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

Protecting Your Home’s Energy
Household Self-Care

Once you’re regularly purifying your home, doesn’t it make sense to protect its energy so you don’t have to do so much spiritual housework? Keep the negative energy out as much as possible, and your home will feel much safer, enabling you to relax more.

There are several easy ways to defend your home’s energy:

♦ Plant shrubs or plants associated with protection around it, such as juniper, peonies, ivy, and basil.

♦ Hang a braid of onions or garlic in the house to absorb negative energy. (Don’t eat these! Compost them after a year and buy a new braid.)

♦ Draw a protective symbol under your welcome mat with a Sharpie marker.

♦ Draw protective symbols on your windows with salt water. Do the same over your doorways and around the locks on your doors.

♦ Place stones with protective qualities around the house, such as obsidian, onyx, and amethyst.

Enhancing Home Energy Pillar Candle

One of the easiest self-care actions is to light a candle. There is something soothing about initiating light; flame is a living thing, and the light it casts is warm. This spell shows you how to prepare a regular pillar candle dedicated to self-care, using a technique called loading. It uses powdered herbs and oils as well as carved words. These techniques can be applied to other kinds of candles as well; feel free to experiment. Use this candle to enhance the restorative, supportive energy of your home. This technique can be used for other magical purposes; simply tailor the herbs, oils, and stone to your goal.

What You Need:

♦ Pillar candle

♦ Ice pick, metal skewer (single-point), or long nail

♦ Matches or lighter

♦ Tea light candle

♦ Pinch dried lavender

♦ Pinch dried chamomile

♦ Pinch dried rose petals

♦ Mortar and pestle

♦ Sandalwood essential oil

♦ Small chip of rose quartz

♦ Candleholder or base

What to Do:

1. Center and ground.

2. Turn the pillar candle upside down.

3. Light the tea light and hold the pointy end of the ice pick, skewer, or nail in the flame to heat the metal. When the metal is hot, gently push it into the bottom of the candle parallel to the wick to make a deep hole. (Don’t insert it right along the wick; leave wax between the wick and the hole you’re making.) If you like, you can reheat the metal and insert it into the candle again to enlarge the hole for ease of loading the candle.

4. Place the dried herbs in the mortar. Use the pestle to grind them into a powder, as finely as possible. Add a drop of sandalwood oil and use the pestle to mix it into the herbs.

5. Carefully pick up pinches of the herb blend and gently poke them into the hole. Tweezers may help, or you may prefer to enlarge the hole some more. When you have filled the hole, press the chip of rose quartz into the hole. To seal it, drip a bit of the liquid wax from the original tea light over the stone chip, or hold a match or lighter close to (not touching) the wax around the hole.

6. To use, make sure the pillar candle is in a candleholder or on a base of some kind.