The House Witch: Your Complete Guide to Creating a Magical Space with Rituals and Spells for Hearth and Home - Arin Murphy-Hiscock 2018
The Path of Nurturing and Nourishing
A Place to Call Home
The path of the house witch is rooted in the parallel paths of nurturing and nourishing. What do these words mean? The Oxford English Dictionary defines to nurture as “[to] rear and encourage the development of (a child); [to] cherish (a hope, belief, or ambition).” The noun is defined as “the action or process of nurturing; upbringing, education, and environment as a factor determining personality.” It defines to nourish as to “provide with the food or other substances necessary for growth and health; [to] keep (a feeling or belief) in one’s mind for a long time.”
These two definitions describe a lot of hearthcraft in a nutshell: providing both physical and environmental sustenance in order to support growth, health, and development. Hearthcraft seeks to nourish and nurture on a spiritual level as well as the physical level. Let’s explore why the basics of caring for someone are so important.
The Power of Basic Needs
Food and shelter are two of the most basic things an individual requires in order to live a good life. The concept of hearth and home reflects both of these things: warmth, protection, and food. These may seem to be insignificant when compared to other, more lofty goals in life, but in reality, these basic needs have to be fulfilled in order for you to explore the higher potential of your life and spirit.
Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs demonstrates this requirement. Maslow proposed a chain of needs, each rooted in the previous one. The hierarchy of needs demonstrates that fundamental physical requirements such as food, shelter, and protection are valid needs that must be addressed in order to create the security and energy required to pursue the other higher needs that Maslow outlined, such as creating an aesthetically pleasing environment or pursuing understanding of the self within the community. Maslow’s theory isn’t absolute, but it does provide a useful explanation for humanity’s focus on the concept of hearth and home, and why it seems to be so ingrained in our cultures and psyches.
Maslow’s hierarchy is often expressed as a pyramid with basic, or lower-order, needs at the bottom and higher-order needs at the top:
1. Basic physical needs, such as food and shelter.
2. Safety needs, such as protection from the elements and a feeling of security from the unknown.
3. The need for love and belonging, within a small social unit and a larger community.
4. Self-esteem needs, or confirming the sense of acceptance within the community, from which issues the sense of self-worth.
5. The need for understanding, again from the community within which one operates.
6. Aesthetic needs, or being able to manipulate one’s environment in a desired way to reflect beauty or another value.
7. The need for self-actualization, which can be interpreted as self-improvement and feeling rewarded or satisfied by your life, as well as having the impetus to strive for more.
8. Transcendence and peak experience, the culmination of the process of self-actualization and the ultimate spiritual escape from the material world: the absence of need.
Hearthcraft tends to focus on securing and maintaining the basic needs. This is far from being simplistic or primitive: every person requires at least the first two needs of food and protection in order to survive. Hearthcraft is rooted in these primary needs, making it a necessary and highly respected path. Without the assurance of these basic needs, you cannot go on to explore more exalted paths or seek more challenging paths in life. In the end, the focal issues addressed in hearthcraft are required by every person in some way, shape, or form.
Knowing this, it is still hard to believe that there are people who dismiss the idea that anyone who works to maintain a secure and happy home is missing something or limiting themselves in some way. The casual dismissal of men or women who have chosen to follow a domestic-centered path as second-class citizens, for example, is shameful when one looks at cultural mores and stories that describe the woman as queen within her home, who managed and ordered and made sure the family had a safe, warm, secure, and successful base from which to operate, thereby maximizing their chances of success in their chosen paths. With basic needs met and accounted for, you can focus your energy on the higher, more spiritual needs, such as self-actualization and transcendence.
Practicing hearthcraft is an excellent method whereby confidence and self-esteem may be secured through answering basic needs. The more control you have over the energy and function of your home environment, the more likely you and your family are to be relaxed and happy. When you are relaxed, there are fewer obstacles to divert the life-renewing energy flowing through your life. Stress, anxiety, and fear commonly snarl up and divert the energy flowing through your life. Keeping a welcoming, serene, and happy hearth maximizes your potential to create a successful life, resting upon the firm foundation built at the hearth, in the spiritual heart of the home.