Whether you live alone or house share, live with a partner or a family, the home offers, as it has always done, a sanctuary from the world and a place where you can be yourself, surrounded by the things that you value and love.
In this and the following chapter I will suggest ways in which you can put a heart into your home - be it an impersonal city centre apartment or a house on a new suburban estate - so that it feels welcoming and restorative.
Many domestic folk customs practised by our ancestors right through Christian times have ancient roots. These customs continued during the 1800s even as more and more people moved to the towns into small cramped terraced houses.
It was not until the Second World War that the real break came with the old ways and with it the increasing mobility of people that gradually eroded the extended family.
For all its faults, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins living in the same street or sometimes in the same house, provided a sense of continuity and security and ensured the natural transference of the old folk wisdom from generation to generation.
Of course, our ancestors did not have the benefits of essential oils, easily available different coloured candles and polished crystals. We have the advantage of being able to use these to supplement simpler tools such as stones, garden flowers and herbs.
Once the hearth was the centre of the home and even in these days when central heating is common, many houses still have a central fireplace with a real or gas or electric flame-effect fire that forms a focal point (focus, the Latin word for hearth means centre).
If this is not the case in your home, it is easy to make a small hearth-like feature in the main living area by using a wooden or metal hearth surround bought from a DIY store or by marking the area with stones or slate.
Any hearth can be kept alive in summer with yellow, orange and red flowers or flowering plants, red crystals or stones and a red candle that can be lit in the evenings.
The history of the sacred hearth tradition
Hearths can be traced back with certainty 125,000 years but may be even older. From pre-Christian times the family hearth was believed to welcome home living family members, deceased wise ancestors and family guardians alike.
The Ancient Greek goddess Hestia was goddess of the hearth and, even on the hottest days, a small flame was kept burning continuously in homes, lit from a sacred brand taken from one of her temple hearths.
In the home, prayers were offered to Hestia before and after the meal and small portions of the food were thrown on to the flames. The hearth fire was seen as a symbol of hospitality and in Greece, as in a number of other cultures, women were the special guardians of the fire.
This was regarded as an honour rather than a chore, recognising the importance of women as homemakers and earthly representatives of Hestia.
Other traditions included carrying a newborn child round the fire and asking for the protection of Hestia during the early vulnerable days. A bride would also transfer a burning brand from the family hearth to her new home to carry with her the blessings of home.
Gabija, the Lithuanian goddess of the hearth fire, was honoured in a similar fashion by throwing salt on the fire each evening after the main meal and some older Eastern European people continue this tradition.
The sacred flame was constantly kept alight in every city in Greece at a public hearth sacred to Hestia and each new city would take fire from an existing hearth to establish its own.
Travellers would ask for a flame from the central hearth to carry with them and it was feared that if the sacred fire of Athens went out then the civilised world would cease to exist.
In Rome, Vesta, the goddess of fire occupied the same role as Hestia, as deity of the family hearth and of the sacred city fire.
Keeping the fire alight
In Western Europe right up until the mid 1900s there was a ritual for the annual extinguishing and relighting of the family hearth fire with a burning coal or brand from the old fire.
This traditionally took place at midnight on New Year's Eve or, in places influenced by the Celtic culture, on Halloween (31 October), that once marked the end of the Celtic year.
This hearth fire burned from Halloween until May Eve, the beginning of the Celtic summer, but even after that date a small symbolic brand was kept burning.
Some people still keep a small long-burning candle continually alight in their home (in a suitable safe place) except when they go away. In modern times, however, the eternally burning flame is more usually symbolised by a dark candle lit five minutes before midnight on New Year's Eve.
Threads are burned in the candle to represent what needs to be left behind in the old year. Then, on the first stroke of midnight, a white candle is lit from the dark one and the dark candle is extinguished to symbolically transfer what is good to the new year. The white candle is left burning until it goes out.
The same custom can be used to mark the beginning of a month, the beginning of a week or even a particularly significant period of crisis or opportunity when ongoing strength will be needed.
The heart of the home today
Modern neighbourhood life can be very lonely. Even in a row of houses or block of apartments, the curtains of each home are drawn as darkness falls and only the flicker of the television set indicates life.
Family members may be dashing in and out to various activities; teenagers may be hidden away in their rooms, sending MSNs on computers to their friends.
You can start to draw the family back together by creating a special centre or focus where people can gather for just a few minutes each day or an hour or two a week to exchange news and strengthen family ties.
