What is Hearth Spirituality?
I bet you’re wondering what exactly is Hearth Spirituality and how exactly does one practice it? Most likely you’ll imagine a kitchen witch, steadily at work chopping veggies, cooking and baking goodies to help nourish any visitors.
And honestly, you’d be partially right. The kitchen is part of the home after all.
The idea of Hearth Spirituality is that the home is a sacred foundation for nurturing and nourishing your spiritual path and growth. The home can be a place of rest, recuperation, learning, and growing and that the home is part of our greater outside world and not just a refuge from it.
The Spiritual Hearth in Your Home
The hearth of your home is the center, heartbeat of your space. It is a spot that is high traffic and where people gather and spend most of their time. Not every home has a fireplace anymore, but most homes do have a central gathering area.
If you take a few minutes of meditation and focus it is likely that you can pinpoint the “center” of your dwelling and it’s structure. Most of the time it will be located either in the living room or in the kitchen.
If for some reason you are having trouble pinpointing this location, you can always dedicate a space as the spiritual hearth of your home. In an old apartment of mine, I didn’t really have a fireplace or easy center, but I did notice that a breakfast bar from the kitchen to the living room was about central to everything.
So I did what any witch would do and set up a sacred space there. I cleansed it with water, salt, and some incense smoke. Then I placed my cauldron and other accouterments on there and boom.
Sacred Home Space was achieved.
Laying the Foundation of The Hearth – Making it Sacred Space
Again, not everyone has a natural fireplace, and thus hearth, built into their home. This post is just going to assume you don’t have that pre-built but would still like to dedicate a space as a hearth in order to practice their home magics from.
Finding a natural spot for your hearth isn’t always easy. Most of the time if you don’t have a counter space or mantle you can use, you might need to find a good end table or even TV tray table to use for your hearth.
A good hearth space will have the following:
- Easily accessible in a high traffic room.
- You don’t want the hearth space tucked away in a corner or closet in a room no one sees.
- Easily cleaned surface.
- You are going to be using and cleaning this space a lot. Make sure it is easy for you to do so.
- Plenty of space for any spell work or home rituals you may be doing that might also include fire.
- Make sure the space will easily host a candle or incense since that is a spot you will be using these items at.
- Protip- right below the fire alarm is NOT good for incense.
Using the Hearth Space on a Daily Basis
Using your hearth space should not take you a lot of time each day. (unless you want it to)
Since a big part of Hearthcraft is nourishing, I love to leave offerings on my hearth so that the spirit of the home is loved and nourished. It also helps keep you connected to your home space in times of stress.
Ideas for offerings include:
- Alcohol or Food
- Flowers or Herbs
- Paper with a gratitude phrase written on it.
How to Bring Each Element into the Space
Bringing each of the four elements into my hearth space helps me feel more connected and more grounded. The Elements are sacred to me and I feel that they help bring balance to my home and space.
Ideas for Elemental Items:
Earth
- Bowl of Salt
- Any gemstones like quartz
- Plants
Air
- Feathers
- Bells or Chimes
- Hand Fan
Fire
- Candles
- Matches
- Bowl of incense ashes
Water
- Bowl of water
- Seashells
- Anointing oil
Mindfully Re-Connecting to our Hearth Space
Where ever our thoughts go, that is where our energy goes. If we focus too hard on everything going wrong then usually we get bogged down by things going wrong.
But if we raise our vibration? If we look for the grattitude, lesson, and silver lining? Suddenly things are uplifted and the situation is much better.
If we aren’t thinking of our Hearth Space, or re-connecting to it regularly, pretty soon it will fall to the way side. It will get dusty and dingy or even worse it might start to lose its “magic” for us.
Offerings are great for connecting with our hearth space but sometimes you want to go a bit deeper.
Take some time to meditate or journal on or near your hearth. Do a check in with it.
How does your hearth space feel? How would you like it to feel? What is one thing you could do in less than 5 minutes to re-invigorate it?
The time that I take to re-connect to my hearth space is just after cooking a meal. When my lovely pot of soup needs to simmer and blend together, I’ll spend the 20 minutes at my hearth giving it thanks for our home and giving thanks for all the support it lends our family to grow and thrive.
You may have noticed that having a hearth space is a lot like having an altar space in the home. While both are sacred, they each serve a bit of a different prupose.
The Hearth space is about supporting the family, chosen and otherwise, and it is about nurturing and nourishing the family dynamic and growth.
An altar space can do similar things, but usually an altar space is reserved for formal rituals, connecting with your divine, and are usually tucked away in a more private room.
Try out a Hearth Space and let me know if you love it!
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