Winifred Hodge Rose
My portrait of our housewight, Elmindreda, working at her task of spiritual cleansing of our home.
This account of my own experiences with a Heathen housewight over many years is meant partly as a humorous and light-hearted entertainment, but on a deeper level, also to inspire others to acquire a housewight and to pay close and friendly attention to it. Especially important in this endeavor is the use of a focused, receptive imagination, as is done in spaeworking, to create a space between the world as humans usually perceive it, and the wight-worlds, where we and wights can meet and interact. With practice and experience, you will find this “double view” of your home in wight-space as well as human-space to be a comfortable and natural way to enjoy and bless your home life. Hopefully, this tale will offer useful examples and ideas about how to do this, and encouragement that indeed, one’s efforts do pay off over time, by gaining an active, capable and friendly housewight to enrich your home life.
One of the things I love best about our religion is that it opens our eyes, hearts and souls to a myriad of other beings who share the worlds with us, making our lives immeasurably richer. Housewights are “recruited” from a number of types of these beings, including the “species” of wights that are often called brownies, gnomes, trolls, tomtes, heimchen, and many other names.
When I first decided to invite a housewight into my home, I found a little birchbark hut, meant as a Yule-ornament. I set it up on my windowsill and surrounded it with houseplants, a few rocks, and a shallow bowl of water as a pond. I added seven or eight tiny bird and animal figurines and a dish of food, and considered I had made a very inviting habitat to lure a housewight with. Though he was slow in coming, one eventually did show up, but I must confess that he was less than satisfactory. He was very undeveloped and lethargic, and spent most of his time sitting in his hut and sighing, or occasionally for a change, wandering around his little garden and sighing. Possibly the weight of the huge city bore down upon him, as it did upon me (I was spending a year in the Washington DC area on a job detail). After continuing this way for some time without improvement, I decided to take a different tack and look for some kind of image that expressed what I wanted in a housewight, and invite one to take up residence in that. I couldn’t bring myself to banish the little sighing-wight, but since I was returning to Illinois, a natural parting of the ways occurred. For all I know, though, the little wight is still there upon the windowsill where I was staying, sighing among the houseplants…
Before heading back to Illinois, I took a few days vacation, whitewater rafting and hiking in backwoods Maryland. I stopped one day at a small tourist shop in the middle of nowhere for a sandwich, and was met with a delightful surprise when I stepped inside: a display of wonderful trolls of all shapes and sizes, made with natural materials like fiber, bark and nuts. Though I examined each troll with much enjoyment, there was one right in the middle that I already knew was “it.” She had about her the sense of an excited kid in the back of the classroom, waving a hand in the air and shouting “Me! Choose me, teacher!” She was made entirely of fox-colored fiber-hair from head to toe, with two long tufts of hair that stuck out on either side of her face like mammoth-tusks. Two big, beady eyes and a large acorn nose were all I could see of her face, but it was quite enough to charm! She held a hoe in one hand, several dried beans in the other, and in front of her on the grass topping her tree-trunk stand was a row of beans she had already planted. Best of all, she and the other trolls all had proper cow’s tails curled behind them, not horse tails or no tail, as I have seen other trolls incorrectly made. My wight-image even had a tiny hemlock-cone tangled coyly in her tail-tuft. She was a very authentic little troll, and it was love at first sight!
Within a very few days, she indicated her trust in me and her intention of staying by telling me her name: Elmindreda. (The first little wight never had given me his name, if he even had one, and no name I tried to give him seemed to stick.) Elmindreda’s surname, Puckwudgie, was adopted much later–more about that, anon. I took her back to Illinois and set her up in a relatively quiet and private corner of my house where I had other Heathen holy objects.
She seemed right at home, and made her presence rather emphatically known, right up front. I was annoyed one day to discover that as I had been walking around the house, I had apparently stepped on several raspberries which I had not noticed, and was tracking red juice across my floors. My grown kids were with me at the time, and I blamed them for dropping raspberries around. As it turns out, though, none of us had touched the raspberries that day. That left Elmindreda! I carefully examined her for signs of raspberry juice and found none, but she had a distinctly “Who, me??” expression on her face. All of us realized that Elmindreda was sending us a message: “Share your raspberries with me, or expect messy floors!” So we do, of course, and have not trodden since upon any raspberries. Elmindreda also receives other offerings of food and drink. She likes most things; among her favorites are oatmeal, rye crackers spread with butter, herb tea, and hard cider. She loves all kinds of berries!
