Spirit of the Home: How to make your home a sanctuary
Spirit of the Home is a wonderful guide to creating your own sacred space and sanctuary and discovering peace and tranquillity.Home is a reflection of the self. It tells us, and other people, who we are. The type of home we live in, the style of the furnishings and colours, all work together to remind us of our personality, our taste, our values and interests.Creating a soul-sustaining space, an intimate and emotional connection with our home, has become a pursuit of the 90’s. As we change our lifestyles, downshift, work at home, deal with stress, live in different communities, we look towards home as a haven for peace and tranquility.The Spirit of the Home is a practical book, packed full of simple, easy-to-follow advice on how to make the most of your home:What does your home mean to you?• Does every space in your home have a special mood and purpose?• Does a healing home have to be a clean home?• Does energy, ch’i, flow smoothly?• Do you have good Feng Shui in your home?• Does your home feel good, smell good, and sound good?• Do you have a quiet corner?• Is your bathroom your sanctuary?• Can your home bring about change in your inner life?
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Thorsons
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published by Thorsons 1998
This edition published 2018
FIRST EDITION
© Jane Alexander 2018
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers
Cover photograph © Alberto Piovano/Arcaid, Simon Brown/The Interior Archive, Shoji Sato/Photonica
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
Jane Alexander asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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Source ISBN: 9780008317478
Ebook Edition © June 2018 ISBN: 9780008318093
Version 2018-07-04
For Sophie – with much love.
CONTENTS
PART ONE The Spirit of the Home
2 Hestia, Abandoned Goddess of the Home
PART THREE The Clear, Clean Home
13 First Steps in Practical Feng Shui
17 Sound & Silence, Light & Shade
24 How Your Home Can Bring Love & Romance
ALMOST ALL OF US have somewhere we call home. Whether it’s a large, grand house or simply a corner in a shared room, if we’re lucky we have a place we can claim as our own. Each and every one of us sees home in a different way: some of us might claim we barely think about home – it’s simply a place out of the elements where we eat and sleep. Others would insist that home is a vital part of life: a solid centre in which we can feel safe and secure. Yet more of us regard our homes as a symbol of taste and status, a means of indulging creativity or proving our social standing. However we experience home there is no doubt that the places in which we live are becoming more and more important to us. There is a huge proliferation of interest in houses, home-building, interior design and decoration. The newsstands are full to bursting with magazines on homes and gardens; coffee tables groan with glossy books showing perfect homes. Turn on the television and someone will be telling you how to revamp a kitchen or hide a radiator.
There’s far more to this than simply another fashionable trend. We have a deep collective yearning for an idealized image of home – for ideal homes. It’s as though we feel that if we could only make our homes look right, they would somehow be right. We would live perfect lives in our perfect homes. But if we think we can create a happy home from the pages of a magazine, if we think we can buy our way to a healing home, we are deluding ourselves.
This almost desperate interest in the external trappings of home – the newest colours, the latest furniture, the best cooker, the freshest curtains – disguises a more profound longing. In our hearts we want to come home to a real home. A real home is a place that nurtures us on every level. It gives us the creature comforts that make our bodies feel relaxed and comfortable. It provides the security and serenity that allow our minds and emotions peace and security. Above all, it nourishes our souls. A real home is not a show-home packed to the gills with expensive furniture, decorated by the most fashionable interior designer: it is a living space that has the power to make us feel safe in a troubled world. It is our refuge, our sanctuary – a place we can walk into and feel a sense of relief and relaxation as we shut the world behind us.
Some homes do this automatically. Others need our help. Sadly, over recent years we have been neglecting our homes or, more accurately, we’ve been ignoring the spirits of our homes. A home is far more than a physical structure; it is a living entity with a soul of its own. In the past the home was honoured as a deity – it was considered to have its own spirit and a host of attending spirits. All over the globe people acknowledged and venerated their homes, treating them with love and respect. Not to do so would be to bring trouble and strife on the house and its inhabitants. Nowadays we treat our homes poorly. Often we allow them to become dirty, cluttered and neglected. And even when we do carefully maintain and preserve the home, we run into the danger of turning our homes into stiff, stilted places of fashion and decorum – they look good but they don’t necessarily feel good. These ‘look-good’ houses exist because we have left out one vital part of the equation: we have ignored the home’s vital living energy, its spirit.