If you live alone you can sit by the fire or candlelight, collect your thoughts and restore harmony before doing chores. Five or ten minutes last thing at night after the television or computers have been switched off can help to bring more peaceful sleep.
For children, a bedtime story by candlelight in the special place brings the day to a close. (As a working mother of five, I know that this can be hard to do, but it's worth it as the children may settle so much more easily and wake less in the night.)
You can either create an actual hearth, as described below, or, if you prefer, a special place in an area where you would naturally relax, for example round a coffee table. The effect is the same.
Creating a magical hearth
By putting symbols of health and abundance around a hearth or focal point you are aligning your own natural health and abundance, and bringing energies via the external symbols to the natural energies around you.
It is a bit like plugging into an online network: the more time you spend in quiet contemplation or quiet warm interaction in the area you have created the more the positive energies spread through your home and your life.
On a psychological level, creating a beautiful place and a regular if brief time there makes you and others feel more harmonious, less pressurised and so more able to talk from the heart or to let go of the stresses and disharmony of the day.
Even a normally noisy or taciturn teenager may occasionally go and sit there quietly alone and you can take that as a cue that you might be welcomed to share their worries or just sit companionably together.
Creating a special place
If the idea of the hearth seems old fashioned or does not fit in with your domestic arrangements - maybe because you house share and only have a small room to sleep and live in - this alternative can be set up on a small coffee table. It can be as simple or elaborate as you wish.
In the modern world, people are increasingly becoming grazers and so families may not often get the chance to share meals together. There is no point in being unrealistic and expecting to change the routine of daily life overnight, but there is much to be gained by making time for a regular meal even once or twice a week with partner, family or friends.
Try to ensure that this takes priority over or is at least regarded as equal to other social commitments. The meal could be a barbecue, Sunday tea or lunch, a Chinese meal ordered from the local restaurant or a 'bring and share' supper.
A shared takeaway pizza can be just as special as a home-cooked meal you have slaved over for hours - especially if you have a family of fussy eaters.
The origins of food and mealtime magic
Sharing food has from time immemorial been a way of symbolically absorbing not only physical nutrients but also the good feelings of the occasion and the symbolic properties associated with the different foods. This transference of energies is made when the food is eaten.
Many modern food customs date back over two thousand years. For example, writing 'Happy Birthday' on a cake in edible paste stems from traditions of Ancient Greece and the worship of Artemis, goddess of the moon and the hunt. Her festival was celebrated with moon-shaped honey cakes with the crescent moon etched on top.
Eating a message wishing a person a happy birthday or indeed a happy Christmas is a way of psychologically absorbing the good luck and happiness of the occasion expressed in the icing or pastry words.
Hot cross buns are still popular in England, particularly during the Easter period. The buns, marked with the cross symbolising the resurrection of Jesus, actually predate Christianity by many centuries as in earlier times the cross signified the old astrological cross, symbol of the Earth Mother.
They or similar special small cakes were eaten at the spring equinox around 21 March (in the northern hemisphere), so offering the protection of the Earth Mother and promising a summer of plentiful resources.
The Ancient Egyptians marked small round cakes with ox or cow horns, sacred to the mother goddesses Isis and Hathor, at their springtime celebrations.
The practice of decorating small cakes with crosses at the time of the spring festival may have started in Ancient Rome. Evidence comes in the form of two small loaves marked with crosses that were discovered preserved in lava in the ruins of the Herculaneum, a city in southwestern Italy that was destroyed by a volcano in 79 CE.
The custom probably came to England with the Anglo Saxons who made and ate small cakes on the spring equinox in honour of Eostre, the goddess of spring who gave her name to Easter.
When the Anglo Saxons were Christianised during the seventh and eighth centuries the custom was easily transferred to the new religion. In Christian tradition, hot cross buns made on Good Friday were hung in sailors' homes and churches near the sea to keep sailors from drowning.
The properties of food
The foods listed following are believed to have particular protective or luck-bringing properties and the majority are nutritionally sound. You can use them in cooking or in the case of fruit or honey in their natural form.
This is only a limited list, however, and every food has spiritual significance. Sit with your hands round a bowl or plate containing a favourite food, relax and the meaning will come into your mind. Note these down and create your own list.
Use my list and your own to add ingredients to special meals, for example rosemary to lamb if your teenager has an important exam the next day and cannot focus.
