Examines how the traditional customs of making and retaining a home shaped a sacred bond among houses and their population

• stocks many stories of condominium spirits, from cajoling the neighborhood land spirit into turning into one’s residence spirit to the great and undesirable success bestowed through mischievous residence elves

• Explains the which means at the back of door and window placement, residence orientation, horsehead gables, the hearth or fire, and the edge

• unearths the charms, chants, prayers, and development practices utilized by our ancestors to bestow happiness and prosperity upon their houses and their occupants

Why will we dangle horseshoes for sturdy success or position wreaths on our doorways? Why does the groom hold his new bride over the edge? those customs signify the final vestiges from an extended, wealthy historical past of honoring the spirits of our houses. They express home is greater than a development: it's a residing being with a physique and soul.

Examining the vast traditions surrounding homes from medieval occasions to the current, Claude Lecouteux finds that, sooner than we entered the present period of common strikes and modular housing, relocating mostly from the nation-state into towns, humanity had a really sacred dating with their houses and the entire spirits who lived there along them--from the spirit of the home itself to the mischievous elves, fairies, and imps who visited, invited or no longer. He exhibits how each element of creating and conserving a home concerned rites, rite, customs, and taboos to assuage the spirits, together with the alternative of a development lot and the very fabrics with which it was once equipped. Uncovering the misplaced that means in the back of door and window placement, the fireplace, and the edge, Lecouteux stocks many stories of residence spirits, from the choices used to persuade the neighborhood land spirit into turning into the household condominium spirit to the great and undesirable success bestowed upon those that search the aid of the “Little cash Man.” He attracts on experiences and vintage literature from outdated Europe--from Celtic lands and Scandinavia to France and Germany to the a ways jap borders of Europe and into Russia--to clarify the pagan roots in the back of a lot of those traditions.

Revealing our ancestors’ charms, prayers, and practices to bestow happiness and prosperity upon their houses, Lecouteux indicates that we will invite the spirits again into our homes, outdated or new, and restoration the sacred bond among domestic and inhabitant.