The Magical Household
The Magical Household: Empower Your Home with Love, Protection, Health and Happiness is possibly my favorite pagan book in my entire collection. In it, Scott Cunningham and David Harrington share a plethora of folklore, recipes, spells, and simple actions to make your home more magical and meaningful. There is really something that anyone on any budget can do in this book.
The Magical Household explains that you don’t need money to live in a magical home. You don’t even need to live in a cottage in the woods with herbs, pentagrams and witchy-looking stuff everywhere (though you have to admit that would be fun). Simply using your fingertip to draw sacred symbols for protection on your windows and doors, for example, can help safeguard your home and give it a more magical vibe without spending anything.
Most of the practical advice (and if you are familiar with Cunningham’s works, you know that they’re 95% about practicality and a “goddess-send” for pagans both new and old) involves things you probably already have at home, such as old keys, pennies, herbs, gemstones, rocks, and even your own pets. (No, not sacrifice—but using discarded whiskers can come in handy, as well as the mere presence of a beloved furry friend.) In fact, you may already have a lot of magical happenings going on in your home without even knowing it!
Cunningham and Harrington go over every nook and cranny of your home, from the hearth—the heart of your home—to the furniture, to where you sleep to where you bathe, the kitchen, the garden (both indoor and outdoor, in separate chapters), the garage and more. There are also sections devoted to magically cleaning and cleansing your home, safeguarding it, casting house spells, moving rituals, your home altar and even things to do in your home throughout the magical year and sabbats. Keeping your home attuned to the seasons has never been so easy.
Another fun thing in the book are the omens presented within it. For example, it describes that eggs that crack while boiling present a sign of visitors coming, and knocking over the sugar bowl is a sign of money. Whether you believe in superstition or not, these are really fun things to both read and remember when having conversation with kids or guests. Sure, your family might think you’re eccentric—but odds are that when your kid is in college and spills the sugar bowl, he’ll think of you!
At under 200 pages, it’s not a lengthy book, but what it lacks in girth it makes up for in worth. Every page is teeming with tons of information just waiting to be used—just waiting to add a little magic to your own home.
