House Wards and
House Guardians
Adding a layer—or several—of protection to your home is more important than it has ever been. We live in volatile times, and most of us in a culture where few learn how to manage their emotions well. Even those who enjoy pockets of geographic peace or who have relatively low psychic sensitivity can feel buffeted by the chaotic winds of contention. Warding our homes against some of these emotional weather patterns is a necessary part of magical people living their lives rather than living from extinguished fire to extinguished fire.
Most homes have a spirit of their own. The land beneath will also have innate spirit. You can encourage a happy house spirit by minimizing clutter, making sure all energy in the house has a job to do, and maintaining as much good will as you can with your neighbors. (The latter may fall the furthest out of your control.) Regular cleansing and clearing removes pockets of stagnant energy that reduces places for “astral nasties” to hide.
Spaces and Challenges
While certain elements of protection magic remain the same—mainly the need for anchors of physical or energetic protection and a continuous fuel source—the shape and size of where you live dictates the types of wards you need. Houses require protective wards that include the land. Apartments have fewer entrances but more people, so filtering the energy that breaches shared walls becomes more important. People living in single rooms can apply the rules of apartment protection to their own smaller spaces.
Even those who live in tents or outdoor situations can still practice warding. While most can’t consistently use physical objects to store the energy, they can practice temporary and easily movable wards and may benefit from invisibility workings. This does go beyond protective shields to protection of your space as you move through the world. While few things are ever foolproof—sometimes stuff just gets in—a warding and guarding practice can add that little element of safety to life that helps on the occasions when something busts through.
Most space warding and cleansing require fire techniques and take fuel from smoke in the forms of candles and incense. While flame and air are an effective means of destroying and dispersing negativity, those with asthma or allergies need other options. These alternatives can also help those who prefer not to share their beliefs and practices with their housemates. Use this far from comprehensive chart to determine what alternatives best serve you and your home:
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Problem |
Substitute |
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Fire/candles are not allowed. |
There are few effective substitutes for living flame, but you can use LED illumination if the intention involves spreading light; you may also want to use copper wire folded into a triangle on top of salt in a glass jar as an energy trap. |
|
Incense and smudges cause health issues. |
Use smudge sprays or aromatherapy misters. |
|
Salts and crystals will be removed. |
Pick innocuous items like decorative salt shakers to store the minerals. |
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Unable to hang items with occult symbols. |
Find toys and other items that serve your imagination and turn them into wards—a butterfly is a powerful spiritual symbol that most people find nonthreatening. |
Wards
A ward is a metaphysical lock and alarm system. Wards can consist solely of energy or be physical objects imbued with protective energy. All wards need to be programmed and from time to time have their energy renewed.
Before building your wards, keep in mind a few best practices:
Magic multitasks poorly. You can create words that serve multiple purposes—keep off fire, flood, and door-to-door evangelists, as well as keep out your mother-in-law’s ghost. Too many purposes spread the protective energy thin, weakening its effect. This forces you to recharge it far more frequently than a single-purpose ward. A good practice is to choose three symbols to represent three wardings: one for harm on the physical plane, one to block out anything uninvited from the spiritual, and one to block out energy sent in anger.
When planning your home wards, look beyond inside-outside barriers. Ward all the doors and windows that form a barrier between the indoors and the outdoors. You also need to look at other ways energy enters the house: fireplaces, vents, and sink drains are examples of more physical entrances. Electrical outlets, televisions, and mirrors sometimes give access to energies entering the home.
When you begin to build your wards, especially those made entirely of energy, remember that metaphysical energy can fit in between the slower-moving energy of atomic solids. You can take that warding symbol and mentally push it through your ceiling to the top of your roof.
Metaphysical energy has a dominant emotional component. This is how your wards—and you—“feel” the intent of what attempts to enter your home. We create wards to help cultivate safe, happy spaces.
Energy-Only Wards
If you want to build a ward using only your energy or energy that you channel from natural elements, then this is just one of many methods you can use. First, decide what you want your ward’s intention to be and choose or create a symbol that aligns with that purpose. Runes and pentacles are popular symbols for protecting property, but they are also commonly used. It may act like setting a too-easy password on your email account. If you prefer to use something less common (and thus harder to hack), you may want to research symbols such as old family crests or tarot cards or repurpose scientific notation glyphs.
Find a place to stand or sit, relax your body as much as possible, and rub your palms together to create heat. Place your hands in front of you an inch apart so that you can feel the energy your body has raised. Breathe into the space between your hands to increase that energy. Conjure in yourself the emotion you want to make your ward express (self-confident calm for physical protection, perhaps a “roll off the back” peace for psychic), and with that emotion shape the energy between your hands into the desired symbol. Taking a giant breath, exhale and lift the symbol like someone releasing a wild bird. Imagine it landing in the area you want protected, throwing out anchors in all directions to cling to your home.
Physical Object Wards
Any object typically treated as decoration or a toy can serve as a physical ward. Some prefer common symbols, such as the pentacle and evil eye, to charge and then hang decoratively in their homes. You may find that you prefer to use pictures that you hang on the wall, spiritual statues, gaming figurines, or items you craft yourself with protective energy in mind.
When charging a physical ward, you can use the same process as you do for the energy-only wards, but instead of sending the energy toward the area you want warded, you place your hands on the object and imagine the energy permeating the object. Once charged, place the objects in areas where you feel you need the most protection. You may tweak the intentions on each object so that items near your door guard from intruders, items in your office protect you from unnecessary interruptions, and items in your bedroom put a stop to nighttime astral visitors. Physical wards can go three to six months before needing a recharge, and if you perform a house cleansing and blessing monthly, you can sneak in a passive refresh of their energy.
House Guardians
House guardians differ from wards in that you (usually) don’t create them. Guardians are sentient beings that protect your home and family in exchange for offerings. The nature of the offerings changes based on the origin of the given spirit. These spirits can include human ghosts of an exceptionally positive headspace, ancestors, fairies, house wights (spirits attached to the collective spirit of the household), daemons (neutral spirits that can be paid to do a job), deities, animal totems, and angels. You can also create your own house guardian—called a servitor or a tulpa—although this takes some practice and more maintenance than making offerings and maintaining positive relationships with already existent beings. The advantage of creating your own guardians is that, since you made them, they will have only your agenda to fulfill.
What guardians you encourage in your home can change based on your religious or magical tradition, your geographic region, and personal experiences you’ve had. For instance, many people who grew up in Christian traditions may perform a four corners prayer, which calls angels to guard the four corners of a home (or room) and to keep out negative influences. This practice may continue even as this person moves into a Wiccan household—or may stop in favor of cultivating house wights or other beings that seem more appropriate to that person’s phase of life.
If you want active house guardians, you must create a contract with them. This contract looks like an informal employment agreement. You ask for a service, such as keeping intruders and door-to-door evangelists away from your home, and in return you offer the spirits a payment, such as incense, chocolate, or small bowls of wine or juice at regular intervals. Some spirits may require something daily, others weekly. Always put out an offering for any house protectors at the Full Moon. If you use food, leave it for seven days and then dispose of it. Every month, evaluate the service you receive. If the protections prove unsatisfactory, release the spirit.
Robert Frost once wrote that “good fences make good neighbours.” He was just talking about practical boundaries, but the truth extends to the metaphysical ones as well. House warding extends beyond a routine house cleansing and blessing. The ever-important monthly cleanse and bless can metaphorically oil the locks on your doors and windows. House wards and spirits add the equivalent of armed guards and a security system. These protections serve double duty: they keep the outside world from intruding into the energy regulation of your home, and they also prevent what you do inside your home from disrupting the lives of your neighbors.