Herbs and condiments
Adding herbs to any food is the easiest way to add special strengths according to the needs of the person or people eating. For example, tarragon or spicy cinnamon are wonderful for giving courage or confidence but wise sage might be better for a hot-headed partner or mini drama kings or queens.
Some herbs, such as garlic, are available in salt or paste forms. These are just as effective as the fresh herb. Those not traditionally used in cooking, such as evening primrose and echinacea, can be absorbed from beauty products or taken as health supplements.
Foods for health, luck, love and success
A mealtime blessing
The tradition of saying a small prayer of thanks before a meal has ceased in most households, but blessing the table and the meal is a powerful but simple way of drawing positive energies to any table, no matter how many or how few people are present.
A blessing is a wonderful antidote to stress if you have been rushing round and are wondering why you are bothering at all for a bunch of ungrateful relatives or friends.
It will settle you as well as the place and almost instantly things will start to go right. You will become more confident and in control, even if you are organising a Golden Wedding celebration for 60 people in the garden and it is raining.
A blessing can also be calming if you are catering for a difficult relative or colleagues you do not know very well, if you have new neighbours coming for tea or coffee or even a brand new date coming to dinner.
The blessing that follows is based on an old Celtic house blessing from the oral tradition. Blessings tend to evolve as they are handed on, and sometimes I am surprised to find that a hymn or prayer I learned in the industrial Midlands of my childhood in fact has Celtic roots.
You can find other house and table blessings in my Complete Book of Spells (see Further Reading). But most importantly you can easily create your own blessings based on the things that are of value to you about the particular celebration and the people who are coming.
I light this flame in love and peace that this meal/celebration may be filled with peace, tranquillity and harmony.
May blessings and peace, joy and good companionship, kind words and laughter enter my home and my table. Welcome to all who come in friendship and friendship may they take away.
Making mealtimes special
When a guest broke bread together with his or her host in the Middle Ages as part of a meal, it was considered that a bargain had been made involving mutual respect and protection.
If you would like to replicate this sense of something special in eating together but are perhaps not comfortable with the idea of using a spoken blessing, there are other ways of making mealtimes special.
You may choose, for example, to light a central candle before beginning a meal in order to set the tone for a tranquil meal. You could also suggest to family members who would be receptive that they might like to give silent thanks before beginning their meal, in view of world hunger and poverty even in affluent lands.
Even when eating alone, marking the meal break can help to make eating a more pleasurable occasion. It can become a habit to watch television, work at the computer or read while eating, which makes us less aware of our food.
By making even a simple snack an occasion, we can regain a sense of pleasure in food and in eating.
If food is a power issue for children, it can help to make the mealtime into a mini party, by lighting a candle at the beginning of the meal. You could even give each child a candle that they could then blow out at the end of the meal as they make a wish.
In good weather, I sometimes turned the main meal into a picnic, where the children could choose from a selection of different foods: cheeses, fruits and berries, cold meats and small cooked sausages, breads of different kinds, chopped raw carrot sticks, nuts and seeds, yoghurts and so on.
I found I was not fretting about wasted food as most could be stored and used again. And, yes, lots of the time I resorted to microwave meals - I have even been credited with the invention of the baked bean pizza!
The tradition of protective guardians of a home, whether in a new apartment or a centuries-old building, is found in the myths of many lands and ages.
Some people believe that this guardian is an actual essence while others are convinced it is a protective atmosphere or energy that comes from the feelings and energies of people who live in the house now or have lived there in the past.
People may picture and describe these feelings as though they were coming from an actual unseen spiritual being. Such descriptions, like those of other nature spirits, are consistent in different lands and it may be that these guardians do have some material reality that is different from the solid human body.
They are rarely seen as a physical being, however, except by children who are naturally psychic and adults with developed clairvoyant abilities.
Your own experience of household guardians may have come when sat late at night after a long day or when everyone has gone home after a celebration and you felt the house almost sigh with relief.
Alternatively, you may have felt a reassuring presence at night when you return home late and are looking in your bag for your key.
In the following sections I have described how these guardians were and still are described in different parts of the world. The descriptions are fascinating.
Even if you are convinced they could not have an objective existence, think of them and work with them as qualities or strengths and you may begin to understand how the legends arose.
I will describe them as if they are actual beings, for that is the way they appear in different traditions.
