ReIssue: Witchy Spring Cleaning: Spiritual & Practical Tips (Plus Talking to Spiders!)
For the arachnaphobic: it starts at "Animist stop". Just skip to Animism Stop Complete to avoid
Note: I unpublished and then reissued last week’s newsletter here. (Should I call it a newsletter?) The previous edition had a few seemingly minor errors that added up to misinformation. Here is the corrected edition. Thank you for your patience with such blips!
Hello Curious Spirits!
For new subscribers, welcome! I encourage those who can look into the back catalog of The Spirited Witch Substack. I cover a gamut of witchy/magickal topics all stemming from lived experience as a witch, city priest, and spirit worker. The extended spring cleaning series (that may go til fall) resulted from a group consensus in January. As far as I can tell, the Spirited Witch chat is open to all. You too can be part of consensus moments!
But Substack does change settings sometimes, so I'll do my best to keep it open.
This installment is part of the Substack of the 6-Month Witchy Spring Clean Series.
Previous posts include:
Substack of the Kitchen Witch: the Magical Home Audit (includes a worksheet for a home audit, also available for purchase on the Spirited Witch Patreon)
Substack of the 6-Month Witchy Spring Clean (includes a Kitchen Witch Materia Magica chart available for purchase on the Spirited Witch Patreon)
Substack of the 6 Month Spring Cleaning: Handle Yourself with Care
A Little About Sources at TSW
I'm back with the next installment of the 6-month Spring Cleaning series. As happens in the Western world, I've had to prioritize a lot since January. It's hard to clean up and organize when you're also putting fires out.
For the fun of it, I've also sprinkled images from one of my favorite tools—Google Books. Many old superstitions—including about cleaning—make good spells now. Even if superstitions don't function as spells, they still make a great foundation for them. So what does Google Books have to do with it?
Google Books has many books available in the public domain, most of which are searchable. The collection includes superstitions and spiritualism from the 18th and 19th centuries. You can click the scissors icon at the bottom of the screen and select text snippets to embed, print, or save as an image. Long-time readers know of my love for the public domain. All you need to do to know that is look at most of the images I select for my newsletters and slide shows. Now, I can even share public domain text.
I will mostly use this tool for good.
Mostly.
**Comment at the end of the newsletter if you want a Live Workshop or a Newsletter discussing converting superstitions into spells!**
The Up - Down of Witchy Cleaning
I now offer you my many cleaning errors as spiritual and practical wisdom. The tips, garnered from magazines, blogs, and almost falling-off counters, do work. They also serve as good metaphors for energy work and spells. Stuff works better when it’s clean.
If you think about it, cleaning your home is a step towards spellwork. You clear energy and obstacles to intentionally engage with your space.
Magick tends to work best in clean or clean enough spaces. (We have workarounds for low-spoon people who just can't.)
Here come the usual self-care reminders: check your spoons, figure out your stopping point before you begin, and take breaks, even if you feel like you don't need them. Decision fatigue is real, not something you imagine.
There is an order of operations for optimal cleaning. Oddly, it also fits in with the way a lot of targeted magick works.
Clean Top to Bottom
A lot of what happens to us physically and spiritually escapes our attention. If you're not spending a lot of time looking at your ceiling (or looking at the sky), asking "why?" you're doing pretty well. But when you don't spend at least a little time looking up, you risk waking up with cobwebs in your face. I like spiders, and I still don't want them building a web with my nose for foundation.
I will leave it to you to examine your spiritual life for cobwebs on your face moments.
Clean Wet to Dry (or Dry/Wet/Dry)
Dust needs something to stick to, and stagnant energies will in general. Multiple cultures smoke cleanse because decaying energy can ride out on smoke particles.
Do the Floors Last
It's always easier to work with gravity instead of against it.
Cleaning Top to Bottom
Clean the ceiling corners first because gravity knocks things to the floor. When something falls from the ceiling to the floor, it can feel like someone launched a missile. Be the one who launches the missile, and you will scare yourself less.
Safety first - Do NOT Stand on Your Counters!
Don't stand on your counter or use a stepladder without a spotter. If someone is taller than you, ask that person's help with top-shelf duties. A duster with an extender can save an enormous amount of stress. I have a reusable one that I can wash with dish soap and let dry when I'm done. But there's no shame in a Swiffer—such as you can get here from Lola Products: https://tinyurl.com/2yx8ln9y. (This is not an affiliate link.)
