"I think anybody interested in connecting to their own power and alignment is a witch..."
My fascinating chat with Erica Feldmann, aka the founder of Haus Witch, on how to infuse your home with magic
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I love the intersection of travel and beauty. Not necessarily just mini travel beauty products (although they are fun) but more about the fascinating beauty cultures, subcultures and practices you discover by getting out of your own bubble, and exploring the world.
I’d had a bit of a heads up that Salem, in Massachusetts, was a hub of artisanal beauty brands and brilliant people, so was lucky enough to visit a month ago, and experience this first hand. I’ve got a lot to share about my trip, but I’d love to start with some snippets from my chat with Erica Feldmann, an academic, founder of Haus Witch and the author of Haus Magick - Transform Your Home With Witchcraft.
She explains how she discovered Haus Magick and how it can transform your entire space….and much more of course!
ANITA: What is a haus witch - and how did you become one?
ERICA: I’m sensitive to energies in the world, and the actual energy of a space. So, to cut the longest story short, a bunch of people in my cohort from grad school came to a housewarming party of mine and they were like, “Wow, it feels so good in here, could you do this to my house?” From there I just started going into people's homes and helping them make over their spaces, taking energetics into account. All of my customers really loved their homes after I was done with them, so that's when I started the spell kits, just to be able to give people a spell in a box, because I can't be everywhere.
People really responded to them and I think the house-shaped boxes do a lot of work because they're very cute but that was proof of concept to me that people were really interested in how energy plays into their home and life. I opened the store in Salem a few months later. (below)
I also like to think of myself as a political witch. I like to think of myself as a business witch. It just comes out of this desire to work with a higher power, but again in a way that feels like it's authentic to me and not some outside idea of what spirituality is. When I was studying witchcraft in grad school, I really started developing my practice and one of the most powerful things you can do is just learn how to ground your energy and just stay centered, because operating from that place is true power. That's the witchiest thing you can do.
A: So how do you change the energy of a space?
E: The way I feel it and see it is like currents of water. You can feel if a space feels stale, still or stagnant, just like a pond with algae growing and settling on the top, and it’s the same for a room. For example, when I clear a space, I like to dance, I like to use sound, I think of it as more of a frequency, and that shakes the energy up.
Think of a swimming pool. People are in it, splashing around and things are moving and are effervescent. That energy can really change how a space feels, so something like dance, not only gets that energy moving, but then you're putting your own joyous, most ecstatic energy back into the space. That's just one way of thinking about it and practising it yourself.
A: I think I need that as somebody who works from home…
E: So many people work from home now. Your space has so many functions that change during the day and that energy can be quite hard to change.
I see a lot of people put their desks in their bedroom for example, and I would want to be infusing a bedroom - depending on if you're partnered - the energy of romance back into that space. Or if you're not, just the energy of rest and relaxation, because work energy is the opposite of rest and relaxation.
I think the most important thing is intention. A good place to start is being conscious of energy, so thinking, if I have my desk right next to my bed, then those two energies are going to clash a little bit, and I'm going to want to do things to make them more harmonious.
A: Can you use fragrance to shift the energies?
E: A lot of people love to work with smoke. Burning sage is something that is pretty popular in the zeitgeist, but it’s not something that is aligned with my cultural traditions, and so we don't sell it here. But a lot of people resonate with smoke, and you can use incense and burn any other herbs, but I really like sound and dance.
Frequencies and binaural beats work well to change the energy of a space. When the store is closed often we'll play a clearing frequency just to get that energy and movement going and clear it out. Dozens of people come in here every day, they're coming from all over the world, all with different kinds of baggage or anxieties, so we just like to clear that each day and start fresh.
A: What makes you passionate about witchcraft?
E: When I was a teenager and I was dabbling in Wicca, which is the religion of witchcraft, which is not what we practice here, by the way. But I was so disenfranchised by the fact that you had to have specific ingredients, you had to have specific herbs, you had to have specific tools and that wasn't accessible for me. I didn't have anywhere to buy those things, I was in working class Illinois.
Making this stuff accessible is really the thing that interests me about it. We have this amazing opportunity, being in Salem, that millions of people a year come here to learn more about witchcraft. A lot of people are just drawn to the store and they don't even know why. We've got coffee mugs, or souvenirs for tourists, but these things will be right next to a book or a zine about how witchcraft is anti-capitalist and even if they don't buy that book, even if they don't pick it up, just seeing it is powerful. I think that's such an amazing opportunity.
I also love tools that feel really accessible, because I don't think that you need a coven or a velvet key, or a book of shadows at all. I think that anybody who is interested in connecting to their own power and operating from a place of centered alignment is a witch. Really part of the brain game for me is ‘What can I put on these shelves that will awaken people to that?’
A: Do you think witchcraft is being commodified?
E: Look, every single thing in our world is mediated by late stage capitalism, right? Everything has been disenfranchised from its original intent and purpose and is being mediated through this lens of making money, marketing, influencing, all that stuff. Just like anything else, there's a malevolent side and then there's a good side, and they're not always mutually exclusive either. I think the most important thing is peeling back those lenses and unlearning things about how the world works.
I found the best way to communicate the things that I want to communicate about the world is through selling products. People ask me a lot, ‘How do you feel about witchcraft being more commercial?’ How do you feel about companies like Sephora dipping into the witchcraft world?” It’s unfortunate that capitalism wraps its tentacles around everything, but alsoI first learned about sort of witchcraft at Barnes and Noble in a strip mall in my town, and the gatekeeping aspect isn’t useful. I want anybody to feel like they can access these things.
If a girl goes in and buys a spell kit at Sephora instead of like a bunch of makeup - and I love makeup - then I'm not mad about that.They're going to get a lot of messages around beauty and feeling inferior, so if they have the opportunity to choose a spell kit, then that's great. Everybody has to have an entry point right and going to be a product, most likely.
A: Out of curiosity, is there anything in witchcraft about ageing and how to embrace it?
E: Crone energy, bring it on! I'm 42 and I feel the best I've ever felt - and I think the witch archetype offers a lot of different ways to view ageing outside of patriarchy. You have this crone figure or the maiden mother. Crone is how people think about the triple goddess or the witch, and crones are amazing. They've been around the block, they can see a fuckboy coming a million miles away.I think the more women unlearn the negative ideas about ageing, the better.
The only reason that we think ageing is bad is because you’re past procreative age and so you're of no use to men anymore. I can't tell you how forward I am looking to the day where I am invisible - I can't wait until men think I'm a crone not worth their time.
A huge thanks to Erica! Check out a tour of the Haus Witch store in Salem below and visit the store online.
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I’m VERY into this post. i worry that if i went into that store i would literally empty my wallet onto the counter and want to run and grab stuff supermarket trolley style.
Because Erika is 42, I have to note that until her birthday, she is the answer to Life!! The UNIVERSE! And EVERYTHING!!! (Vide Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) Ask her to use her power for GOOD.