We're told that home is where the heart is, but when we have jobs, hobbies, social schedules, and any number of other commitments to attend to, it's easy to let our houses or apartments turn into mere holding areas for our stuff. We all want to feel at home in our living space, but that's easier said than done.
Intuitive counsellor and author Tess Whitehurst tells us that performing a simple ritual, in which you cleanse and bless your house, can be just the thing that helps you reclaim your space. And the first step of that ritual is to reacquaint yourself with the purpose your house serves. "Acknowledge your space as sacred," she says. "That changes the way that you interact with it and think about it."
Even if you don't spend a ton of time at home, it still functions as your base, your comfort zone. If you view it in this light, you may feel compelled to care for it in the same way you care for yourself. That means performing important spiritual upkeep on it from time to time. Negative thoughts and bad memories are like dust, Whitehurst explains — they can accumulate in nooks, crannies, and dark corners if you let them. If your house really is a sacred space, you probably want to keep that stuff from building up too much.
So, if you've recently moved somewhere new or haven't shown your home much love of late, it's probably due for a little clearing out. Ahead, Whitehurst walks us through a simple home cleansing and blessing ritual and shows us how to make it part of our regular housekeeping routine.
Make sure your ritual is balanced.
Whitehurst compares cleansing and blessing a home to shampooing and conditioning: Both are important, but very different, parts of a larger process — and you can't have one without the other. Where cleansing your home helps you clear out old feelings and thoughts, blessing it allows you to prepare for the future. "It’s lefty loosey, righty tighty," she says, simultaneously alluding to the complementary nature of the two steps and to how they're executed as well (more on that ahead).
Cleanse with sound and smoke.
Whitehurst suggests clapping, beating a drum, or really making any sort of noise to start the cleansing ritual. Let's say you're using a rattle — go through each room and shake it in a counterclockwise motion, focusing on the darker spots and the corners (again, anywhere that negative energy might accumulate). This part of the ritual is expected to wake up the home and start to shake out any bad vibes from their hiding places.
Once you've finished the sound cleansing, Whitehurst says it doesn't hurt to cleanse with smoke, too. This could mean burning sage, palo santo, or another herb with purifying properties like basil or rosemary. Again, you'll cleanse one room at a time, moving in a counterclockwise direction.
Bless with intention.
Once you finish cleansing your home, you've created an energetic "void" that needs to be filled with a new intention, Whitehurst explains. Maybe you're simply hoping to ensure positivity in your house. Or perhaps you want to beckon something more specific into the space, like new friends, more money, or greater health. Whatever your wish for the future might be, she recommends reflecting on it as you go through the whole house again, this time with a spray bottle of rose water or a stick of incense, walking through each room in a clockwise direction. "If you like to call in the divine in any form, this is a great time to do that," she adds. You can then bring the ritual to a close by moving to a central point in your home, visualising your intention one more time, and sealing it with a wish for protection.
Time your ritual to new things.
Once you've gotten acquainted and comfortable with cleansing and blessing your home, Whitehurst says you can do it whenever and as often as you like, but it's natural to want to do it anytime a change or fresh start comes up in your life. That might mean cleansing a new home when you move in, performing your ritual when you start a new job, or even doing a quick blessing when the moon reaches its "new" phase. Whatever your specific reason is, "new" tends to be the name of the game when it comes to cleansing and blessing your home.
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