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Happy news!
Only a few weeks after I had finished writing the second draft, my book Sacred Homemaking: A Magical Approach to a Tidier Home was picked up by Aeon Books, a well-known publisher of occult and herbal knowledge. Aeon has released several titles by John Michael Greer, including The Way of the Secret Temple, Monsters, and The Sacred Geometry Oracle, among others. The circumstances around this seemed like divine intervention. I had not yet sought a publisher and was considering writing a query to another publisher when I was contacted by Oliver of Aeon who just happened to like my Substack.
Sacred Homemaking is in some ways the occultist's answer to the minimalist genre, which includes Marie Kondo's book The Art of Tidying Up and The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta Magnuson. To my mind, though both of those authors were on the right track, they missed the mark when it came to focusing on the spirits of place instead of the actual stuff being minimized.
Sacred Homemaking is a book about appreciating the spirit of place, a skill that once cultivated you will take with you far beyond a single lifetime. By learning to communicate with the spaces and things around us in a meaningful way, we learn to take off our materialist blinders and connect with the world around us via gratitude. Sacred Homemaking does include a great deal of practical advice -- much of this comes from the original Sacred Homemaker in my life, my mother -- but in essence it is a book about enlightenment. I do talk about how to fold things, including underwear, if you are into that. Today I was going to fold my underwear but ran out of time... my underwear and socks may end up crudely stuffed into a drawer if time runs short enough. Sacred Homemaking is not about perfection. In fact, one of my salient points in the book, made early on, is to appreciate the "Charlie Brown's Christmas Tree" aspects of home, meaning the imperfect being appreciated and sublimated into joy and usefulness.
I am very excited to bring you Sacred Homemaking. Fingers crossed and with prayers, my fondest hope is that it will hit shelves May 2026 or sooner. Until then, I hope it will be worth the wait.
Delegating Etheric Labor in Your Sacred Home (Excerpt from Sacred Homemaking)
The bitterest and worst of household fights occur over etheric labor: meal preparation, cleaning, laundry, bill management, childcare, and household repairs. The war between the sexes manifests itself in battles over dirty dishes and leaky roofs.
Women are generally better at daily housework and household management. Men are generally better at breadwinning and household repair. Though no woman or man should ever feel confined to a particular set of roles as no two individuals are truly alike, a sane society leaves room for people falling into their natural roles and does not diminish anyone for their choices. We do not live in a sane society. Women may work outside the home more than ever these days, but that hasn’t lightened the load of housework they do and are expected to do.
In the 1970s and 80s, women were fed a line they could have it all, a package which included a thriving career, a beautiful home, well-adjusted children, and a happy husband. This clever ploy made women into a zombie army of materialist consumers, both making more and spending more while losing happiness and well-being. There simply are not enough hours in a day to have a full-time job, play with and educate one’s children, engage in a fulfilling relationship with one’s spouse, and keep a house in reasonable working order.
Because people love to commoditize everything in our civilization, many have suggested making lists of household tasks and then giving these lists to various family members with the pat expectation they will get them done. Some wives go as far as offering sexual perks to their husbands when they perform a certain number of listed tasks within a given period. It’s a sad day when you have to prostitute yourself to your own mate in order to get him to wash dishes, change the baby’s diaper, and fix a creaky door.
As someone who has been married over two and a half decades to her first and only husband, let me reassure you that making lists of undone tasks is a surefire way to build resentment and hatred that will shorten your marriage or lessen its quality. Never build the negative by emphasizing it and giving it free reign to become an obsession. Making lists of commoditized household work cheapens the perceived quality of the work and makes it clear you don’t appreciate the work already being done. Instead of listing on paper what your spouse has failed to do every week, list in your head or in a secret diary of what he or she does every day, week, and year to keep your home up and running and cultivate gratitude for it. Thank him for these completed tasks, reminding him of the goodness he has made. If his list has nothing on it or is dreadfully short, for instance, he is a gambler and a violent drunk, then perhaps you should leave.
The moral of the story is that a husband (or wife) is not another child, nor should he or she be treated like one. A spouse is an adult who shares responsibility, not an army cadet or a personal assistant who takes orders. In a good relationship, focusing on your mate’s achievements instead of marinating in his or her shortcomings is the most difficult and necessary of tasks.
When your husband does do something right, thank him just as you thank your door, toilet, and toaster. Because he is human and not the spirit of a place or object, thank him aloud, in words. My husband almost never did the dishes in the first fifteen years of our marriage because he did not understand how much it meant to me. Over time, I thanked him every time he did dishes even when he did not thank me for doing dishes. When he was unemployed for several years, he often left dirty dishes for me in the sink despite my being exhausted from working full time and preparing most of our meals. If you think I was not fuming mad from this little habit of his, then you don’t know me very well. Criticizing him by saying he rarely or never did dishes did not work: I tried it. What has worked has been thanking him when he does dishes, which at this point is nearly every day. During those rare moments when I felt it was right, I told him how much it meant to me when he did dishes, especially when I did not expect him to do them. I also make a practice of recalling at least three of his wise decisions or actions whenever he makes me angry. I try to make a point of expressing my gratitude for him on a regular basis. He is better about doing the dishes and housework than he used to be but I still do the majority of tidying and cleaning tasks and he still does most of the home repair and construction projects. We are both working full time.