Guardians in the Far Eastern tradition
In the Far East, house guardians are given places of honour. For example, in China every kitchen has a shrine. A picture of the god of the stove or hearth, Tsao-Wang, is placed in a miniature wooden temple over the hearth, facing south.
Pictured next to him, his wife Tsao-Wang Nai-nai carries the sayings of the women of the household to the Jade Emperor in the heavens.
Each morning, three incense sticks are burnt before this domestic shrine, and offerings of food, flowers and drink are made. This is believed to keep the kitchen safe and to attract good fortune and prosperity to the family home.
In Japan, in the Shinto religion, the kamidana or god shelf serves a similar function. This is set high on the wall in a business premises or home and daily offerings are made to the kami, the divine spirits within nature.
Offerings include evergreen twigs, rice wine, salt and rice. After the offerings are made, prayers and thanks are given for blessings and the participants ring the bell hanging over the shrine, bow twice, clap twice and bow once more.
Some westerners adopt these Far Eastern traditions to attract good fortune to the home.
House wights
In Ancient Rome benign household spirits were called the Lare and were honoured each morning by placing offerings of wine, honey, milk, flowers or grain on miniature shrines on the hearth.
There were one or two Lares for each household, and also Lares who watched over the neighbourhood and the state. Also honoured by the Roman family were the spirits called the Penates, who were given offerings so that the store cupboard with which they were associated would always be full. They were also entreated to bring wealth to the family.
In Scandinavian, Germanic and Eastern and Western European myth, house wights or spirits are evolved spiritual beings, described almost like individual guardian angels of each home, large or small.
There is often just one house wight who is attached to the house or apartment or associated with a building that was once on the site or with the agricultural land that the house was built on. The history of the area may give you a clue.
If, for example, you live on a brand new estate in a road called Abbey Gardens, your protective house spirit may have been a monk or nun who loved the place so much they remained as protector. Cats especially are thought to have an affinity with these benign spirits.
House wights often choose a beautiful statue or an amethyst geode in which to settle. You may feel strong but very good energies coming from a particular statue and may occasionally even see small beams of light. Smudge over these weekly with either a lighted Native North American sagebrush smoke stick or a sage or pine incense stick, working in spirals.
Traditionally, a special stone is set on the hearth to act as a focus and home for the house wight. The following steps will enable you to welcome one of these protective essences into your home, either actually or symbolically:
Dísir
Other more evolved spirits are considered to be attached to the family rather than the actual premises and may move if the family or individual changes residence.
The Dísir are considered the spirit ancestral mothers of a specific family in the Scandinavian and Germanic traditions.
They are not ghosts as such but, like the wights, are spirits who choose to become part of the natural world and specifically family household essences in order to protect their family through the generations. In this sense they are close to spirit guides.
Each family, or individual if you live alone, has just one guardian mother or Dís. If your own mother is deceased or far away, these are wonderful guardian spirits to connect with by lighting a white candle once a week on Friday evening, the day of the mothers.
Your Dís will be especially powerful on Christmas Eve, the night of the mothers, called Modraniht in Anglo Saxon. If you are the mother of the house try to take five minutes out of the celebrations or on a Friday night when the house is still to sit quietly and draw strength from this wise maternal energy.
The Bean-Tighe and Duendes
Similar to the Dísir are the Bean-Tighe, the fairy housekeepers of Ireland and Scotland, and of Celtic people who have settled elsewhere in the world, such as America and Australia.
Bean-Tighe means woman of the house. She guards children and pets, especially during the night, and also encourages exhausted mothers.
The Bean-Tighe would attach herself to a particular branch of the family for generations and would move home with them. Sometimes removal men would ask where the old lady had gone as they were unloading furniture in a new house, only to be told there was no old lady or at least no human old lady in the house.
In Spain and Central and South America, the fairy housekeepers were called Duendes. These were gossipy middle-aged fairy women dressed in green, who attached themselves to households.
Unlike the Beane-Tighe, they were sometimes jealous of the mother or women of the home. The individual household Duende would clean because she hated a messy home, but would sometimes throw crockery, move furniture and hide possessions if annoyed.
She would, however, protect the family from external harm (only she was allowed to be bad tempered with them).
Calling on the protection of your household guardians after dark
You do not have to believe in house wights to use the following method to draw on their protection, particularly after dark.
Whether you fear vandalism or a break-in, feel threatened by gangs of youths roaming outside your home or are afraid at night if you live alone, try this method weekly on a Sunday evening or whenever you feel extra nervous.