As Elmindreda gained steadily in main (soul-power) from all the feeding, bloting and attention she was receiving, and as simultaneously I was developing stronger spae-sight ability, I grew more able to see her with other eyes and got to know her on a much more personal and active level. Elmindreda joins us in all our home blots, and receives her portion of the holy drink in a tiny drinking-horn made from the very tip of the cow’s horn. It is still a pretty big horn in comparison with her size, and she likes it that way because it makes her feel like a doughty Viking downing his mead from an aurochs horn! The little Thor’s hammer I gave her, hung around where her neck supposedly is under all that hair, adds to the overall image in her mind. She is very strong for her size, being a troll, and does not seem to even notice the weight of a full horn two-thirds her own size, as she swigs it.
Trolls are not at any time noted for their table-manners, and I must concede that having a huge eggplant-shaped nose and no apparent mouth must make drinking out of a horn a bit difficult. Even so, Elmindreda seems to be unnecessarily messy when she is slurping the blot-drink. She believes that holy drink spilled over her hair will make it grow fuller and healthier, so I suspect she spills it on purpose. She may also feel that since we drench the harrow outside for the landwights, it is only appropriate to drench the housewight inside! Sometimes she leaves quite a little puddle around herself by the time she is done bloting. But, it is not for one friend to criticize another friend’s bloting-style, I suppose. When the blot is over, she trots behind me out to our harrow in the backyard and basks in the landwight-blessing as I pour out the drink.
One of the things that seems to have given Elmindreda a big step forward in developing more personality and energy, was moving her dwelling-image out of the secluded “holy place” I had originally placed her in. I wanted her present at a Yule gathering I was planning, and moved her onto a table standing between the living-room and dining-room areas, right in the middle of all the action. She much approved of this change of location and refused to move anywhere else, settling down happily into the curling tangle of a large philodendron plant behind her. There, any guest (Heathen or non-Heathen) who enters our house is brought to be introduced to her, and she never fails to charm! Indeed, she is quite irresistible, and the standard reaction of every visitor is to remark on the sense of personality she seems to have. Over the years she has been the delight of young nieces as they have grown from infancy to young womanhood.
Elmindreda was most pleased by the acquisition of a little curved-lid chest I bought for her to keep her ever-accumulating belongings in. Inside, she keeps the tools of her craft and her other belongings: her spade and rake, her cup and dish for offerings, a supply of several miniature brooms since she goes through them pretty fast, and some dustcloths and dishcloths cut out of an old nightgown. When she has finished using her cloths, she rinses them and hangs them hidden among the stems of the philodendron to dry. Not content with this stash, she requested a bottle of linseed oil for polishing the furniture. I am still looking for a bottle small enough for her to handle, and large enough to pour the thick linseed oil into. I am glad I have finally found a useful function in life, however: serving as a mail-order catalog for a little housewight!
Elmindreda made a nest for herself out of dry leaves, twigs, moss, and sprigs of evergreen, and she always smells as good as a breath of forest when she gets up from her nest. Still, I wondered whether this nest was really comfortable for her, and offered to make her a little comforter to sleep in. She just stared at me in patient resignation, as though she couldn’t believe even a human could be so stupid, pointedly closed her eyes, and snuggled deeper into her crackly nest.
One day I noticed she had several big snarls in her hair, with little hemlock-cones tangled into them. I assumed this had happened from sleeping in her nest, and was about to offer to comb her hair and remove the debris from it. Before I could state my intention, she fixed me with an offended glare and informed me that these were her hair-ornaments, and she’d thank me to keep my meddling hands off them! She was markedly cool toward me for the rest of the day. I must say that having Elmindreda around has opened the door to wholly new experiences in my life. Feeling chastened by a nine-inch tall, hair-proud troll for a whole day is certainly one of them!
Good-hearted and endearing little wight as she is, nevertheless Elmindreda does have a bit of a temper, and has little patience with what she considers to be human follies. When she fixes you with her fierce glare, you tend to remember suddenly that she is, after all, of the troll-kin, and it occurs to you to wonder just how closely she keeps in touch with her larger and more bloodthirsty kinfolk!
Elmindreda is fiercely territorial about our house and land, and pays close attention to all wights who set one foot, claw, or feather on our property. Most of them are clearly harmless and escape her wrath, but there are two categories of beings she really hates: door-to-door missionaries, and possums. Though she depends on Thor and myself to rid our territory of religious solicitors, and on the dogs to take care of the possums, she is our “first alert,” and eggs us on by going into a frenzy of shrill chittering and squeaking.
When she realizes a possum has invaded, she grabs up her sturdy little gardening-spade and holds it as though it were a lance, and she a knight on horseback, preparing for the charge! Though she has no horse, and actually remains stationary during this, her enraged bouncing up and down does indeed make her look like she is galloping on horseback. I asked her once why she hates possums so much, and she replied darkly “Things ride them.” She won’t tell me a word more about it, though.
