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

Caring for Those Outside Your Home
A Place to Call Home

One of the essential elements of the hearthcraft path is a presupposition of a community of some kind to care for, whether it be yourself and a pet, your family, or your circle of friends. Most hearth-based house witches gravitate to the path because they feel the need to care for and nurture those who are close to them. A kitchen and a home are places where living people operate and interact. These people are literally the soul of the home, much as the hearth and fireplace are the heart of the house. As a result, the hearth-based house witch and her work can have a significant impact on her family and extended community as they interact within her sphere. The energy you maintain in your home will affect them, just as the energy they bring to your spiritual hearth will help to fuel it.

Hearthcraft posits a certain connection to community. The term community can sometimes be misleading, because we often associate it with a collection of people at large from a general area. The term can comprise any collection of people who are associated in pursuit of a similar goal.

Blood isn’t the only indicator of close ties. The term kin is sometimes employed to describe those who are members of your blood family unit, but the term akin means something or someone essentially similar. People who have interests or philosophies akin to yours, with whom you have a spark of connection, and whom you invite into your home constitute a community of sorts as well. You may have close friends who hold special places in your heart, like-minded individuals who support and love you. In essence, they are family without the blood or legal ties.

Chosen family is the term often used to describe this circle. Chosen family is one such example of a close circle or community for whom your hearthcraft practices resonate in some way, whether they consciously know of your spiritual focus or not. Caring for them in emotional and physical ways—the supportive phone call, the cup of tea, the casserole in times of stress—is another way in which hearthcraft expresses itself. Caring for family and community to foster an environment that supports healthy growth and development at all levels is one of the things a house witch does.