- Animism Stop: About Spiders -
I acknowledge that some people have arachnophobia, and there's no getting around that. For those with this issue, skip on to the next heading.
Spiders are ubiquitous in every household. Most are tiny, mighty, and smart enough to hide. In Polish animist culture, we have Domovoy, little snake spirits that slide under our stoves. But every culture has house spiders, and we must start recognizing that they are important, too.
As you clean almost any ceiling, you knock down cobwebs along with the dust. As you do, arachnid neighborhoods are destroyed, and some of that destruction is unavoidable.
But you can avoid angering some of our best household allies.
Spiders can be a good thing.
I live in an animistic household. Rather than lock into an endless war of building and tearing apart, we treaty. Before I clean, I verbally tell the spiders I appreciate how they catch all the bugs for me, but I do have to knock down webs I see.
Since I started doing this, I rarely see cobwebs in my home's corners. I also rarely have a problem with flies for very long.
Once in a while, a spider crawls out on a counter I'm cleaning, waves a leg, and then returns to the shadows.
Here's a sample script for talking to the spiders in your home
"Hey, spiders, thank you for keeping the flies and other unhealthy buggies away! Can you please keep your webs out of sight? I do have to knock down the ones I see!"
- Animism Stop Complete -
Cleaning Wet to Dry
Cleaning wet to dry is exactly what it sounds like. Use something wet to get the first round of dirt, and get the rest with a dry cloth.
Don't do this on ceiling fans. Also, I don't recommend it for long-neglected baseboards.
I recommend a quick sweep with a mini dusting pan if you use the method on countertops.
Once I started using the method, I saved a lot of time - and when I switched to a pack of microfiber dust cloths. I also saved paper.
LEARNED THE HARD WAY: If cleaning a ceiling fan over your bed, use an old sheet as a drop cloth. That way, you don't have to change the sheets before you want to!
I don't have a mechanics of magick insight on this one, and I won't BS you with one. Aside from stagnant energies sticking to water particles, I don’t have much. If you can think of an aspect that fits, by all means, share!
Cleaning Back to Front
Cleaning front-to-back is all about metaphysical tradition. Many an old European superstitions stated to sweep from the back of the house to the front. That way, the debris and miasma hidden in the back were most thoroughly rolled out the door. Sweeping, throwing out mop water, or releasing pests often had specific directions.
Technology has changed a lot about how we approach cleaning. Vacuuming front to back can depend on the location of outlets and the age of your home. I'm not about to throw mop water on my doorstep—I walk through that daily. If I throw it out on the street in front of my house or down a storm drain, I have to think hard about where that bad energy goes. Some people have accidentally haunted their neighbors while house cleansing.
Before our next installment
The next installment of the Spring Cleaning Substack gets the magical cleaning formulas. For paid subscribers, you already have a version of the Kitchen Witch Materia Magica chart. It is available for purchase at the Spirited Witch Patreon.
I want it understood - if I'm not saying it enough - I write TSW from a place of accessibility, NOT aspiration. If you can't do the things I recommend, it is OK. Spirituality and magick should make your life better. Any added stress should be short-term with an eye to a specific goal. If all you get is "I‘m not good enough/I'm not doing enough" stress, then it isn't healthy for you.
Brain freeze can descend when we add magical intent to our ordinary activities. Should that happen, take a break. Remind yourself that all magical folks, from the first moment of magic, worked with what they had. They worked within the circumstances they had. They shaped meaning around their circumstances. You are doing the same.
After all, it's cleaning. Perhaps you'll get a slightly less haunted house. In my case, haunting is inevitable - I'm still trying to find out what the ghosts told me by leaving a random browned tortilla on the floor.
Entropy is part of life. It lacks the sexiness of seasonal cycles or the phases of the moon, but it is also a cycle and one of the things that shapes the somewhat offbeat rhythm of our lives.
Creation Time (est): 6.5 Hours
Consumption Time (est): 15 Minutes
What a fascinating post, and as someone who solved a historical mystery on Google Books, I could not agree more about its value! What can you share about the book snippets you've included in this post? I'd love to see if the author(s) collected any folk wisdom in the Ohio Valley where I am from.
This post has been archived due to some errors that risk promoting misinformation. A corrected post will be going up this weekend!