Magical Architecture I: Basic Homebuilding

I live in a home built almost entirely of chestnut wood. The place where I live used to be a chestnut grove, hundreds of years ago before the blight came and they were all devastated. My house was built almost two hundred years ago with the old-fashioned mortise and tenon technique; many of the beams that hold it up are so large that they are bigger around than me, and I’m not small. In a way, my house isn’t so much an affirmation to the tree spirits as a memorial to them. My beams are not replaceable. Should my house burn down, I could never recreate it again. I live in a memorial to the American chestnut spirits, and I do not forget that. I didn’t know what “chestnut-haired” meant until I sanded and oiled the wainscoting in the living room; now I know why horses that shade of orange-brown are named for this fine tree with the sad story.

William, a pagan homesteader in Indiana, writes: “Another example of the homestead lifestyle bringing a heightened sense of pagan spirituality was the concept of Oak Wisdom. I related with this aspect of the Neo Celtic religions. I used the symbol of the Oak in shamanistic ritual. Now that I am living on our land, the Oak takes a much deeper meaning. To be surrounded by the Oak day in and day out, to know the creatures which feed and shelter in the Oak, for your body to be fed by those creatures which feed on the Oak, to have raised the ancient Oak logs felled by ancestors to make my home, for the winter’s hearthfire to dance with the flames that come steadily from the Oak like no other wood, to go into the woods and know the red Oak from the black Oak from the white Oak from the chestnut oak, to know the smell of oak and the color of its leaves in the autumn, all of its nuances and seasons. It is not until I knew these things that I finally felt like I had gained Oak Wisdom. “

It’s important to know what sort of trees gave their life for your shelter. Most houses are built with wood, and most modern stick-built houses with pine wood. Although we think of pine as a “cheap” and “soft” wood, there is nothing dishonorable about it. It is sacred to Cernunnos in His aspect as Forest Hunter. Pine is an evergreen, which holds the mystery of leaves that are sharp and hard to the touch, but so tough that they stay alive through even the fiercest snows. If you live in a pine-built house, make an offering to the pine spirits and contemplate their gift of renewal. If your house is primarily oak, or some other wood, or even a mixture, make the effort to learn the mystery of each kind of wood used and take the bother to make an offering to them. Nearly every tree is associated with a deity of some sort - Odin with the ash, Dagda with the oak, Artemis with the cypress, and Venus with the maple.

The first thing to consider when building a house is placement. Some of that will have to do with sheer practicality - is it close to a water source, can you get to it from the road in your vehicle in deep snow, does the ground percolate, and what do the local zoning laws say about permanent structures? However, there are other axes that you will have to take into consideration: agricultural, climatic, and spiritual.

On the agricultural axis, the rule is clear: Choose the worst, least fertile ground you have on the property. The place with barely a quarter inch of topsoil and only a few scrubby weeds is just right. You will want every inch of fertile ground for something else; don’t waste it by putting a house on it. Don’t worry about that big flower garden you wanted around the foundation; you can import soil and build deep beds.

The climatic axis will vary tremendously with your area. This is where it comes in handy to ask the neighbors, if you’re new to the area. Where do the coldest winds blow in from? (You’ll want a windbreak, and if there isn’t one, start planting one, even before you dig a foundation.) Is there danger of flooding at any time of the year? (Build on the highest part of the land.) Are there soggy places? (Resist the temptation to build there just because of the automatic water supply; mosquitoes and wet basements are miserable.) Where does the sun come up in the morning, especially at the shortest time of the year?

You’ll want a lot of windows in the east and south, preferably with no trees blocking, and thick walls on the north side if you’re in a cold climate. You’ll also want a whole lot of insulation (although you must remember to keep the place ventilated) and possibly a south-side greenhouse, which can warm a whole wall even if it’s unheated. Another possibility might be a solarium; make sure that the floor and walls that the sun shines on has maximum heat-retaining mass, such as stone or slate. If you intend to put in a fire-center, such as a fireplace or woodstove, arrange the rooms so that they fan off of that center room, and put in a ceiling fan to keep the warm air circulating. If you live in a snowy climate, the steeper the roof, the better, especially is it has a southern exposure. (For that matter, siting your house with the roof facing south is imperative if you intend to put in solar power later.) In old-fashioned homes meant to be heated with wood, the rule was to have low ceilings, so as to heat easier.

