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HOME is a universal concept of central importance to religious thought. Like such other general symbols as sun and earth, it recurs from prehistoric times across cultures, in contrast to more culture-specific analogues such as the cross and the Kaʿbah. Besides its symbolic importance, home is also a significant locus of ritual in many traditions.

As with most sacred symbols, home is simultaneously an abstraction and a concrete object (as when it is embodied in a dwelling). The development of home as dwelling place can be traced from animal to human habitats; from the dens, windbreaks, and caves of nature to the tents, huts, and houses of culture. To automatically equate house and home, however, is to oversimplify, for home transcends all physical dwellings. Nonetheless, this distinction must be applied cautiously, for it assumes a secular separation of symbol and referent alien to preliterate thought.

The qualities that make home a sacred symbol include the way it traditionally functions as an ordering symbol. As such, it is a kind of maṇḍala, or symbol of wholeness, containing within itself all opposites. Among the Tiv of Nigeria these opposites are primarily social. Spatially, home (the compound of huts and granaries) represents kin and domestic group. Genealogy typically governs both hut and compound location. Consequently, a death in the family necessitates readjustment of hut positions to reflect the resultant social order. When a father dies, his son assumes the father's reception hut and allows the houses of the father's wives to decay. He then builds new huts for the widows among those of the heirs, usually brothers, of the deceased, who now become the women's new husbands through a practice known as levirate. Meanwhile, new huts are built for the son's wives adjacent to his reception hut. With the death of a compound head, fission of a compound often occurs so that sets of brothers and their families leave the compound with a new leader.

Commonly the home symbolizes a cosmic order, as exemplified by the tents of the prerevolutionary Mongol Buriats. The Buriats divided their dwellings into four sections: the south portion from the door to the hearth was the low-status half; that from the hearth back, the high-status half. Each half was then again divided, the west side being male and ritually pure, the east, female and ritually impure. Therefore male visitors would stay in the southwest quadrant, female in the southeast. The seat of honor for the host and high-status guest always rested in the northwest sector. Even objects were categorized in this way; valuables and hunting equipment, for example, were male, household utensils female.

Most Native American cultures saw similar cosmic correlations, leading them to characterize their dwellings as both temple and house. For the Plains Indians, the floor of the tipi represented the earth, the walls the sky, and the poles the paths linking earth and humanity to the sky and Wakantanka ("the great mystery"). A small altar of bare earth behind the fireplace, often with sod and roots removed and the earth pulverized and swept clean, represented Mother Earth. Sweet grass, cedar, or sage were burned here as incense to the spirits.

In Africa, the layout of Dogon villages and houses also correlates cosmos, village, house, and individual in a series of scales. Both village and house approximate the figure of a man, some of whose "body parts" are female. The outer door of the house is a phallus, its kitchen door a vagina, and the entire ground floor a woman on her back, ready for sex. The ceiling is her male partner. Such cosmic correlations of home and universe are common to the folklore of many archaic cultures.

Homelessness

When connections linking self, ancestors, society, and cosmos dissolve, homelessness ensues. Dread of such a state is universally expressed in conceptions of the "unhoused" dead. In ancient Greek and Roman thought, for example, the unburied were doomed to wander forever as phantoms incapable of stopping for the offerings necessary to rescue them. The connection to home is also threatened by enslavement, which severs all bonds to family, tribe, and village, and by banishment, a punishment frequently imposed in preindustrialized cultures.

Consecration and Domestic Rituals

Consecration initiates the process whereby dwelling becomes home. Worldwide, various kinds of foundation rites effect this transformation. Typically they begin by employing divination (such as the elaborate system of feng-shui in China) or astrology (as in India) to select the appropriate site. Exorcism follows, and then the foundation is laid according to the directions of a priest or sorcerer. Archaeological evidence indicates the universality of foundational "charms" from at least as early as the Shang period in China (c. 1751–1028 bce), when humans were customarily sacrificed at each house post; similar customs were observed into the twentieth century by groups such as the Maori. Thought to underlie such blood-related offerings is the belief that victims of violent death become demons who make powerful house spirits. Animal substitutes have long been used in foundation rites, as among the Arabs of ancient Moab (present-day Jordan), who sacrifice a sheep to pacify the jinn before laying a tent. Other surrogate victims have included statues (Rome), images of the house god (India), and animal parts, pottery, and vegetable remains (Europe).

In the Korean shamanistic tradition known as mudang, this essential process of consecration (sŏngjo baji ) is repeatedly reenacted even today to symbolize cosmic renewal. Typically, pine branches are hung on the gate and white papers on the roof beams of the central hall room to protect and renew the home. Additional rituals of renewal, the Ttŏkkosa and Sulkosa, are held at every full moon to correlate cosmic change to the building ground of the new home: as the moon appears the ground is renewed. In this tradition the house replaces the more common archaic symbols of mountains or cosmic trees as symbols of the axis mundi.

In Judaism, ḥanukat-habayit, "dedication of the home," is based on Deuteronomy 20:5 ("What man is there that has built a new house and has not dedicated it? Let him go back to his home, lest he die in the battle and another man dedicate it"). No established form exists for this ceremony beyond the uttering of appropriate blessings and the affixing of a mezuzah, a parchment believed to protect the occupants from committing sin, inscribed: "And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates" (Dt. 6:9, 11:20).

In some traditions, domestic rituals augment or replace practices otherwise performed in sacred places specifically set aside for religious purposes. Daily prayers are common to many religions, but more elaborate home-based rituals occur in the post-Vedic Hindu pūja rites, in which images of deities must be attended daily. In the morning the deity is awakened, bathed, dressed, perfumed, garlanded, and fed. Food is again proffered at noon and at night, with an evening song closing the day. Domestic rituals also significantly characterize Orthodox Judaism, Korean mudang, Haitian Voodoo, and the resurgent practice of witchcraft, or Wicca.

Pollution

In contrast to consecration, which is designed to vitalize and protect a dwelling by installing a strong protective spirit, prophylactic processes are enacted to exorcise malevolent spirits or evil substances, the most malevolent of which involve blood as in giving birth, fatally wounding an occupant, or natural death. Death especially pollutes a dwelling, so that its occupants must be ritually purified before freely resuming their lives. Among the Yoruba, for example, if purification rites fail and a dwelling is believed to be ghost-infested, it will be abandoned.

Pollution almost universally attends the onset of menstruation as well, and a young woman is frequently required to leave her home until ritual purification renders her fit again for home life. This ritual is enacted by various tribal cultures, such as that of the Bolivian Yuracare who require her to live in a specially constructed leaf hut for four days. Similarly, an almost universal pattern of purification rites attends childbirth in preindustrial cultures. Houses that fail in these various struggles against pollution are often considered demonic, as Leviticus 14:43–44 describes: "If the disease has spread in the house, it is a malignant leprosy in the house; it is unclean." The motifs in folklore of people-eating and haunted houses are additional manifestations of this phenomenon.

On a daily basis, too, pollution of the home must be guarded against, as Judaism well illustrates. In a traditionally observant Jewish home, all food must be kosher, meaning that it must conform to Jewish dietary laws developed from Leviticus 11:1–43 and must be prepared properly, using one set of dishes and cooking utensils for meat, another for dairy products. If mixing accidentally occurs, the polluted object becomes impure and must be rendered ritually and legally fit again, or discarded.

Death and Dwelling Places

"Home" means belonging, dwelling in one's proper habitat. In this sense, the term applies equally to the living and the dead, the grave being as much a home for the dead as a house is for the living. The nearly universal custom of bestowing grave goods on the dead underscores this connection, as does the custom of constructing tiny dwellings specifically for the soul, a practice common in the Yang-shao period of China and in ancient Egypt. The present-day Sakai of the Malay Peninsula similarly fill huts with doll-sized furniture and implements for use of the dead, and images of ancestors are kept in miniature "soul houses" in parts of Papua and Melanesia.

Such intimate connection between home and deceased family members is dramatically expressed in the dwellings of the Kwakiutl of the Northwest Coast of North America. For them, the house itself lives as a kind of double of its owner, becoming "empty" or "broken" when he dies. When the family regroups around its new head, a new house is built. Characteristics of the "life" of the house are its "speaker's posts," open-mouthed figures through which ceremonial words of welcome emerge as if from the ancestor himself, and the gigantic mouth of the frontal pole that "swallows" those who enter.

