No. 1: Environment is Everything

 

Environment has everything to do with your magical and mundane success & health. This month’s Pagan Prompt: what does home look, feel, sound, taste, and smell like for you? How can your home be more energetically receptive and conducive to your work?

This prompt is great to do in your environment as an observational exercise. And you can take this as a step toward exploring ways you can make your environment more your own.

In Ayurvedic medicine, the first step to healing is identifying the flaws in the environment. It’s not uncommon for an Ayurvedic healer to visit the home of a patient, or have them show pictures or a video of where they live in order to assess if there’s more to an illness than physical ailments.

This expands out from our homes to the environment surrounding our houses, too. Look for a full breakdown of where you live: too close to a highway or on a busy street means increased noise and air pollution, which can cause asthma or other lung-related issues as well as dermatological ones, for example. If you live near a treatment plant or a factory, what waste are they distributing? Is this getting into your water supply? These are the unexpected ways our environment can affect us.

The body stores our anxieties and discomforts, resulting in illnesses that have no discernible cause. So too do we have emotional and spiritual side effects from our environment. The energy of the people in our vicinity affects our spiritual health. If those around us are ungrounded, that can lead us to feel less grounded. If there’s a pervasive energy of anger, or simply low self esteem, so too can you start feeling more anger or a lower opinion of yourself.

If you have identified some issues with where you live, who you live with, and what your house is like, here’s some ideas for fixing it.

1. 1. Cleanse the energy of the home with incense, or a sage or rosemary bundle. If you feel uncomfortable burning things in your home, water that you’ve blessed under the full moon can be used instead. Take a plant wand made of rosemary, sage, lavender, orange leaves, or other energetically calming plants, and a bowl of water. Use the wand to take a bit of water and sprinkle it at the corners of the room, over your furniture, lightly over any technology, and around the doorframes, inside and out. This is best repeated each full moon. Focus on what you need to repel from your home if there’s specific energies you want to see removed.
   2. Declutter as much as you can. If you have items that are secondhand, cleanse them particularly closely as they might have energy from their previous owners bringing down your energy.
   3. Clean things often. Removing actual dirt and grime might not feel necessarily spiritual, but a productive, calm environment has to be a clean and organized one.
   4. If there are issues with your surrounding area, like a treatment plant or factory that you can’t remove, consider an air purifier or planting purifying plants that can contribute to the health of your home’s atmosphere.
   5. Consider an R/O system or other water filtration for the water you’ll be drinking. Regardless of pollutants in your area, having safer, tastier water will make you more excited to drink it, helping you stay healthy overall. If you don’t like plain water, try adding a lemon or orange slice, a sprig of fresh mint, some peeled ginger root, frozen fruit (doubles as ice!) or even lavender or rose flowers. Tip: licorice root doesn’t taste like actual licorice, but it does have a very sweet flavor. Add some to your water for a non-sugary sweet flavor, and try combining with other ingredients.
   6. Start shielding your energy as part of your morning routine. The ‘Golden Egg’ method of envisioning a protective golden eggshell around you works great. Incense or blessed water wafted around you is effective, too. And a simple affirmation, “I am cleansed of negative energy”, keeps your grounded and clear all day. Reshield as needed if heated arguments or issues at home arise.

 

*Photo by Zane Lee on Unsplash

 

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About the Author:

Elyse Welles is a Greek and American earth intuitive witch and author. She cohosts the Magick Kitchen Podcast and is a monthly columnist for The Wild Hunt, Witch Way Magazine, PaganPages.org and Full Moon Magazine. An initiate of the eclectic Faery Tradition, her practice is centered on connections to land spirits and sacred places (numina). Her debut novel, “What the Water Remembers,”a paranormal mystery that empowers witches in and out of the broom closet, releases autumn 2024. With ten years of experience, she teaches witchcraft online and am an intuitive tarot reader.  Learn more about upcoming workshops, or book a reading @seekingnumina on Instagram, and seekingnumina.com