chaoskyan:

I don’t celebrate Ostara, so instead of posting about that I decided to instead post my checklist of things I do every spring to cleanse my home and start fresh. 

The first step before you start any magical cleaning of your home is to do a good physical cleaning. There are many cultures for which spirtual wellbeing is very connected to your physical space, so I really don’t suggest skipping this step. Plus, it will make the rest of the steps a lot easier if you don’t have to navigate around piles of clothes and dirty dishes. 

If your place is in a really bad situation, I recommend starting off with Unfuck Your Habitat’s Emergency Cleaning guide. If you’re coming out of a depression lull and your apartment or room has gotten extremely messy, it will give you manageable steps so the clean doesn’t feel quite so overwhelming. They also have a great guide to Spring Cleaning for Actual People on their website (or you can get the pdf here). (I’m not in any way affiliated with this website, I just like what they do).

Sources: The content below is a mixture of French-Canadian folk magic, personal gnosis, and rituals from ‘The Magical Household’ by Scott Cunningham and David Harrington.

1. (Re)arrange furniture. Take each room on its own and look at it from every corner, rather than only from the places you usually see it from (doorway, desk, couch, etc). There should be room to breathe and allow the energy to circulate freely. A good starting point is to find the focal point of your room, and orient the rest of your furniture accordingly. I usually point the head of my bed to the North and place it going in the same direction as the lines on the floor. 

2. Salt the floors. This is honestly one of my favourite parts about doing a good home cleanse. Your floors should already be cleaned up from your mundane spring cleaning. It’s easier to do it one room at a time. Sprinkle the salt on the floors and especially in the corners. Leave the salt to sit so they can absorb any negative energies in the room, and once you feel it’s been long enough sweep it up with a broom. Cunningham’s book says that it’s common practice to have a separate broom for mundane than for magical cleaning, but I personally prefer to use the same broom for both. When you are sweeping you want to do it in any direction that is not towards the main entrance of your home. I sweep towards the back of the house, and once you’ve collected all the salt into a dustpan throw it outside (preferably not on your own property). An optional additional step would be to mop the floors again, but instead of using a cleaner use warm water, Lavender essence, and a small amount of (your own) urine. In folk practices this marks your spiritual and physical territory. It might seem gross, but this was (and still is) fairly common practice for many witches. Urine is sterile, and you should only be using a small amount so there will be no lingering odour (if you can smell it, you’re using WAY too much). 

3. Ward windows and doors. If you use wards regularly, any protection ward will do. My windows and doors are all painted white, so I use white chalk on them. If you don’t use wards normally and you’re not sure what to put on there, any symbol that to you means protection will work just fine. Pentagrams are a common one for pagan witches, crosses are also fairly common. 

4. Additional protection. These are extra things I like to do for safety due to the entities I work with and the experimental nature of my craft: 

– Dry a bunch of dill and hang it above the entrance to your home
– Hang a bag of salt onto each door handle
– Hang a string of garlic in the kitchen
– Place a knife under the bed
– Place a whole onion under the sink (this needs to be changed out when it goes bad)
– Light sandalwood incense in each room (you can do them one at a time if you only have one incense burner)
– Hide a witch bottle

5. Cauldron ritual. This step closes the spring cleaning for me and acts as an activation for all the wards and protections that have been placed in the home. Bring water to a boil in a large pot. Add a tablespoon of vanilla, juice from a lemon, and one stick of cinnamon. Let them simmer for a few minutes while you finalize your ritual. If you use incantations or call upon gods, this is where you’d do your thing and incorporate whatever elements you prefer. When this is done, I pour the water (remove the cinnamon stick) into bowls and leave them overnight as offerings for house and local spirits. They can be discarded the next morning however you want.