The Pagan Experience - "Cleanliness and Godliness"

http://www.luckymojo.com

Wk 5 - Mar. 30 - Any topic of your choice! Have fun with this one. Prose, poetry, fiction, art work or any other creative format are welcome!

"Cleanliness and Godliness"

I’ve been studying a little bit of hoodoo while working at a local occult and conjure shop.  My boss is a little  very obsessive about cleanliness, which has been a bit of a challenge for me.  I’m not a dirty person, but I am a messy/cluttered person.  Also, a little dust doesn’t really bother me; it flies right under my radar.  My boss would like me to sweep more, I’d like him to pay more attention to the inventories I do.  You give, you take, you win some, you lose some.  C'est la vie.

In the tradition of hoodoo, however, cleanliness is very important.  Though I’m no expert, it seems as if hoodoo is heavily reliant on sympathetic magic.  That is, imitation and correspondence are very important.  Phallic-shaped items are good for male virility, green items are good for money, walnuts are good for the brain because they resemble little brains, and a cluttered and messy home attracts a cluttered and messy life.  So, if you have dust bunnies and clutter all over your living space, lower-level entities and spirits will be attracted to those spaces.  These guys, while not necessarily evil or anything, aren’t really good, either and they can really muck stuff up.  (Not to mention, if you have a lot of low-level bad stuff around you, that in turn may attract other stuff, which will attract other stuff, which will attract other stuff.  Not good!)

I’ve seen it recommended that before doing any magical working one should clean their whole space.  This would include your house, your room, your altar, and yourself.  Magical baths are incredibly important in hoodoo, too, both to banish energies away and to draw them into your life.  Pre-ritual baths are popular in Neo-Paganism as well, though most often for a body/mind/spirit cleansing.

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About a year ago I came down with a bad case of the flu.  I was sick for about a week, being able to do little else than sit around, sleep, and watch terrible 80s movies all day.  I was in graduate school at the time, and I didn’t even have the energy to catch up on homework or reading.  After a few days of Gatorade, pajamas and soup, I decided I had just enough energy to clean up my room a bit, to air out the stench of sick and illness.  I rearranged things, cleaned up any piles of clutter, dusted, lit incense, smudged, and wiped down surfaces… until my whole room was perfect.  Even though I was exhausted from working so hard, I felt so much better, and the flu cleared the next day.

So, my challenge for all of my readers right now is to go clean something!  It doesn’t matter what it is.  Clean your body, clean your desk, clean your room, clean your whole house from top to bottom, clean one room, clean one closet – just go clean something.  I promise it won’t take as long as you think it will, it will be painless, and you’ll feel good after doing something so productive.

Go!  Go do it!  If you don’t clean your house, at least go clean your altar.  It will feel wonderful!