Broom Magick

To Bless a New Broom
Before using your new broom for normal household sweeping, carve or write on its handle (the words running from the tip to the bristles on one side): "I sweep in money and luck." On the other side (with the words running away from the bristles) carve or write: "I sweep out evil and poverty." Visualize as you clean the floors, and you'll do just that.

Consecrating Your New Broom
Whether you make your besom in the traditional way, or purchase one that appeals to you, it is traditional to name your broom as you would a horse. Then when you have chosen a name, anoint it with oil as you would a candle and consecrate it with the following words:
Besom of birch and willow tied or a besom of straw with cord tied
Be my companion and my guide.
On ashen shaft by moonlight pale
My spirit rides the windy gale
To magickal realms beyond both space and time.
To magickal lands my soul will sail.
In the company of the crone I'll ride
This besom of birch with willow tied
or besom of straw with cord tied.
So do I consecrate this magickal tree.
As I will it, so mote it be!

For Protection While Sleeping
Lay a broom beneath the bed. Anoint the headboard or bedposts with a protective essential oil, such as sandalwood, rose geranium, rosemary, or frankincense. Then sprinkle a circle of salt around the bed (while you are inside the circle's perimeter), and you shall be guarded against all ill until morning. Sweep up the salt with the broom when you rise.

To Safeguard Your Bed
If you must be away from home for some time and want to return home to a safe, clean bed, tuck your magickal broom into it, laying the bristles on the pillow. Nothing will disturb a bed so guarded.

To End Tiresome Visits
If you have someone that stays too long and interferes with your life, try one of the following spells. None of them will harm visitors; they merely impel them to leave. Place a broom upside down behind the door. If the guests still refuse to leave, stick a fork into the bristles of the inverted broom. Failing this, go into a room adjoining that which the guests are in, place the broom so that its handle points toward the offending visitors and intone the following:
Get thee hence beyond my door For I am weary to the core. Of course, you could just try the surest spell of all--ask them directly to leave!

To Purify Your Home
Before dawn, take a branch from any tree. Thank the tree for its gift and leave a coin or semi precious stone at its base in payment. Tobacco is another traditional offering among Native Americans. Next, obtain several brightly colored flowers on long stalks. Tie these flowers to the branch to fashion a sort of broom, then sweep the floor in every room of the house, visualizing the flowers of the broom absorbing negativity as you work. Then, still before sunrise, leave the broom at a crossroads. Traditionally in the southwest United States and Mexico, this ritual is repeated at the first of
each month.

Sources For Above Info:
Pauline Campanelli, Ancient Ways: Reclaiming Pagan Traditions
Pauline Campanelli, Wheel of the Year: Living the Magical Life
Scott Cunningham and David Harrington, The Magickal

Broom Folklore:

If a broom falls from your hands while you sweep, make a wish before retrieving it.

To bring rain, stand outside and swing a broom over your head in the air.

To safeguard your home against lightening strikes, cross a broom and a spade outside the main entrance to the house.

Placing a broom across any doorway allows your departed friends and family to speak to you if they so choose. As long as the broom remains in place, they can communicate freely.

To protect babies and children while they sleep, place a small broom underneath their pillows.

If nightmares are a problem, let a broom sweep them away. Hang one on the bedroom door to help you sleep peacefully.

Two brooms crossed and hung on a wall or nailed to a door guard the house, as does a broom placed on the ground before the door. The brooms are believed to disperse negative energies before they can bother you. You can also protect your home by taking two needles, making and equal-armed cross with them, and placing the cross inside broom. Then stand the broom behind a door.

Never move a broom from one house to another; it will bring the bad luck and dirt of your last residence into your new home. (This doesn't pertain to decorative brooms or those reserved solely for magickal use, only those actually used to sweep floors.) If, for some reason, you must move an ordinary broom, put it into the new house through an open window and the ill luck will be deterred.

The above info from:

Pauline Campanelli, Ancient Ways: Reclaiming Pagan Traditions
Pauline Campanelli, Wheel of the Year: Living the Magical Life

Broomstick Wedding:

In Welsh Tradition among the Gypsies, there was an old custom of the broomstick wedding. The couple solemnized their rites before witnesses by jumping over a broom placed in a doorway, without dislodging it. To dissolve the marriage, they had to reverse the process, jumping backwards out of the house, over the broom, before the same witnesses.

An old Yorkshire belief:
should a young girl inadvertently step over a broom handle she will become, a mother before she becomes a wife.

In Sicily, on Midsummer's Eve, a broom is placed outside the home to ward off any wickedness that might come knocking.

Never sweep after the sunset, or fear chasing away happiness or hurting a wandering soul.

Brooms laid across the doorways are believed to keep evil out.

Never use a broom when there is a dead person in the house.

Never bring old brooms into new houses as a broom becomes attached to houses so leave the old one behind.

Never walk on a broom.

Never use a broom to sweep outside the house,unless the inside of the house is cleaned first.

If you sweep under someone's feet tell them that you will dance at their wedding. Otherwise they will have bad luck.

A new broom should sweep dirt out of a house only after it has swept something in.

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