Hot climate dwellers may prefer to keep cooler with northern windows and insulated south sides. For those in hot and moist climes, such as the Southeast, the following rules apply: Keep the house off the ground, on piles, and have vents in the floor to bring up cool air. Put up high ceilings that go up to a high central area with adjustable ventilation, possibly a cupola. This will bring the cool air up by convection through the house. Rooms should be high and wide, with open areas rather than small closed spaces. Keep the rooms that produce steam - kitchen and bath - far away from the main area. Build large roof overhangs that can shade and keep the walls cool, possibly with the traditional wrap-around porches. Several coats of white latex on your roof will cool the inside, while reflecting heat. (Actually, the white latex roof does fine to cool things off in the summer in cold, snowy climates; if there’s going to be six inches of white stuff on your roof anyway, the color doesn’t matter in winter. Dark roofs only really work well in cold climates with little snow.) For hot, dry areas with little rainfall, flat roofs are fine. Thick, solid walls keep heat out and coolness in, especially with deep window wells to shade the air intake. Underground housing, or housing cut directly into stone cliffside like the Anasazi Indians, works well in desert-ish climates.

In all areas, if you’re building a house to suit the climate, you’ll want to first check out what the natives in your area used for housing. Although it may be impractical to copy aboriginal housing completely, you will probably discern some highly practical features that you could adapt to your own usage. You might also check on housing options of ancient peoples in other areas of the globe similar in climate to yours; the Scandinavian log home worked fine in wooded areas of Canada and Wisconsin, and ancient Egyptian-style housing has been used to fine effect by some Southwest desert dwellers.

If you have to move earth to build your house or outbuildings (and you might), be careful of underground ley lines. The energy meridians of the earth run in three dimensions; some are closer to the surface than others. In the process of digging up several feet of soil, you may unearth the main flow of a ley line, which can be good or bad for your house. As the earth wears away, ley lines are constantly being exposed, but usually it’s done slowly, and the vibration is softer, more “worn”. There have been many times, however, when I walked through a development where tons of earth had just been moved and shifted and new houses put up on the reterraced land, and the inhabitants in a certain area would be complaining about headaches and small illnesses, and I could just feel the raw oozing energy pumping out of the ground. Dowsing the lines, or getting someone to do it for you, can be helpful. If the ley lines are small, don’t worry too much about it, but large (street-wide) lines might have a detrimental effect on your health.

Ley lines come in two varieties; positive and negative, which does not mean “good” and “bad”, but energy-projective and energy-absorbing. Positive lines shed energy, and although they can be good for sluggish people, they can also drive high-energy people into a frenzy and cause headaches or nervous tension. Try not to put your bedroom over one, and definitely not your bed. Negative ley lines absorb energy, calming and decaying. On them, food rots faster and people sleep better, but may have trouble waking up in the morning.

Where any two lines cross, the energy is intensified. A positive ley cross is a great place for dancing and high spirits. The perfect item to put onto a negative ley cross would be a compost heap - or possibly, since underground water tends to follow negative ley lines, a well. What you want under you house, if possible, is a cross of a positive and negative ley line. This will complete and neutralize the energy of the two, creating balanced vibration. Actually, a combination ley cross is great for anything.

When you are building any structure, even a shed, keep in mind not only its placement upon the land, but the sacredness of its component structure as well. As you measure, remember that every time you take a diameter of a space, you invoke the Goddess, since the word diameter means “Mother Goddess”, Dia Mater. Remember to thank her for the space you are building in.

Round and cornered structures have different feeling to them, although I would not be so crass as to value one over the other. Round structures, or domes (from the original Indo-European word for house) have a womblike feel to them; if they have an arched ceiling you might want to paint a constellation on it to represent the dome of the heavens. Square and rectangular structures have compass point built in; mark the four main vertical corner beams with the elemental symbols in the proper direction (which is whichever direction you choose to use). They are the pillars of the building, and hold up the roof or “sky”; you can inscribe them with the Uruz rune for strength or a phallus for eternal upwardness. For tripod structures, such as stools and windmill towers, remember that the tripod was considered a symbol of the Triple Goddess and often had Her three names carved into it.

Here I must also put in a plea for Hestia again. In ancient times, the focus or hearth was the center of the home; indeed one could say that in most ancient building structures, the home consisted of a hearth with a house built around it. The hearth is more than just a fireplace, it is the place where food is prepared and people sit down to eat it. In a space blessed by Hestia and built for Her energy, the kitchen - be it woodburning stove or regular gas or electric - is the unquestioned center of the home, the place where people are drawn in and congregate. Ideally, it should be the largest open space in the house. All other rooms - dining room, “living” room, etc. where people are expected to group together should be open to and visible from the kitchen, circling it like satellites. By making it the back room, unseen from the dining and congregating areas, you rob them of Hestia’s warmth. People in common rooms cut off from any kind of a central hearth tend to focus on the TV or a book or their own things rather than each other; if you are building your own home, remember to design it in such as way that Hestia is honored, or you risk creating a “cold” vibration in your common spaces.