How to use white sage smudge

[dark_path]

How do you guys use sage? Obviously its a somewhat ubiquitous herb, but what methods and incantations or chants do you use with it?

 

[Yazata]

None. If I burn this on its own I take a small piece, just part of a leaf, and light that. Blow it out and walk around the place, trace a banishing pentagram in the corners, but no formal ritual / spell / etc.
I like that its smell lingers, so if I have burned even such a small piece, if I enter that room a day later or so I'll still smell it.

 

[PinealisGlandia]

Honestly, the most frequent reason I have for burning sage is if I had a guest over who had a foul attitude. Constant complaints/gossip? Totally burning sage over your chair as soon as you leave the house.

When our son moved out in a huff because we told him to get a job and he went no contact with us to teach us a lesson, after a couple of weeks I burnt sage under a photograph of him and within a day or two he reached out and contacted us so we knew he was alive, albeit still angry at us.

It's worth saying I never use sage alone. I always burn either dragon's blood or cedar with or after it. The metaphor I use for this is that the sage is like cleaning/prepping a surface for stain or paint, but the dragonsblood/cedar is what actually seals it and makes it stay that clean.

About once a season I do a deep cleansing of the apartment and go into each room, make sure the smoke gets into each corner, and walk clockwise through the house with a door open to chase bad spirits out through. Honestly something that formulaic doesn't completely align with my beliefs, but it's the way I was taught and it feels good to do, everyone compliments our house's energy so I keep doing it. After a cycle through the house with sage, I follow up with cedar. About once a year I'll go the extra mile and do the outer perimeter of the apartment building our unit is in, to cleanse and seal the whole building.

I do not repeat anything while I do it, but that's because my mind is blank when I'm doing it. If I do have a stray thought, I repeat my mantra. It's worth mentioning my mantra is not about protection or cleansing. My mantra is essentially "Lord of the Universe, destroy all obstacles in my path (including me, should I be an obstacle)". Tangentially it is both protection and cleansing, but I feel like it's both broader in scope and also more targetted in its meaning. Protection and cleansing beg the question of "from and of what", while "remove obstacles" is a bit more intuitive to the unconscious in my feeling.

 

[Grayhoss]

Unless you're a Medicineworker, there's no need to use white sage.
Its become endangered, and should be lain off of to let it recover.

You can use fumigants with a tradition of purification from the Middle Eastern and European traditions as well, like European garden sage, rose attar, lavender and red cedar (effective as a pair), bay laurel, rue, angelica, cinnamon, frankincense and myrrh.. The list could go on and on

 

[PinealisGlandia]

Unless you're a Medicineworker, there's no need to use white sage.
Its become endangered, and should be lain off of to let it recover.

You can use fumigants with a tradition of purification from the Middle Eastern and European traditions as well, like European garden sage, rose attar, lavender and red cedar (effective as a pair), bay laurel, rue, angelica, cinnamon, frankincense and myrrh.. The list could go on and on

White sage isn't endangered. It's being proactively conserved because of its popularity. No one's calling it endangered. There are concerns about overharvesting so some people are planting more to make sure the plant stays around. You shouldn't take it from protected lands like national parks.

NGL telling someone to use frankincense and myrrh instead of white sage is kinda elitist. They're literally mentioned in the same sentence as gold in the Bible because of their enduring value and high price per ounce, their cost has not gone down since and I don't know where your concern about overharvesting is with frankincense, something where I feel that concern is much more well-placed. White sage is like $8 a pound because it grows like a weed.

 

[fungus77]

Unless you're a Medicineworker, there's no need to use white sage.
Its become endangered, and should be lain off of to let it recover.

You can use fumigants with a tradition of purification from the Middle Eastern and European traditions as well, like European garden sage, rose attar, lavender and red cedar (effective as a pair), bay laurel, rue, angelica, cinnamon, frankincense and myrrh.. The list could go on and on

To kind of go off of what was said here, "smudging" is a specific ceremony used by Indigenous communities, with specific protocols and tools. It would be better to call the act of burning something for the purpose of cleansing a space as just "smoke cleansing."

If you want white sage specifically, it would be best to buy it from places that harvest it sustainably and that work with Indigenous communities directly. A quick Google search shows Mojave Moon Apothecary seems like a good choice.

Again though, white sage doesn't have to be used to do a smoke cleanse. You can kinda use anything really? Of course, there's herbs associated with cleansing, like sage, rosemary, lavender. But you can even use any incense/resin with a scent you like.

 

[PinealisGlandia]

To kind of go off of what was said here, "smudging" is a specific ceremony used by Indigenous communities, with specific protocols and tools. It would be better to call the act of burning something for the purpose of cleansing a space as just "smoke cleansing."

If you want white sage specifically, it would be best to buy it from places that harvest it sustainably and that work with Indigenous communities directly. A quick Google search shows Mojave Moon Apothecary seems like a good choice.

Again though, white sage doesn't have to be used to do a smoke cleanse. You can kinda use anything really? Of course, there's herbs associated with cleansing, like sage, rosemary, lavender. But you can even use any incense/resin with a scent you like.

Smudging is several specific ceremonies depending on whose ceremony is being referred to, so if you have your own ceremony that resembles one of those ceremonies, yes, "smudging" is the appropriate term.