Only a few weeks after I had finished writing the second draft, my book Sacred Homemaking: A Magical Approach to a Tidier Home was picked up by Aeon Books, a well-known publisher of occult and herbal knowledge. Aeon has released several titles by John Michael Greer, including The Way of the Secret Temple, Monsters, and The Sacred Geometry Oracle, among others. The circumstances around this seemed like divine intervention. I had not yet sought a publisher and was considering writing a query to another publisher when I was contacted by Oliver of Aeon who just happened to like my Substack.
Sacred Homemaking is in some ways the occultist's answer to the minimalist genre, which includes Marie Kondo's book The Art of Tidying Up and The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta Magnuson. To my mind, though both of those authors were on the right track, they missed the mark when it came to focusing on the spirits of place instead of the actual stuff being minimized.
Sacred Homemaking is a book about appreciating the spirit of place, a skill that once cultivated you will take with you far beyond a single lifetime. By learning to communicate with the spaces and things around us in a meaningful way, we learn to take off our materialist blinders and connect with the world around us via gratitude. Sacred Homemaking does include a great deal of practical advice -- much of this comes from the original Sacred Homemaker in my life, my mother -- but in essence it is a book about enlightenment. I do talk about how to fold things, including underwear, if you are into that. Today I was going to fold my underwear but ran out of time... my underwear and socks may end up crudely stuffed into a drawer if time runs short enough. Sacred Homemaking is not about perfection. In fact, one of my salient points in the book, made early on, is to appreciate the "Charlie Brown's Christmas Tree" aspects of home, meaning the imperfect being appreciated and sublimated into joy and usefulness.
I am very excited to bring you Sacred Homemaking. Fingers crossed and with prayers, my fondest hope is that it will hit shelves May 2026 or sooner. Until then, I hope it will be worth the wait.
Delegating Etheric Labor in Your Sacred Home (Excerpt from Sacred Homemaking)
The bitterest and worst of household fights occur over etheric labor: meal preparation, cleaning, laundry, bill management, childcare, and household repairs. The war between the sexes manifests itself in battles over dirty dishes and leaky roofs.
Women are generally better at daily housework and household management. Men are generally better at breadwinning and household repair. Though no woman or man should ever feel confined to a particular set of roles as no two individuals are truly alike, a sane society leaves room for people falling into their natural roles and does not diminish anyone for their choices. We do not live in a sane society. Women may work outside the home more than ever these days, but that hasn’t lightened the load of housework they do and are expected to do.
In the 1970s and 80s, women were fed a line they could have it all, a package which included a thriving career, a beautiful home, well-adjusted children, and a happy husband. This clever ploy made women into a zombie army of materialist consumers, both making more and spending more while losing happiness and well-being. There simply are not enough hours in a day to have a full-time job, play with and educate one’s children, engage in a fulfilling relationship with one’s spouse, and keep a house in reasonable working order.
Because people love to commoditize everything in our civilization, many have suggested making lists of household tasks and then giving these lists to various family members with the pat expectation they will get them done. Some wives go as far as offering sexual perks to their husbands when they perform a certain number of listed tasks within a given period. It’s a sad day when you have to prostitute yourself to your own mate in order to get him to wash dishes, change the baby’s diaper, and fix a creaky door.
As someone who has been married over two and a half decades to her first and only husband, let me reassure you that making lists of undone tasks is a surefire way to build resentment and hatred that will shorten your marriage or lessen its quality. Never build the negative by emphasizing it and giving it free reign to become an obsession. Making lists of commoditized household work cheapens the perceived quality of the work and makes it clear you don’t appreciate the work already being done. Instead of listing on paper what your spouse has failed to do every week, list in your head or in a secret diary of what he or she does every day, week, and year to keep your home up and running and cultivate gratitude for it. Thank him for these completed tasks, reminding him of the goodness he has made. If his list has nothing on it or is dreadfully short, for instance, he is a gambler and a violent drunk, then perhaps you should leave.
The moral of the story is that a husband (or wife) is not another child, nor should he or she be treated like one. A spouse is an adult who shares responsibility, not an army cadet or a personal assistant who takes orders. In a good relationship, focusing on your mate’s achievements instead of marinating in his or her shortcomings is the most difficult and necessary of tasks.
When your husband does do something right, thank him just as you thank your door, toilet, and toaster. Because he is human and not the spirit of a place or object, thank him aloud, in words. My husband almost never did the dishes in the first fifteen years of our marriage because he did not understand how much it meant to me. Over time, I thanked him every time he did dishes even when he did not thank me for doing dishes. When he was unemployed for several years, he often left dirty dishes for me in the sink despite my being exhausted from working full time and preparing most of our meals. If you think I was not fuming mad from this little habit of his, then you don’t know me very well. Criticizing him by saying he rarely or never did dishes did not work: I tried it. What has worked has been thanking him when he does dishes, which at this point is nearly every day. During those rare moments when I felt it was right, I told him how much it meant to me when he did dishes, especially when I did not expect him to do them. I also make a practice of recalling at least three of his wise decisions or actions whenever he makes me angry. I try to make a point of expressing my gratitude for him on a regular basis. He is better about doing the dishes and housework than he used to be but I still do the majority of tidying and cleaning tasks and he still does most of the home repair and construction projects. We are both working full time.
