularity, I encourage you to consider using another plant and method for this purpose.
Why?
Well, the popularity of white sage is actually threatening the existence of wild white sage, which is considered a very sacred plant by native people, who have very specific and traditional ways to work with it. Other sages, such as common culinary sage, can be substituted with good effect. Palo Santo is another aromatic wood that is burned for cleansing and blessing, but it is severely threatened by overharvesting and unethical collection. It’s hard to justify using a plant to bless your space when it comes with such sadness and harm.
There are other plants that are known for their cleansing properties as well, and I encourage you to look into them, but your best bet will be the plants that grow around your home or neighborhood. While this takes some research and learning how to identify plants, it is well worth the effort. After all, those plants will already be part of the sacred land you live on.
If that seems like a bit much, and you still want to use plant smoke to cleanse your sacred home, try to find a local source of cleansing plants, and even better if it’s from someone indigenous to the place.
The sacred home is a place where sacred relationships are honored and encouraged.
In the next blog I’ll talk about how our sacred home supports our other intentions, such as for prosperity and health, and how to embody those intentions in talismans and power objects that help us live a magical life.
More soon…
