Question: What's a good, basic home protection spell? Preferably one that takes into account the presence of children and/or pets.
Answer: The first, most important, and most powerful thing you can do is set up an ancestral altar and then begin and maintain ongoing ancestral devotions. If you can talk to your dead every day, that is the best. But try at least once a week. Encourage your children to talk to them. Go before the altar and announce important milestones for the family. Show them your child’s report card…even little milestones are important. Make your ancestors an active part of your family. Most importantly, ask them for their protection. This is all the more important when there are children present. Children are the inheritors of the ancestral line and the dead have a vested interest in keeping them safe.
I’d also suggest cleaning the home thoroughly on a mundane level, and maintaining this regularly. The cleaner your house is, the less space there is for negative energy, malignant sendings, etc. to find purchase. I also think it’s necessary to make regular offerings to the genus loci, the spirits of home, place, and land. All of this will go a long way toward keeping you in harmonious relationship with your portion of the world and that aids massively in protection.
There are things that I recommend doing after this, certain hoodoo charms, and then raising a full energetic shield, but if you do nothing else, and before you do anything else, get right with your dead.