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

Room Purification Ritual
Using Hearthcraft to Protect Your Home

It’s important to note that terms such as purify, cleanse, and bless are often used interchangeably, but they do mean slightly different things.

✵ To cleanse something means to remove the physical dirt from it, with the intent to remove any associated energy influence.

✵ To purify something means to remove the negative or undesired energy from it.

✵ To bless something means to infuse the item with positive Divine-influenced or Divine-originated energy.

Basic Room Purification Ritual

This is an all-purpose purification ritual that can be used as is or as a basis for your own ritual.

You will need:

✵ Cleaning supplies (as needed)

✵ Incense (stick or loose) or smudge stick

✵ Charcoal tablet (if using loose incense)

✵ Censer or heatproof bowl

✵ Salt or sand (if using bowl for incense)

✵ Candle (white or color of your choice)

✵ Candleholder

✵ Matches or lighter

1. Begin by physically cleaning the space. Tidy the room. Put things in their place or return them to their original places in other rooms. Then vacuum, sweep, dust, polish—do whatever you need to do to remove physical dirt. It can be as thorough as you feel it needs to be.

2. Purify the room by burning a teaspoonful of your favorite purifying incense (or use the recipe in this chapter) on a charcoal tablet. Alternatively, use a stick of purchased incense in a purifying scent or use a smudge stick (homemade or purchased). As you light it say:

I light this incense to purify this space.

3. Place the bowl or censer in the middle of the room and let the smoke fill the space. More incense is not necessarily better; a single small spoonful can produce billows of smoke depending on the blend you’re using. Make sure you test the blend beforehand. If you like, you can walk around the room in a counterclockwise direction to help disperse the smoke throughout the space. Counterclockwise movement is associated with banishing or undoing something.

4. Allow the incense to purify the room for as long as you feel it is necessary. It may take anywhere between a few minutes to a few hours. Don’t worry about keeping the incense burning all that time; let the energies released with the original spoonful or stick do their work. If you sense that it will take longer than the initial burn time, check on the room or space after an hour (or after the incense has finished burning, or once the smoke has cleared) to evaluate whether you need to burn more incense or follow up with another purifying technique.

5. When the space feels purified, light the candle and place it in the middle of the space, saying:

I light this flame to bless this space.

6. Allow it to burn down.

If you plan to purify a space for the first time, or for the first time in a long time, do all three of them in order. Begin by cleansing the room, then purify it, and finally ask Spirit or your concept of the Divine or your spiritual hearth to bless it. For the less intense maintenance rituals, you may choose to do the purification alone. For a touch of spiritual energy as the mood or desire strikes you, the blessing is ideal.