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Jillian Aurora was raised in an isolated religious cult and homeschooled, in a world where there was very little room to question what she had been taught or imagine a life outside of it. Her grandmother changed the trajectory of her life by helping her go to college, opening a much larger world of ideas, people, and possibilities. What followed was not a clean break from one life into another, but years of questioning what she had inherited, leaving behind beliefs and relationships that no longer fit, and figuring out what she actually wanted to carry forward. That freedom came with real losses, but it also gave her the chance to build a life much more deliberately.
Home became a big part of that rebuilding. Because home and community had not always felt reliable, Jillian became someone who created them wherever she went. Her doors were rarely closed for long. Friends, neighbors, animals, and people who needed somewhere to land found their way in,
gathering around tables for food, celebrations, long conversations, traditions invented along the way, and occasionally a little chaos. Over time, she came to understand that roots do not have to be something we inherit. We can grow them ourselves, through the places and people we choose to tend.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, that same habit of questioning what we inherit eventually found its way into her work as a historian. Jillian is completing graduate study at the University of Edinburgh, where much of her research has explored Spiritualism, mysticism, witchcraft, and the complicated role belief plays in people's lives. She is interested in why people believe what they believe, what those beliefs give them, and what happens when systems that offer meaning and belonging also become tools for fear, exclusion, or harm. Folklore became a natural extension of those questions: not simply old stories and superstitions, but traces of what people feared and hoped for, how they explained things they could not understand, and what they thought was important enough to pass along.
In 2025, Jillian moved from Pennsylvania to Transylvania and eventually made her home in Bran, Romania. Here, history and folklore are not difficult to find. They live in village traditions and family stories, old houses and churches, recipes and seasonal customs, local legends, and the mountains and forests themselves. Her research is now expanding into Transylvanian folklore and cultural memory, while living here has given her another opportunity to think about questions that have followed her for much of her life: what we inherit, what we leave behind, what we choose to keep, and how, eventually, we make ourselves at home.
About Jillian
Philosophy of Home
The hearth has always been more than a symbol. It was where warmth was kept, meals were prepared, work was done, and stories passed from one generation to the next. It was a practical center of survival and daily life, and from those ordinary acts came something deeper: memory, belonging, tradition, and a shared sense of home.
Mistress of the Hearth grew out of the belief that we still need that center. Our lives may look very different now, but the need to belong, to carry stories forward, and to create places of meaning has not disappeared.
The hearth does not ask us to preserve the past unchanged. It asks us to know what we have inherited, choose what is worth carrying forward, and make room for what we create ourselves. That is the philosophy beneath Jillian’s work: home as something we inherit, something we build, and something we tend.
An Invitation
My hearth is an open fire, and you are welcome here.
Whether you have come looking for a story, searching for a sense of home, curious about the lives and traditions that came before us, or simply drawn to linger awhile, there is room for you at my hearth.
Bring your questions, your stories, and whatever you carry with you.
The hearth has always been made richer by those gathered around it.
- Jillian Aurora