I call upon (name the guardian). Protect me through the night and turn back any who would do harm, so all is calm until day returns as light.
Blessings be on my home and on me/all who are within or in my heart.
May the light surround me safe until morning.
House elves
For some people these are the stuff of fairy tales. A number of people in Scandinavia, Germany, the Netherlands, Eastern Europe and Russia, however, still acknowledge the presence of these smaller and more tangible luck-bringing essences in their homes and workplaces.
These vetter or 'little folk' are said to take practical care of apartments, business premises, cars, pets, wallets, trailers and boats in cities and countryside alike. Some vetter are described as living under floorboards and doorsteps and can be mistaken for mice or even large insects.
A dark smoky quartz crystal buried in a small pot of earth or a plant on the doorstep is believed to ensure the vetter will protect your home against natural disasters like fire, floods or storms - and against subsidence.
A number of people, as well as sensing the presence of their house elves, regularly hear them - sometimes all too clearly. Indeed often when householders complain about ghostly activity, it may be the house elf stumbling and grumbling over drinks cans and food wrappers discarded by a teenager in the house.
The following are commonly described forms of house elves. Whether they are objectively true or another way of describing the energy field accumulated around houses and gardens, by making symbolic offerings it may be possible to activate your own innate luck-bringing energies.
Once you are sensitised to the possibility of creatures existing parallel to humanity, you may, against all expectations, see or sense a nature essence in or round your home.
Brownies
In English and Scottish folklore, a brownie is a small, industrious fairy or hobgoblin believed to inhabit houses, barns, outbuildings, garages and sheds.
Rarely seen, a brownie is often heard at night, cleaning and doing housework; he also sometimes mischievously disarranges rooms. A brownie brings good fortune if he adopts a home. Sometimes several may make their home in a single human dwelling. Cream or bread and milk may be left for him, but other gifts offend him.
The boggart of Yorkshire and the bogle of Scotland are hostile, mischievous brownies, similar to the larger German kobold. According to the Brothers Grimm, who were great folklorists, a real kobold called Hodeken was witnessed living with the Bishop of Hildesheim in the early 1800s.
Gnomes
Described in the folklore of much of Northern and Western Europe and Scandinavia and taken by settlers to America and Canada, gnomes, like dwarves, were said to live mainly underground or in deep forests. They were famous as metal workers and apparently had wives and families and were all very strong, but they jealousy guarded their treasure.
Gnomes in gardens both private and public are regarded as slightly more sociable, though they are attached to the plants and wildlife and not the owners of the land.
Males have usually been described with a peaked rather than a pointed red cap, wearing blue or green with boots made from birch bark.
Females may be seen in green and often have headscarves. The gnomes may or may not have white beards. Gnomes are said to care for the earth, the minerals and metals, the roots of plants and for forest or garden wild animals and birds.
A resident garden gnome is believed to attract luck and prosperity to your home and encourage plants to flourish. To attract the favour of gnome energy, buy a gnome figure, if possible a plain brown or grey clay one.
The creation of a gnomery should see your garden positively shoot up. Burying a coin in the earth directly beneath a gnome statue is thought to attract a slow inflow of money into your life and prevent too fast an outflow.
Domovoy
In Slavic and Russian mythology, the domovoy household spirit or the grandfather as he is called is described as a very small old man with a long white beard or as resembling the oldest male of the household.
He originated as part of an ancestor cult and so has something in common with household guardians. He cares for and brings luck to the home and can, it is said, appear suddenly as a cat or a dog, a snake or a rat. His wife is called Domovikha.
A domovoy can live near the oven, in the hearth or under the doorstep and rarely goes outdoors. He is said to bring prosperity to those who work hard and are not extravagant; if angered he can be very noisy at night. If invited he will travel with the family to a new home and transfer good luck.
Living with and attracting house elves
If you buy a house and it seems dark, cold and unfriendly, it may be that the household nature essences have moved out. Your personal family guardians (Dísir) will have come with you, but the household elves are the practical ones who fix the atmosphere of the house by making it feel lived in and alive.
Whether you describe this as elven energy or a general sense of well-being, you'll notice if it is missing.
Superstitious unscientific nonsense? Maybe. But if you do attract benign elf energy to your new dwelling, watch your everyday luck increase in small but significant ways and notice how DIY seems to go smoothly.
Follow these steps to attract the house elves into your home: