What Is Smudging, And How Do I Do It?

I have to admit I’m at odds discussing the topic of “smudging”. The reason is that true smudging is a specific spiritual practice done by indigenous American people and should be taught only by a person within the tribe(s) that practice it. Well, that’s not even quite right. There are many different Native Peoples and not all of the tribes do smudging, and of the ones that do, they have different ways of doing it. For example there are different herbs, as you might expect, as are available regionally. Of the ones in common, they are not always used the same way by different Peoples. Some will use a shell to hold the herbs where others who lived in dry areas would use a pottery bowl. If a feather fan is used, the different birds have different significance to the various Peoples. So it’s very hard to say “this is how you do it Native American style”, even if it were my place to do so.

I myself have Apache and Choctaw heritage but I was raised white, so I am unschooled with the “official” spiritual practices of these tribes. I learned some of what I know from my great-grandmother, who was the last of the wild prairie generation in the family. We did not use smudging for cleansing. We did occasional sprinkled spiritual baths using salt for purification or flower water for blessing, such as at springtime, although my personal familiarity with ritual cleansing mostly involved getting my mouth washed out with Dial soap.

I don’t want to contribute to the trend of lumping all Native Peoples together by saying “smudging is an American Indian tradition”, because such blanket statements (bad pun not intended) don’t enhance this subject at all. I cringed when I Googled “smudging” for this article, because the preponderance of what came up was yoga-loft aura-seeing white people websites claiming they knew all about “smudging”. Ugh!

So in an effort to avoid perpetuating racial and cultural stereotypes as well as discouraging cultural appropriation, I will use the proper term for smoke cleansing, which is suffumigation. It’s a big word but absolutely perfect for today’s topic, as you will soon see. I’m a vocabulary geek anyway, preferring to use the exact word even if I’m babbling on while I do it.

Yeah.

So suffumigating as a literal practice would look like this: to have the thurible on the floor (suf- = below, under) and have the person stand over it while the smoke rises to surround them (fumigation). An alternative would be to have the thurible on a table and pass objects through the smoke.

In practice, a worker might hold the vessel close to the client’s body and use a fan or feather (or their hand) to direct the smoke onto and around the client, who stands with arms held out to the side, working from top down or bottom up, front to back, or as the situation would dictate. Sometimes the client is lightly wrapped with a sheet (usually over their clothing) and either stands or sits in a chair so that the smoke fills the tent-like sheet for a few minutes, so that it can soak into them. The worker often prays on the client during this process to help manifest the spiritual goal. This is sometimes called “smoking the client”, if done by a rootworker, or “smudging” if done for a spiritual cleansing.

Suffumigation is more commonly used to mean using smoke from burning botanicals in a ritual setting, but unlike simply burning incense, the smoke is meant to get on the person or item for a magical purpose, where incense is burned to perfume the air for ritual. This practice has migrated into the mundane world so now incense is now also used for simple home fragrancing.

In addition to spiritual cleansing, suffumigation can also be used to bless (protect) or for certain kinds of offerings, to apply a magical treatment, for charging a magick charm and during the preparation of a mojo bag. It has also been used occasionally for medicinal treatment, which is beyond the scope of this article.

Other items could be used for suffumigation, for example a censer, which is a thurible suspended from a chain, can be swung around the person or item, or in the direction of a statue, relic, altar etc. The smoke from a lit smudge bundle can be wafted on, over, or around the person or item being cleansed or blessed. An incense stick made of natural ingredients applicable to the ritual might be wafted around or toward the person or object, such as in Chinese Buddhist and Taoist ceremonies where the sticks are held above the head and wafted toward the statue or plaque.

As a general practice, suffumigation for various purposes has been used at least since ancient Egyptian times. Many cultures around the world practice this in a variety of ways using botanicals and tools held sacred by their own people.

For this article, I will describe my own experience and some of the ways I have been taught to use the items I mention here. I am not an expert on how it’s done all over the world or even most places in the US. I invite readers to share their own experiences and traditions in the comment section.

