I spent most of my adult life in the military or as a military wife, so I know a thing or two about moving! I’ve lived all over the United States and moved more than twenty times in the past twenty years, and it’s NEVER been “smooth”, but I’m here to share some of my tips and tricks to help you have a peaceful move from a spiritual perspective.
Why Move?
Moving is never a pleasant experience. Change is disruptive, no matter how important or necessary the change may be, and few things in life are more disruptive than the change that comes from finding a new home.
But our lives here on this planet are designed to help us grow, evolve, and develop. This requires us to change, and sometimes that journey demands an actual journey – a trip to a new place, either temporarily or semi-permanently. Whether you chose to move or the decision was forced upon you, moving provides you with an opportunity for rebirth and renewal.
Embracing the Upcoming Move
In general, nobody likes change. This is normal. Change makes us all uncomfortable, as we have to deal with new things that are outside of our normal routine. One of the best ways to help become more comfortable with the upcoming change is by becoming more comfortable with your new home.
The Internet has made moving so much less scary! I remember back in Ye Olden Times, when a military member was moving, they would be assigned a “sponsor”. Your sponsor would send you a packet with a little booklet about your new base. They were supposed to send along a friendly letter, too, but few ever did that! Your new unit would assign you a sponsor, usually trying to match you up with someone with a similar family status (marriage, kids, etc.), so you would have someone to ask all the important questions. In practice, it rarely worked out as well as advertised, but it was a nice idea.
These days, we use the Internet and Facebook to get all the details about our new home. We can use Google Earth to scope out the neighborhood, Facebook and Yelp to find new stores and salons, and Instagram to spy on all the new neighbors. But this sort of cyber-spying can help us feel a lot more comfortable.
There are some things that we can’t learn online. Sometimes, it’s nice to be surprised – to just embrace the sense of adventure! But there are times when we might want to get more detailed or specific information about what awaits us. You may need to find specific groups or people to ask questions of, or you may even feel better after you get a reading to learn more about your new home.
Knowledge is power. When you’re moving, knowledge can help you feel more comfortable with all the changes you’re facing.
House Hunting, for the Spiritually Oriented
When it comes to house-hunting, it’s important to remember that it’s far easier to cleanse a single house than an entire neighborhood. For this reason, focus more on the neighborhood’s vibe than the vibe of the single home.
As you check out new places to live, you want to look for signs of life. During the afternoons, you may see kids playing outside, but you might also look for cats or dogs, birds, squirrels, or other types of animals. Even bugs are a positive sign, especially things like bees and butterflies. Obviously, you won’t see as much of this in the wintertime, but you may still see signs of life (like tracks), even in the snow. You’ll want to avoid neighborhoods that seem “too quiet” – neighborhoods where there’s no normal sound of the neighborhood, like birds chirping, dogs barking, or doors opening and closing. These types of neighborhoods are either dead or suppressed, and neither is a good place for growth and happiness.
When you look at the plant life, you want to look at things like weeds, trees, and flowers. Perfectly manicured lawns with no sign of weeds or deviation aren’t actually a positive sign in a neighborhood. That’s a sign of conformity, but it’s also a sign that the neighborhood is likely to be artificial. Natural life includes things like weeds and flowers; when that is absent, it may be a sign that there are hidden secrets lurking beneath the surface.
In and around your home, you’ll want to watch even more closely for these signs of life. You can live where other things live, so if it feels like your home and neighborhood are places where there is no sense of life, you can expect that there’s something there that’s not going to promote and encourage long-term growth and development.
Moving Day!
Whether your home is new or old, you’ll want to make sure that it’s thoroughly cleansed before you begin moving any of your things in. For older homes, you want to cleanse the home of any “bad vibes” (or even just residual energy) from previous occupants. Even in a new home, there have been people inside of it, like construction workers. Before you move in, you need to make sure that all the energy is fresh and clear so you can have a clean slate for your new beginnings.
The first thing to do is to open all the windows and doors that you can (subject to the weather, season, and other practical considerations). Then begin sweeping your home. NEVER bring an old broom into a new home; rather, use a brand new broom for this task. Start at the top corners of each room and sweep down the walls, then sweep the floors. Start at the rooms farthest from the front door. Instead of sweeping all the dirt into a pile, then scooping it into a dustpan, you’ll continue sweeping the pile toward the front door and making it bigger and bigger. Sweep the whole pile out the front door and into the front yard. Even if everything LOOKS clean, sweep it anyway.
