Housewight Interactions
I know… it sounds like a bad sales pitch, but there really is truth to it. Getting to know the spirits of place is always rewarding. Ritualizing the routine of maintaining a gifting cycle gives it meaning and can make you feel more purposeful. Being respectful to the beings around you and engaging in the gift cycle with them will build your luck and the luck of your family/hearth.
Housewight is a rather broad term that can refer to a number of beings that you may share space with in your home. There are a ton of other words for housewights in various traditions. Let’s take a look at some:
- Brownie (Scottish/English)
- Hob/Hobgoblin (English)
- Kobold (German)
- Domovoy (Slavic)
- Nisse (Norwegian/Danish)
- Tomte (Swedish)
- Tonttu (Finnish)
- Cofgodas (Anglo-saxon)
- Húsvættir (Old Norse)
Most of these beings have very similar stories attached to them. They usually live by the hearth of the home, and often are most active at night. They may do chores or help around the home, yard, or shop in exchange for offerings. The usual offerings are things like bread, milk, cream, ale, or porridge. They may also be left a portion of the family’s dinner. They share in the family’s luck and may bring luck to the family as well, or forebode any harm that might befall the family. They may bring the family wealth in the form of good harvest or money. However, these beings must also be treated with respect. They are often called hearth deities or hearth gods, and they do demand reverence. An insulted housewight may be mischievous, but they may also turn dangerous. They may make food spoil, or harm animals in the household, cause accidents, or cause bad luck for the family. If they are really insulted they may leave the house entirely, leaving the household luckless. Some wights will leave the home if you present them with clothes. This can be a way to get rid of a particularly disgruntled wight, but it is also often regarded as a way to further insult them.
Other traditions seem to be somewhat dependent on the spirit you are personally dealing with. Some housewights seem to follow their families between homes or are between generations in the same home, or (like mine) they may live in objects which can be transported when moved, other times wights stay with a particular house, and so there are various different methods of inviting new wights into your home if you move. It is important if you are inviting a new wight into your home that you make it a welcoming space first. Would you want to stay somewhere that didn’t feel inviting? Housewights are very sensitive to their environment. Ill words or deeds in front of them may corrupt their nature. If your housewight is healthy then the home is healthy, and if the home is healthy then your luck will also be better.
It surprises me that some heathens think it is okay to be outright disrespectful to housewights. I can understand to an extent ignoring them, or being ignorant to them being there. I can even understand some amount of inattention. Life can be complicated sometimes, and things get forgotten. What really gets me though are the people who see housewights as less than hearth gods. People can be downright rude to wights or treat them like… pets? They are not your pet, and if you try to put yourself above a housewight you are surely in for a shock! (You read the part above about what happens when you insult them, right?) Don’t be disrespectful.
I know popular culture could make you either disbelieve in household spirits like brownies, or make you think they are kind of cute and novel. That is not the way it is and ... it is just a lot more complicated than that. It is too easy to trivialize housewights as being like cute little fairies or elves or something, like in The Elf and the Shoemaker story or Dobby from Harry Potter. This is not the experience you will have when you engage with your housewight(s). A happy housewight will shower the home with blessings, but a housewight that feels displeased or ignored can be very unpleasant. Do you like to lose your wallet or keys all the time? That could be the result of a poor relationship with a housewight, or it could be much less pleasant in its response as well.
Housewights also have their own personalities. Some wights are just mischievous by nature. If you are working with your housewight and have been maintaining a gifting cycle with them, you can voice concerns with them if something they are doing is causing you stress or inconveniencing you. For example, my housewight really likes oatmeal. We had to have a discussion about how vocal he is about wanting oatmeal when it is being cooked. (By vocal I mean things shifting and making loud noises in the kitchen when oatmeal is being cooked.) A compromise has been reached in which there is always enough oatmeal being made so that the wight gets his share, and the noises have now pretty much stopped.
If you haven’t really spent much time on building a relationship with the spirits of your home, I really suggest doing it. The whole atmosphere of your home changes with the attention you pay to the hearth gods. Building a relationship with any other beings is work. They often don’t see things the same as humans, so it can even be tense at times. Approaching them with openness and respect is key. Speak plainly with them about your intentions. Start a gifting cycle and pay attention to how these gifts are received. Trial and error may be necessary, although all the heathens I’ve talked to with established hearth practice seem to find offerings of porridge or milk/cream are well received. Beyond that, each house spirit is an individual.
This was a fairly interesting post for me to complete from a writing standpoint. I have a fairly strong relationship with my housewight, but I found myself fairly reluctant to share any really telling anecdotes. It just felt way too personal and private. I suspect a lot of heathens feel that way, since there are a lot of very basic articles, or suggestions for attracting housewights to new homes, or basic rituals to perform or how to begin the gifting cycle. What you don’t see much of in the online heathen community is stories about peoples’ housewights. I have shared a few of my personal stories with my tribe from time to time, but I am reluctant to put much out there to strangers. Hearth cult can be very personal. So if you are feeling frustrated that you can’t find content like that anywhere, there is probably a reason.
Also, I wanted to quote a bit from text I remember reading at some point, but as happens in the religion of homework the longer you are in it the more difficult it is to remember exactly where you read something. As such I was unable to source it. I do remember reading text at one point about a new wife moving to the house of her new husband, who was christian. The wife brought with her the old traditions of the hearth deity and kindled a spark in the home. It was her careful observation of the traditions that brought luck to the home. I don’t know if historically it would have been primarily the job of women to build relationships with the housewight. This would make sense for women, since most often they were in charge of the home. In modern contexts though it seems like men and women approach their housewights equally often, just as in many households the divisions of labours are fairly evenly split. Building a relationship with your household might fall to one person for whatever reasons, or it may be something the whole family participates in. There isn’t really a wrong way of doing it in that regard. Building hearth practice is personal and about doing what works for you and your family.
This is a fairly basic post, so I didn’t really have a lot in the way of sources, but I will suggest a few places for further information below if the topic interests you.There are a lot of very good basic posts on housewights or various traditions of housewights beyond what I am suggesting here as well. A simple google search will make them accessible to you. If you don’t like reading or don’t have much spare time, my go-to suggestion to new heathens for content is Eric Word-Weaver Sjerven, who hosts The Raven’s Call on YouTube. He has some videos on húsvættir, as well as a lot of other subjects and they are all very approachable.
Further Reading:
“Lob Lie-By-The-Fire” by Walter de la Mare
“Making Friends with House Wights”
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/heathenatheart/2015/10/making-friends-with-house-wights/
“Offering to the Cofgodas (House Wights)”
https://earendel-rising.tumblr.com/post/126222842979/offering-to-the-cofgodas-house-wights
The Tradition of Household Spirits: Ancestral Lore and Practices by Claude Lecouteux
Photo Source:
Illustration for Postcard by Jenny Nyström
