The 32-year-old Somerville resident Erica Feldmann maintains a blog, a spell kit-slinging Etsy store, and an Instagram account (@hauswitch) under the name HausWitch, her budget-conscious home styling and home “healing” company that she launched just over two years ago.
Q.When you say home “healing,” what does that mean?
A. I use a bunch of techniques, but everything is nondenominational. It’s a combination of the practice of shamanic Earth magic, psychic meditation, Jungian psychology, and feng shui.
Q. What are signs that your home might need to be “healed”? Is there a way to sense “bad” energy?
A. I think you can sense it, but I would say the number one sign is that you don’t like being in your home. Like, you’re making excuses not to be there, or don’t feel like making the space into a home, and you just want a mattress on the floor and ramen noodles in the fridge. If you have good energy in your home, you want to be there and make an effort to make it feel nice. It’s a measure of whether you feel a connection to the space, or if you don’t.
Q. Why would someone suddenly start feeling as if their home had “bad” energy?
Advertisement
A. Feng shui says that things in your home are connected to you and your psyche. If you’re neglecting part of the space or something or someone in your life is causing you to neglect the space, it presents itself as a problem. For me, my back porch is part of my relationship sector, so when my porch is full of garbage, which it sometimes is [laughs], I see that reflected in my relationship. That can go with any part of your home. Like if there’s a specific part of your home that you use for creativity, and it becomes disheveled, you can start feeling a lack in that creative energy within other parts of your life. You should think of your home as a hybrid. The energy of your home influences the energy of your day-to-day life.
Advertisement
Q. If someone isn’t committed to a full home makeover, or even a spell kit, is there anything they can do to refresh their home’s energy?
A. We recently did a workshop at Olives & Grace in the South End about making your own sage smudge stick for your home. You safely burn bundled sage in your home and allow the smoke to clear out whatever bad or stale energy is in there. Then you can build a more positive energy on that. Native American and other cultures around the world have been burning sage for millennia.
You can buy bundles of sage online or at Cambridge Naturals on the border of Cambridge and Somerville. Also, maybe Whole Foods, but I’m never in there because it’s too expensive for me.Once you start looking they’re really easy to find.
Q. What about for someone who is even more of a skeptic?
A. A horseshoe over the door is an old standby for good luck. And I believe in filling your home with natural light, it’s both the decorator in me and the witch. And fill your home with things you love and conjure positive memories. Oh, and make your bed every day. Set an intention to keep your home balanced. Organize it; make it into someplace you love; and then use that intention to keep it that way.
Advertisement
Rachel Raczka can be reached at rachel.raczka@globe.com. Follow her on Instagram @RachelRaczka.