Once everything is swept, you’ll want to cleanse it. For walls and hard floors, I like to use a floor wash. For carpets, you can use a vacuum powder. You’ll follow the same pattern with this as you did with sweeping – starting away from the front door and sweeping everything out the front door.
For a vacuum powder, start with a base of 3 parts baking soda and 1 part salt. You can then add in the herbs that correspond to your desires. For your floor wash, I like to make a strong herbal tea and add that to water. (You can also just use Pine-Sol; the formula for that is based on an old hoodoo floor wash and it works well!) So, for example, I might make a vacuum powder containing some parsley (calm & protection), lavender (tranquility), and rosemary (harmony) for my carpeted areas. For my floor wash, I might do an herbal tea with some parsley, lavender, and rosemary, and then I’ll toss in a whole bay leaf in the top of my mop water (for luck/wishes). You can play around a bit with it, but it’s important to do it!
Now, everything is clean and ready for occupancy! The first things you bring that belong to YOU into your new home should be bread, salt, and wine. Bread signifies that you’ll never go hungry. Salt signifies that you’ll never be poor. And wine signifies that you’ll never be lonely.
Light a candle at your hearth. If you have a fireplace, you’ll light the candle in your fireplace. If not, put the candle on the top of your stove and light it there. Once the candle is lit, share a little salted bread and wine with your new housemates to welcome everyone into the new home. After this, all the other things may be moved in.
Blessing and Keeping the Home
There are thousands of traditions for blessing a home. Some of these are fairly ubiquitous and practiced by almost all cultures, while others are more uncommon.
Most cultures believe that you should never take a broom from an old home to a new home, as this carries bad luck. My mother-in-law was raised with this, as was my grandmother. There’s probably some scientific reasoning for this, too. Brooms tend to be hard to clean thoroughly, and they pick up teeny tiny little bugs and germs. Taking a broom from your old house to your new carries along all the little mites and tiny bugs from one part of the country to the other. For people who lived before the advent of microscopes, all those little bugs would certainly have seemed like “bad luck”! But a broom isn’t that expensive, so better safe than sorry!
One very common tradition is to allow the pot to boil over. This is frequently done with rice and milk, although variations in other traditions aren’t uncommon. The idea of allowing a pot to boil over makes sense, as it’s a form of sympathetic magic, like, “My cup runneth over.” Milk and rice will certainly boil over easily! And rice is commonly associated with money, while milk is frequently associated with luxury or opulence. Most traditions say that the family should eat the resulting rice pudding with some sugar, although that may simply be a way to avoid waste!
If you’ve purchased the property and you want to anchor your family to the new home, you might want to try nailing down the four corners of the property. For this, you’ll need five nails made of iron. You’ll simply hammer one nail into each of the four corners of the property, into the ground. The fifth nail should be hammered into the floor as near the center of the property as possible. This will tie your spirit to the property.
Finally, try planting some herbs around your new home! Herbs can be easy to grow, even in an apartment, and they can have a number of magical (and delicious!) uses. Rosemary is an outstanding herb to help promote marital harmony and fidelity, and it can help repel mosquitoes. Basil is good for drawing in money and making pesto. All the mints are good for general protection. Also, mice hate the smell of mint, so planting mint near doors and windows can be a good way to repel them. (But keep in mind that most mints are highly invasive, so if you don’t want the mint to spread everywhere, you may want to put them in containers.)
Tansy keeps ants out of your home and is good for overall health. It’s also said to protect your home while you travel. Catnip is supposed to be good for attracting friends and promoting general happiness, although that may be because it attracts cats and cats make people happy. 🙂 Dill is great for attracting love and beauty into your life – it’s a beautiful herb for an artist’s abode. Yarrow, meadowsweet, mullein, and hyssop can make a beautiful little wildflower bed near the front door, but they’re going to enhance divination and spiritual development. This can be a positive or negative thing, so be careful about putting these near the front door.
Ready to Move?
Moving is a major disruption, and it can be really scary, but it’s also an opportunity for rebirth, renewal, and new opportunities. No matter how this move came into your life, it’s here now, and it’s up to you to make the best of it, but you don’t have to do it alone.
If you need answers to help you feel more comfortable jumping into this new phase of your life, I can help. I you need a guide to help you understand what’s coming next for you, I’m here for you. If you just really need to talk to someone who understands what it’s like, I’ve got your back. Let’s talk.
It’s your time to move forward, so make the most of it. I’m here to help.