Household Shrines

From Neolithic times, the practice of setting aside a corner or room of a dwelling as a shrine has been common to many traditions. In ancient Egypt this domestic shrine, usually recessed in the wall of the central hall and adorned with religious scenes, contained a figure of a household god made of pottery or precious metal. Among the Banyankole in Africa each hut contains a special grass-covered, hard-beaten mound of earth, about a foot high, to hold sacred objects. Among the Gold Coast tribes, an honored place is set aside in one corner of the home for special offerings to the domestic spirit known as the suhman. The Yoruba place a humanized image of the house god Olarosa at the door and make a recess in the wall for their personal fetish as well. Among the Udmurts, the vorsud or clan god customarily resided on a shelf in the outhouse. Household altars also prominently characterize domestic observances in China, Japan, and Tibet.

House Spirits, Domestic Deities, and Family

Almost universally, home, as opposed to mere dwelling, is vivified by a spirit of some sort, usually an ancestor. Evidence in the form of cave burials, skull cults, and sacrifices to the dead dates from the Paleolithic era, suggesting a sacred connection linking ancestors with dwelling places. In pre-Christian Europe, the house god was commonly represented as a snake, which was believed to be a vehicle for the souls of the dead. Among the Lithuanians, for example, the paterfamilias typically maintained his serpent (givojitos, "the living ones"; givoitos, "immortal ancestor") in a corner of the house where he offered it food and sacrificed to it.

An elaborate system of household deities existed among the ancient Romans: the manes were the benign gods, an undifferentiated collective of ancestors; the penates were gods of the store closet; and the lar familiaris was the primitive concept of home personified, to which offerings were made on all family anniversaries. Among the Teutons, the household spirit often assumed manikin form. The cofgodar ("house gods") of the Anglo-Saxons have their counterparts today in the Kobolde and Butzen of the Germans; Puck of the English; the brownies of the Scots; and the gardsvor, tomte, and nisse of the Scandinavians, all still frequently believed to be spirits of ancestors.

Among the Slavs every house has a domovoi, the spirit of the founder of the family. At festivals commemorating ancestors, this little old grayhaired man in old-fashioned dress is honored, too. Before the family moves, its members pray, offering bread and salt to entice the house spirit to accompany them. Before Lent, the head of the house invites the domovoi to supper by going into the yard and bowing to the four cardinal points. In Russia the spirit is named according to location: in the cattle shed he is the chlevnik; in the yard, dvorovoi; in the drying kiln ovinnik; and in the bathroom, bannik.

Among the shamanistic Samoyed of the Arctic coast of Russia, the domestic spirits (haha ), usually one male and one female, are represented by oddly shaped roots and stones or anthropomorphic figures kept on a special haha sledge. Whenever the family moves, special haha reindeer carry it. No woman, even a shaman, may uncover the haha or care for the domestic gods. The haha sledge ordinarily stands behind the chum ("tent") on the outer side of the si, the place of honor, occupied only by the eldest family male.

In most West African tribes, the family fetish and a class of ancestral spirits known as the "well-disposed ones" protect their particular village and family. Among the Kenyahs, a rude image of the minor deity Bali Atap, who protects the house against sickness and attack, stands beside the gangway connecting house and riverbank. A different god, Bali Utong, brings prosperity.

Among the Ainu of Japan a family spirit, inaw, is invested with life, dwelling in a special corner of the hut behind the heirlooms. In times of trouble he is stuck in the hearth and offered prayers. The incorporeal eingsaung nat of the Burmese scares off burglars; it lives in the southern post of the house, which is devotionally adorned with leaves. The Burmese also pray to images of respected relatives as house guardians.

The Sacred Hearth Fire

The sacred quality of household spirits and deities has frequently been associated with one of the most common attributes of home, the sacred hearth fire. In Brahmanism, the householder rekindled the sacred fire whenever religious rites were performed. For all domestic ceremonies (smārta-karman ) the fire of a clay hearth (grhyāgni ) was sufficient. Every morning the family assembled around the fire in prayer before "feeding" it with bits of consecrated wood (samidh ) from the palāśa tree. If the smoldering embers were inadvertently extinguished, the household would be plunged into chaos; only for an expiatory ceremony (prāyaścitta ) was the fire intentionally rekindled. The fire god, Agni, functioned as both the god of the household and of the clan, protecting both from evil, much as Hestia did in Greece and Vesta in Rome.

Among Native Americans of the Northern Hemisphere the sacred fire burned by day in the hearth at the center of the dwelling. Fire, a gift of the gods, symbolized the sun, much as the surrounding home symbolized the universe. The door or tent flap was positioned facing the east to catch the morning's first rays.