As a bit of background: I lived in Oklahoma for a very long time (sometimes I refer to this as  “doing time in Oklahoma”). It’s boring and somewhat backward and you can easily get stuck there. Before the last 25 year stretch I have also lived in New Orleans and Dallas. But having spent most of my adulthood in OKC, that is where the spiritual practices I teach professionally matured as I studied with and from others. We jokingly call it OklaHoodoo. This is not a term I want to be known for coining so please forget you read that just now. haha

Oklahomans are familiar with the concept of “smudging” (I’m using quotes to distinguish it from the religious ceremony done by tribal people). It is a very common thing for even a Nice Lady Soccer Mom white woman to buy a smudge stick once or twice a year and burn it through her mcmansion to keep off “bad vibes”. The average guy on the street would know to burn sage to make a ghost or spirit go away.

The reason for this is obvious if you look at the Native population of the state. The “Five Civilized Tribes” – Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Muscogee, and Seminole – all wound up in Oklahoma. Lots of native Oklahomans (and I have it on both sides of the family) have Native American blood even if they look fully white. Nearly all those tribes practice smudging, so even if you are not on the tribal rolls (I’m not) or even if you have no Native American blood at all, there’s a good chance that if you have lived in Oklahoma for any length of time, you are familiar with the cultural practice of “smudging” as part of a routine spiritual practice.

For the non-religious but still spiritual use that is known as “smudging”, then, this is what we taught our customers to do.

First, physically and thoroughly clean your house. Mop and vacuum the floors, wash the walls, wipe down all surfaces. Open all the windows and doors and get fresh air going through it for a while to change out the old air for new clean air.

Once the house “feels” clean as well as looks clean, close the doors and windows and gather your supplies. Generally this is simply a smudge stick and a vessel of some kind to catch falling ash, plus a fan of some kind. Because a lot of our customers are white people who are neither witches nor rootworkers, but raised with some kind of Christianity or even just spiritual humanists, what we suggested was to use a folding fan if they had one, or to make a fan with a favorite Bible verse or a quotation or poem that promoted peace in the home.

Turn off the AC unit. Light the herbs. Start at the back of the house and work your way forward. Use the fan to push the smoke over the walls and furniture, trying to get it into every nook and cranny, as you pray out loud, sing/chant, or otherwise state your intent (things like “this house is protected”, “let there be peace in my home”, “this is my home and no ill will shall be allowed here” etc). Close the door to each room as you have finished with it so the smoke has time to penetrate deeply into the walls and textiles.

When you are finished, extinguish the smudge bundle by putting it in a jar and closing the lid on it so it goes out of its own. Alternately, place the burning end in a dish of sand. Most people liked the jar thing because they could save it there for the next time.

After it’s been “long enough” turn on the AC again and open doors and windows to get the remaining smoke out of the rooms.

Sage, when burned, releases aromatics that help us feel comfortable, safe, in control, and content. Over time the botanicals embedded in the walls and furniture will occasionally give off a microburst of chemicals, maintaining the “work”. When they start to decompose, though, the air will feel stale and that’s when you know it’s time to deep clean and “smudge” again.

For the purpose of this type of “smudging”, any kind of sage will work. Sage is sage is sage, no matter the variety, when used in this manner.

Now if a person wanted to fine tune that a little, and had metaphysical intentions for their working, they could choose to add more things to the mix. Most of our Oklahoma customers were not looking for too much magic – their religion would get their knickers all in a twist if they started messing around with tradition too much – but we had a fair number of people who were more open minded and even practiced magic of a few different stripes.

Oklahoma magic has a huge influx of curanderismo due to the Latino population, so if something looks like it’s not Native American smudging, this is why! I’ve come to realize I lived there so long that I can no longer disentangle my trainings from one another. So what I can teach here is a crossroads of magics and I will not apologize that none of them are pure anymore. Pure practices are for anthropologists to study, not for humans to perform. This is just some of what I know and do.

In no particular order, then.

Sage – used as described above for ritual cleansing of a home or other space. Can be soaked in ethanol such as vodka to make a tincture, strained, mixed 50/50 with water, and sprayed or asperged if burning is not possible. Can also be used, ground, 50/50 with sea salt and sprinkled into an area, left for a day or so, and swept up as an alternative to burning or as a sneaky deployment.

Sage is also used to send human spirits (ghosts) away. It creates a portal through which a human spirit can go or return to the Other Side. Sometimes it can be used to enhance results while using a OuiJa board or during a seance, but there are other herbs more suited for this.

