Newsgroups: alt.pagan
From: antm@spdcc.com (Ailsa Murphy)
Subject: Re: House Blessing
Date: Sun, 27 Nov 1994 20:44:44 GMT

i just helped with ahouse blessing this weekend.  my girlfriend is a 
rather new pagan, and wanted my help as resident expert, or how to
put the ritual.  here is basically what i told her:

there are two ways (well, more or less) to do this - one is taking a new
place, that has not got your mark on it at all yet, and consecrating it,
and then filling it with yourself.  the other is taking a place that you
have lived in a while and never consecrated.  that, one assumes, is 
full of you already, but may also contain things that are not you and
that you do not want, as well.

her place was the second type.  this is my advice for the second type:

first - clean it.  not mystically, just good old ammonia, hot water, 
comet, etc.  find a palce for everything, throw out everything you
don't want anymore, or give it away, or something.  this does not mean
the place has to be spotless.  it is YOUR place.  make it the way YOU
want it.

second - consider the arrangement of the house.  is everything set
out the way you want it?  are those curtains the ones you really 
LIKE in this room?  are your pictures and thing up, and are they 
in pleasing places?  if not, move them.  make the place look as
much like the image of the way home SHOULD look as possible.

third - gather the stuff for a ritual cleansing.  for this ritual,
you need: a blue candle, enough candles for every candleholder in
the house, as many white candles as your altar requires, your
favorite incense, your favorite essential oil(s), olive oil or
almond oil, a jar, a white handkerchief, four rocks, a stick (birch,
or whatever wood you happen to like), and flowers.  the only part
requiring preparing ahead is filling the jar with the oil, adding a
few drops of the essential oil(s), closing the jar, and leaving it for
a week to set.

third - all this being done, it is time for the ritual cleansing.  there
are a number of ways to do this, but the one rachel preferred when i 
told her her options was to make a broom out of flowers and a birch 
stick (blossom end down), and sweep out the entire house, stem to stern,
dusting off anything stressful especially carefully.  carry the broom
out the back door and toss the flowers out, along with everything they
are carrying away. 

fourth - on your way in, light the dark blue candle (you had grabbed it and
stuck it in your back pocket on your way out), and walk the perimeter
of your space.  if you own the whole house, walk the boundaries of the 
property.  if your place is an apartment, follow the edges of the rooms.
but you are drawing a ring of fire around your boundaries, so that your
cleaned house will stay clean.  when you have completed the circle, set
the candle on a white handkerchief by the front door to keep watch.
weight the corners of the handkerchief with four rocks (one for each
corner) taken from someplace nearby.

fifth - now the place is clean, and guarded.  now it is time to mark
it as YOURS.  light your favorite incense.  doesn't matter WHAT your
favorite incense is.  what matters is that YOU like it.  or if you
prefer a potpourri burner, go with that. then light all the candles
you bought for all the candleholders in the house, and put on some music.
(what music?  ask youself?  what have you got that feels sacred or just
very YOU.  if that happens to be aerosmith, well, it's YOUR ritual.)
now that you've done that, take the scented oil and mark every corner in
the house, as well as any place or object that it seems to you OUGHT to
be marked.

sixth: recreate (or create) your altar.  anoint it with the scented oil,
wave incense over it, put everything on it in its place.

seventh: call whatever deities, wights, watchtowers, elements, etc., that
you want watching over your house or present in it.  since you are erecting 
a temple and setting up protections, you don't dismiss them afterward,
just offer them food, drink, whatever they like.

eight: go eat & drink something yourself.

ninth: it's your house now.  now you have to live in it.

					-ailsa

p.s. new houses are different from old ones, and the cleansing described
here was assuming that nothing really terrible had happened there.  i 
can describe a heavy-duty cleansing later, if there is interest.

-- 
i saw the worst bands of my generation/applied by magic marker to drywall
i should be allowed to shoot my mouth off/i should have a call in show 
= antm@spdcc.com = ailsa or Kate = half homo, half goober!  <><  <><