The House Witch: Your Complete Guide to Creating a Magical Space with Rituals and Spells for Hearth and Home - Arin Murphy-Hiscock 2018

The Sanctity of Home
Your Home As a Sacred Space

You guard your home; you defend it from unwanted intruders, both physical and otherwise. You invest great amounts of money in it, whether you rent or own it. You decorate it in a way that soothes you, or enlivens you, or reflects you in some way. Inviting someone into your home is a great concession. It says, “I trust you” in some way. You trust a guest to behave well, to be considerate, and to appreciate the personal space that is yours.

Respecting the Home

The Japanese culture demonstrates how highly it respects the sanctity of the home by having people remove their shoes before entering a dwelling. It shows respect for the hosts by abstaining from ruining the floor covering (usually called a tatami—a woven-plant fiber-like straw that is easily damaged by footwear), as well as avoiding tracking dirt into the home. Symbolically, removing the footwear also represents leaving the worries and problems experienced outside at the door.

To define the space between the outside world and the private space of the home, there is an entryway referred to as the genkan, where the footwear is removed and stored in a cupboard or shelf divided into a series of cubes called a getabako. The genkan functions as a buffer between the sacred space of the private home and the uncontrolled outside world. The level of the actual living space is usually one step up from the entryway, and this step functions as another kind of buffer, requiring you to physically step up and away from both the outside world and the transitional area. There is an entire etiquette associated with the genkan and how shoes are removed and placed, and how to enter the home as well. Japan isn’t the only culture to employ this custom. Parts of Korea, China, Indochina, and Southeast Asia also have customs involving the removal of footwear before entering sacred places.

In Japan, footwear is removed before entering shrines, temples, and some restaurants. Many homes provide slippers for visitors to wear once they have removed their outdoor footwear. A different pair of slippers is worn in the bathroom and is not to be worn outside it, further demonstrating how the different energies of the home are kept as separate as possible.

The custom of removing one’s hat before entering a home is also associated with respect. In Western culture, hats are removed to demonstrate respect for a person, a place, or an action, or to illustrate recognition of one’s humbler station. Hats are removed by men in a Christian church to humble oneself before God; however, some sects require that women cover their heads before entering the church. Hats are generally worn outdoors, and to wear one inside smacks of poor breeding as well as disrespect for the sanctity of the place. Conversely, Judaism instructs its adherents to always cover their heads in a temple, usually with a brimless cap called a kippah or yarmulke.

Sacred Spaces

The home is set apart as sacred space, separate from the outside world. Within the home there are further zones of sacred space, the hearth being the zone this book will focus on. Sacred spaces are recognized by our deference to them and defense of them: they are sacred to us. Some spaces are recognizable by other people as sacred: the collection of family portraits on a shelf, for example, or a collection of statuary. Sacred things have a certain aura to them, and we are both drawn to them and understand innately that we ought not to touch or interfere with them. This aura can originate from the item itself, which may have drawn you to acquire it in the first place, or it may be instilled in it by your designation of it as sacred. The former may have come about by the item’s previous associations or its origins.

There are sacred spaces that are almost universally recognized, and sacred spaces that are unique to one or a small group of individuals. Something can very well be sacred to you and no one else, and that’s fine. A space or object does not have to be validated as sacred by anyone else for it to have power for you. While you may not sense the sanctity of a place or item held sacred by someone else, it is always courteous to respect the other person’s sense of sanctity.