Floor Wash
The floor wash is the bath's domestic counterpart: where the bath clears a person, the wash clears a building, and it is the standard remedy for a house that will not 'hold' money, a shop that will not keep customers, or a home where a crossed condition has settled.
Blueing, the laundry whitener sold as balls or as 'blue anil', is one of the classic additions and also one of the most commercialised: it is an ordinary household article that acquired a magical use, and the corpus records it as a substance in its own right. Modern 'floor wash' products are frequently coloured water with a fragrance; the tradition's own washes are made from herbs.
Symbols and forms
- Alternate Names
- Floor washWash waterScrubHouse wash
Practice
- Purpose
- To clear a building of a condition, to draw trade and money to a business, and to keep a household from being crossed at its door
- Tools
- Broom (Besom)Bowl
- Magical Uses
- PurificationProtectionProsperityHome blessingHex breaking
Nature and meaning
- Kind
- Practice
Details
- Region
- African American households of the South and the northern cities; sold commercially nationwide
- Era
- Twentieth century to the present
- Background
The floor wash is the bath's domestic counterpart: where the bath clears a person, the wash clears a building, and it is the standard remedy for a house that will not 'hold' money, a shop that will not keep customers, or a home where a crossed condition has settled. It belongs to the same commercial world as the condition oils - the wash waters were bottled and sold by the same suppliers - and it is one of the practices most often described by the merchants Long studied.
- Practice
The wash is made by adding a prepared water, a cologne, a condition oil, a powder or a boiled herb preparation to the scrub water, and the floor is washed with it, usually from the back of the house toward the front door and out, with the dirty water carried away from the property. In a shop the same is done to the threshold and the walk; red brick dust or war water may go down at the door afterwards, and the washing is often repeated on a set day until the condition shifts.
- Materials
- Florida WaterHoyt's CologneVan Van OilCondition OilsRed Brick DustBlack SaltWar WaterBlueing BallsSea SaltCamphor
- Keywords
- Floor washWash waterHouse cleansingBusiness luckThresholdScrubDomestic
- Ethical Note
The wash is domestic work before it is magic, and in the tradition it is usually the woman of the house who does it, on her knees, with her own prayer - a fact the commercial suppliers rarely mention when they sell a bottled 'floor wash' as a product. Washing a home that is not yours, or a business in competition with a client's, is the kind of work a worker is asked to justify.
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