After the dread intruders are gone, Elmindreda grimly takes out her broom, with the air of a warrior bringing forth the ultimate weapon, and fiercely whisks away all trace of them from the premises. I am very curious to know whether she has had encounters with any wights more otherworldly and less solid than the despised possums, and have not as yet directly perceived such events. One may have happened, though. Late one night, my daughter and I were unnerved to notice that our dogs had their attention most firmly fixed on the dark corner of the room where Elmindreda was, and would not budge their attention one bit for our calling them. They cocked their heads back and forth, as though listening to instructions, and then both burst up and galloped out into the backyard, rushing about under the bushes in a hunting frenzy. Though we heard no voices of any other animal, the dogs were wrestling and fighting with something out there, that kept them busy for some time but left no traces for me to find later. They returned to the house and settled back into their positions of attention to Elmindreda, cocking their ears back and forth again. Strange doings…..
Though I have written all along as though Elmindreda “speaks” to me, this is not exactly how our communication takes place. Up until recently, she did not even vocalize, that I was aware of. I am able to understand her either by her behavior or by communication in some other mode–perhaps telepathy would be the closest term for it. Her recent growth in main has led her to be much more vocal in the other-space where we meet, however. She murmurs and mutters to herself as she works, and as described above, squeaks angrily when threatened or disturbed. I have yet to hear a single comprehensible word out of her, though. I don’t know whether she really is talking some unknown language (Trollspeak?), or thinks she is, or whether she just likes to make noise. I am hoping that as she grows still more in main, she actually will start talking comprehensibly in a language I can understand. Or she could teach me hers!
Elmindreda most likes to murmur to herself when she is at her favorite task: sweeping with her little straw broom. It is hilarious to watch her as she goes about this, since her movements are nothing like a human being’s–at least, not like an adult’s. She scoots about erratically like a waterbug or a wind-up toy–in fact, very much like a wind-up toy, because when she careens up against furniture or walls, she will just ricochet off into another random direction, without it fazing her at all. She does tend to go through brooms pretty rapidly, though, since they don’t take the wear and tear the way her sturdy little self does. The more she is enjoying her work, the faster and more erratically she moves, and can reach almost blinding speed and complexity of motion when she is really psyched. It is not a good idea for me to watch her at this stage, because she makes me seasick.
When we sweep the floor, we do it in some systematic pattern, gathering all the dust into a little pile and scooping it into a dustpan for disposal. This is not Elmindreda’s way, and the first time I watched her at it, I did not know whether to laugh or to be indignant and wonder whether she really knew her business as a housewight, or not. She starts off at top speed, wherever in the room she feels like, and scuttles about totally randomly, briskly swishing her broom and causing clouds of dust to fly up into the air. She appears to be doing nothing but distribute the dust even more widely around the room than it had been before. After watching a few minutes of this, I offered to get her a dustpan, as a hint that she was supposed to be collecting the dust, not redistributing it. Every hair bristling with indignation, Elmindreda swept scornfully by me, pointedly ignoring my well-meant offer, and the dust continued to fly. I watched and wondered what to do about it.
As I watched more closely, though, I realized that when the dust flew up into the air, it gradually became tinged with gold, and then evaporated into nothingness. It wasn’t falling down and resettling around the room again. I also noted that unfortunately, all her vigorous efforts were having little effect on the clouds of dog hair drifting around the floor. After further observation and careful thought, I finally realized that it was not “dust” she was sweeping, but something else entirely. She was cleaning our house of other undesired residues, on some other plane, and was doing a fine job of it, leaving a calm and pleasant atmosphere behind her when her work was done. It is not always so calm for the dogs, though: sometimes she will mischievously sweep their noses as they’re napping, whereupon they begin to snuffle and twitch, and finally wake themselves up, sneezing.
One particularly significant time, I watched as Elmindreda struggled with an unpleasant-looking, sticky, soot-covered cord of some sort, that had twisted one end of itself around her broom while disappearing through the wall on the other end. I started toward her to assist, and received a fierce glare in return: obviously, she wanted to deal with this herself (I never seem to learn…). She finally untangled the cord and got rid of it somehow–I never did see how, though I suspect she may have eaten it. I don’t know what it was, but I was very glad she did get rid of it for us. I definitely did not want that thing lying around the house.
There was one thing that I think had more to do than anything else with Elmindreda’s rapid development into an energetic, competent wight with a strong and unique personality. I am sharing it with you because you may want to try something along these lines with your own wight.