Sage is not effective for otherworld entities. See Sulfur, below.

Cedar – if you aren’t allergic to cedar, this is an excellent tool for creating firm boundaries. Cedar puts up a psychic wall that is the equivalent of drawing a line and saying “don’t cross that”. It’s the smudge equivalent of black salt for defining territories and setting limits.

Sweetgrass – sometimes seen used in a braid all by itself, sometimes included as part of a smudge bundle. Don’t burn the knot as it is considered a talisman for good luck. Sweetgrass is used for promoting kind words, good communication, and a happy home.

Yerba Santa – this herb is sometimes known as “Indian pipe tobacco” and yes, you can smoke it. It’s like the janitor who comes and cleans up after the church service, straightening the hymnals, picking up the programs, vacuuming the carpets, cleaning the stained glass windows. This one is good to use after a good purge – if a house had not been cleaned for quite a while or if suffumigation on a person was done to remove some pretty bad energy that had been stuck to them. You can use it after getting rid of a ghost to help settle the energies of the house again.

Palo Santo – this is the wood from the copal tree. It’s endangered but if you can find it, it is incredibly purifying just on its own. I shave off small pieces with a pocket knife or vegetable peeler and burn them with red cedar and/or sandalwood to loosen up stuck or stale energy.

Juniper – similar to cedar, but works with darker forces better. If a person is fighting against addiction, for example, this can help support them if they are using regular smoke cleansings as part of their sobriety routine.

Copal – there are three colors of copal. White (Manilla), gold (Columbia), and black (Guatemala) are all used more or less interchangeably but their energies range from light to dark and you may find one works better for a particular purpose than another. White copal is light and lemony while black is deep and woody. The gold is between the two. Copal in general is used for purification in the same way that Palo Santo is, but since it is a resin, the pebbles are burned on charcoal. The resin’s energy seems to last longer, probably due to its chemical makeup and the fact that it is melted and then vaporized rather than converted into smoke though burning.

Frankincense – this well known resin has been prized for millenia, used first in Egypt and Africa, where it grows, then making its way through trade throughout the world especially where the Catholic Church had influence. It seems to work on a deep level of the soul, healing and soothing spiritual turbulence. It is the final stage after an exorcism, where the room affected is smoked heavily with frankincense and left shut up for at least one day and one night before being opened up again. Frankincense is also enjoyed in happier times, but as a deep healer, it is excellent for this purpose.

Sulfur – burned in small!! quantities, this mineral is  the go-to choice for uprooting seriously bad juju. It is generally not recommended for suffumigating a person, because the fumes are pretty noisome if not outright toxic. But if you are plagued with a supernatural (non-human) entity, smoking the area with sulfur does one of two things: one, chases out the entity or two, creates a soothing atmosphere for them so they stop bugging you. Some entities love sulfur and will be more likely to do the bidding of a person who  gives it to them, including honoring a request that they go away. Sulfur is indicated for skin problems sometimes, so use a sulfur soap or add a small amount of powdered sulfur to a soaking bath instead of smoking a person with it if this mineral is needed in the work.

Tobacco – pipe tobacco is sometimes used for creating sacred space or for offerings. It is rarely used for “smudging” a person. This herb is highly controlling but can be used to shut down a situation that’s about to explode due to its insistence that you stop and put your head down for a minute. Anyone who’s ever had too big of a drag on tobacco knows exactly what this feels like. It will paste you to the floor and make you calm down. There’s a reason it’s used in peace pipes. It can also be used to honor one’s ancestors, burned in a small dish on the ancestral altar. Tobacco is used in Vodoun and Santeria rituals as well, but I am not an initiate of those religions and cannot comment on how exactly that works.

In a pinch, you can mix essential oils with 50/50 water and ethanol, shake, and spray while praying for more or less the same effect. This would not technically be called suffumigation, smudging, or smoke cleansing of course, but it runs in the same family of spiritual cleansing services. We do this in our shop, having several stock mixtures for different purposes such as a hyssop/sage blend for cleansing, a copal/cedar mix, and a frankincense one that has a couple chunks of sea salt in the bottle for “sealing”. Always ask about allergies before spraying anything on a client.