Since ancient times the sacredness of the hearth fire has been symbolized in China by the stove god, Zao-wang, and in Japan by the kitchen gods Okitsuhiko and Okitsuhime and the god of the stove, kama no kami. Bronze Age Chinese dwellings all had a central opening for smoke called "the center of the house." The spot beneath it was sacred to the tutelary god of the ground on which the house stood. Here food was prepared and eaten, family council held, and the god worshiped. Originally, the god represented the mystery of fire, guardianship of the house ground, and the family's ideals and traditions.

Secularization

In traditional cultures, "home" is a sacred symbol capable of transforming chaos into cosmos and engendering personal wholeness. But for many industrial and postindustrial cultures, home has become a purely secular institution, particularly in those societies that accept Plato's denigration of the private sphere associated with home in favor of the public one associated with politics. Accordingly, two strongly opposed orders are thought to govern existence. One, to which all humans belong, is the natural order of things determined by biology, in which woman bears children and man maintains the life of the family. The center of this existence, which is ruled by necessity (anagkē ), is the hierarchically arranged household (oikia ) dominated by the eldest male. Contrasting with and transcending this order, however, is the city-state, the polis, in which every member is equal. In this "higher" realm of the polis, members are most truly alive, as they engage in the two "highest" forms of human activity, action (praxis ) and speech (lexis ). But only citizens can be members—women, children, slaves, and foreigners are automatically excluded.

Both implicitly and explicitly, this praise of the public and denigration of the private elevates males to a place of existence from which women, by virtue of their anatomy, are barred. Historically, the public sphere of men is extolled while the domestic sphere of women, the home, is both trivialized and despised (except briefly in Victorian times in the West when it was sentimentalized). Thus, much as Freud in Totem and Taboo openly derides the concept of God as a believer's internalized image of his or her father, many contemporary Western feminists, Marxists, and utopian thinkers now ignore or dispise the institution of home. For them home has become an ugly image of privatism instead of a symbol of cosmic order and personal wholeness.

Bibliography

A contemporary work that deals with the religious significance of home and related aspects is my book The Sacred and the Feminine: Toward a Theology of Housework (New York, 1982). Within the context of the nineteenth-century American doctrine of "the cult of true womanhood," Catherine E. Beecher's A Treatise on Domestic Economy (New York, 1855) proselytizes about many aspects of home from a popular perspective. One of the best treatments of the psychological significance of houses is Gaston Bachelard's La poétique de l'espace (Paris, 1957), translated by Maria Jolas as The Poetics of Space (New York, 1964); esp. chaps. 1–3. For a comparative visual study of aboriginal domestic architecture from around the world, Colin Duly's The House of Mankind (London, 1979) presents an outstanding collection of photographs with accompanying analysis. A useful discussion of the religious significance of homecoming is Charles E. Winquist's Homecoming: Interpretation, Transformation and Individuation (Missoula, Mont., 1978). For an easily readable account of home-centered ritual within Judaism, The Jewish Catalog, edited by Richard Siegel, Michael Strassfeld, and Sharon Strassfeld (Philadelphia, 1973), is unsurpassed. Two excellent sources on domestic rituals in the classical world are Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges's La cité antique (Paris, 1864), translated by Willard Small as The Ancient City: A Study of the Religion, Laws and Institutions of Greece and Rome, 11th ed. (Gloucester, Mass., 1956); and Georges Dumézil's La religion romaine archaïque, 2d ed., rev. (Paris, 1974), the first edition of which was translated by Philip Krapp as Archaic Roman Religion, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1970). The classic analysis of the persistent split between the public and private spheres is Hannah Arendt's chapter "The Polis and the Household," in The Human Condition (Chicago, 1958). Helpful short discussions on various symbolic and ritual aspects of home in specific cultures appear in Irving Goldman's The Mouth of Heaven: An Introduction to Kwakiutl Religious Thought (New York, 1981); Paul Bohannan and Laura Bohannan's Tiv Economy (Evanston, Ill., 1968); Sechin Jagchid and Paul Hyer's Mongolian Culture and Society (Boulder, Colo. 1979); and Jung Young Lee's Korean Shamanistic Rituals (New York, 1981). An excellent general discussion of the theme of home as cosmic image occurs in Mircea Eliade's The Sacred and the Profane (New York, 1968).