I have the privilege of having a very wise and kind idis, an ancestral spirit-teacher, Eadgitha, who teaches me spaecraft and other things. I generally fare to meet her in a deep forestland. One evening when I went to visit her there, she took me by the hand and led me through the forest to a lovely glade. There was the vague shape of a house in the middle of it, blurred as though I were looking at it through a distance under water. She indicated that this was my house. I realized that my task was to envision the house, inside and out, into a solidity and distinctness that would hold steadily through time and not fade away, and to use this as my home-base in the spaelands. Though I had named my house in This-World “Wealdfaesten Hall” (meaning “forest fastness/stronghold”) several years ago, I realized that only now was I seeing the real Wealdfaesten Hall, of which my physical house is the reflection. Eadgitha gave me her blessing and left me to my work.
Skipping over the work I did on the exterior of the house, I will pick up the tale again as I began to shape the sitting-room. After solidifying the ceiling, walls, and floor (the latter requiring quite a bit of negotiation with the house, as to whether it would be flagstone or hardwood, but I finally got the hardwood I wanted), I tried to place the fireplace and hearth. I wanted it on an inside wall so it could share the fireplace with the room on the other side of the wall. But the hearth did not want to be there, and kept migrating itself to the center of the outside wall. I finally gave up and let it stay there, whereupon it rewarded me by sprouting a beautiful and uniquely-designed oaken mantelpiece: a flat-topped arch that encompassed the entire fireplace and was carved with dozens of bees and thistle-flowers. I felt this was a worthy reward for letting the house have its way in this, and it inspired me to construct a matching carved wooden armchair with red cushions.
I sat down beside my new hearth to rest from my labors, and very soon thereafter, Elmindreda appeared on the hearthstone, broom in hand. She took one step forward, gazed around the mostly empty room, and a look of exaltation spread over her face. She zoomed off and started sweeping in a transport of joy. Everywhere she swept, the floor took on greater solidity and a beautiful sheen. Her erratic pattern of movement around the room caused a most peculiar mottled pattern of less-solid and more-solid floor, but at last she had covered every inch of it and gazed upon her work with a beaming smile. Watching her, I realized that the acquisition of this soul-house marked a great milestone in her career: she emanated the sense of serene intentness that comes only from those who have discovered and achieved their true vocation in life. By some arcane trollish custom, it also appeared that Elmindreda’s new status in the world entitled her to a second name, and so she chose Puckwudgie.
She worked diligently and creatively in both our houses, both versions of Wealdfaesten Hall, and grew rapidly in might and main, personality and character. So, I suggest that those of you who wish to empower your own housewights might like to try the same thing: find a landscape of the soul that calls to you and build a house there, using your will, concentration and imagination, and inviting the help of your housewight in the whole process. Expect it to take quite some time to complete, just as a physical house would, and enjoy all the stages along the way! Also be aware that soul-houses tend to have minds of their own, and building and furnishing them tends to be a process of negotiation rather than the imposition of one’s will on inert matter. I think you will find, though, that the end result is better than anything you could have imagined all on your own. Once your house is built, continue to visit there and keep it in order, for the refreshment and wellbeing of your soul and your housewight’s! The house will grow and change, just as you do in your life, and will reflect the state of your soul.
It is only by seeing the role of the housewight in building and maintaining one’s soul-house, that one comes to a realization of how important housewights are in our lives, humble though they appear to be. For those of you who have yet no housewight, starting a soul-house might be a very good way to seek or lure one to you.
So, that is the tale of my friend Elmindreda Puckwudgie, a most endearing little wight and a joy to share my home with. Even though she gets rather impatient and put-out with me from time to time, I know she is fond of me as well. Recently, just as I was drifting off to sleep, I felt the lightest of touches on my hair: Elmindreda was stroking it gently with her furry little mitt. I smiled as I slid into sleep, blessed by the goodwill of a most worthy housewight. Waes thu a hal, Elmindreda: Be thou ever hale!
End-note: Though I wrote this article for the journal Lina: The Journal of Frigga’s Web, almost three decades ago, Elmindreda is still with us, a core part of our home. She still likes to have her troll image moved around the house to be in whatever area is seeing the most activity at the time. Since we moved out to the country more than twenty years ago, though, and are visited nightly by many wild critters, she has become more relaxed about the possum issue, otherwise she would be in a permanent state of agitation!
Elmindreda has grown in stature and dignity over the years, and at times seems more like a Dis, a noble ancestral lady, rather than a quirky little troll, though the troll-image I describe here is still her home base and still reflects much of her nature. Wights grow and change, as do we, and over the years we grow and change together, weaving human-space and wight-space more firmly together, to the benefit and blessing of all.
Elmindreda tends the soul-garden with care.