The Witch's Book of Self-Care: Magical Ways to Pamper, Soothe, and Care for Your Body and Spirit - Arin Murphy-Hiscock 2018

Cleansing and Purifying
Household Self-Care

Maintenance of your home’s energy should be a priority. Fortunately, it’s easy to do. As mentioned, crystals and houseplants can be used to passively and constantly purify your space on a low level, but you’ll need to do a larger, more active clearing of negative energy on a regular basis in order to keep your space in the best shape possible to support your self-care.

Here are some ways to cleanse the energy of your home:

♦ Sweep with a broom, visualizing negative energy being broken up and swept away.

♦ Burn a sage smudge, a small bundle of dried sage tied together. Sage is excellent for banishing negative energy.

♦ Use a purifying mist or a cleansing powder like the following.

Purifying Mist

Use this simple spray to help purify areas of your home.

What You Need:

♦ 1 cup distilled water

♦ Spray bottle

♦ ¹/₄ teaspoon salt

♦ 10 drops sandalwood essential oil

♦ 8 drops frankincense essential oil

♦ 6 drops lavender essential oil

♦ 4 drops rose essential-oil blend

What to Do:

1. Pour the water into the spray bottle. Add the salt and swirl to dissolve and combine.

2. Add the essential oils and shake gently to combine.

3. To use, set the spray bottle to a mist and mist the room you wish to purify or in which you wish to eliminate negative energy.

Cleansing Powder

Powders are sprinkled through an area to spread their magical energies around to do their work. Afterward, they are swept or vacuumed up. In this blend, salt is the heavy lifter in terms of purifying, supported by the cleansing and also protective and blessing qualities of the rosemary and sage, and the positive energy of the rose. Technically it’s not a powder, because the salt isn’t ground to powder, but no one’s going to stop you from calling it that. (For a true powder, use cornstarch in place of the salt. You’ll lose the purification properties of the salt, although the rest of the ingredients still carry that energy.)

What You Need:

♦ 3 tablespoons fine salt

♦ Small bowl

♦ 1 teaspoon dried sage

♦ 1 teaspoon dried rose petals

♦ 1 teaspoon dried rosemary

What to Do:

1. Place the salt in the bowl.

2. Crumble the dried herbs into the salt, making the particles of herbs as small as possible. (If you have a mortar and pestle, use it to grind the dried herbs first.)

3. Use your fingers to mix the herbs and salt together. Pause with your fingers in the blend and say, “Powder, I charge you to cleanse and purify the energy of the place in which you are sprinkled. So may it be.”

4. Take pinches of the blend and sprinkle it around the area you want to cleanse. Allow it to rest there for about an hour or overnight. Sweep it up with a broom and dustpan the next day, or vacuum it up. Dispose of the powder or contents of the vacuum in an outside bin.

Tip:

♦ This is a great method to adapt for whatever magical purpose you like. Using salt or cornstarch as the base, you can include whatever herbs resonate with the energy of your goal.

Music

One of the ways you can affect the energy of your home and also impact your self-care is by playing music. Chapter 4 looked at how playing music can affect the emotional and creative aspects of self-care. Music can also be used to affect the energy of a space.

Sounds waves are energy that moves. Harnessing that energy to have an effect on the energy of a space is easy to do.

If you are looking to break up negative or stagnant energy in a space, you can use drums, maracas, or clap your hands sharply. Move through the space you’re working in, remembering to reach into corners and spaces where energy doesn’t circulate well.

If you want to settle slightly out-of-sync energy or calm energy that is a bit too antsy, look into using a Tibetan singing bowl, a metal bowl that creates a sustained note when a mallet is lightly run around the rim. Running a finger around the damp rim of a wine glass can be a substitute in a pinch, but nothing beats the rich, complex layers of a real singing bowl. Bells are also common instruments to enhance or calm the energy of a space. Use a single bell and ring it throughout the room, allowing time between the rings to let the vibrations flow.

Wind chimes also work to break up negativity or to create positive energy, depending on the size and tuning of them. The deeper ones tend to be good for turning away or breaking up negativity, but the lighter, higher-pitched ones seem to work well inside for calming energy or uplifting the energy that is already pleasant.

Chanting can also work to transform negative energy to positive energy. A chant that is commonly used is the om mantra, but feel free to search out other chants on the Internet to learn them. If you sing them yourself, it has the added bonus of positively affecting your personal vibration. If you prefer to play a recording, that’s fine, but the effect will be slightly different.