How to bless, cleanse, 'smudge' and celebrate your home: your way

Posted by Monika Meulman on September 23, 2022

The Lowdown:

You can bless and cleanse your home your way.

The Reality:

Offering blessings, cleansing and smudging your home, burning sage, lavender, rosemary, sweetgrass or cedar wood is your personal ceremony. It is for you to honour and you alone.

The Origins:

Originally, across the globe, indigenous peoples (from the four corners of the globe), far and wide, had many cleansing and smudging rituals and ceremonies. Some rituals had developed specifically for cleansing a space, a home, an altar, a sacred site from spirits and to welcome ancestors to join in a celebration.

There are hundreds, if not thousands of stories of smudging and burning sacred plants for a variety of reasons. Many plants have been used all over the world to clean the air, to prepare a sacred space and to open and close a ceremony.

All of these have evolved over time. All of these have developed in particular regions, in specific geographic places and according to mostly oral traditions.

Your Story:

Honour the origins of burning sacred plants, dried herbs, trees, resins or incense by building your own story into your space. Your home, your altar, your sacred space is waiting for you to bless it with your words.

Your intentions matter.

When choosing a dried herbs or incense, the purpose, the intention is the most important part of this process. What are you doing? Why are you doing it?

When you establish a clear and meaningful connection between your home and your heart, then you will choose the right 'smudge' for you. To use an herb or incense because someone else told you too is not nearly as powerful as connecting to a plant, its home, its origins and seeing how it relates to you and then choosing it to be a part of your world.

Your Plant as 'Smudge'

Once you have established a connection to a plant that 'speaks' to you, you are ready to cleanse your space, to offer a sacred smudge of sorts and experience the wonder of creating your own sacred space, your way.

Thus, your personal ritual and ceremony is born.

rose petals on dark cedar mulch

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Side Note on California White Sage:

do you need to use white sage to cleanse your space

I have not purchased any California sage recently because it is simply over-harvested and not necessary for smudging.

So often it is sought after, but a sacred or ceremonial smudge is a sacred plant that is used to cleanse your space, your spirit in a way that is connected to you, your heritage, your culture and your personal history — well her-story.

I use cedar, rosemary, thyme, copal, rose and palo santo in my smudges.

Those are important to me from my travels, healing lodges and shaman lessons I have received,

from my teachers.

The most meaningful spiritual support plant for me is copal, as I have encountered it, or a version of it, just about everywhere I have travelled, from Ontario to Florida, Mexico and Central America.

I bet you have a sacred plant that is the most powerful tool for you.

I’m curious what plant that is in your life?

This week, I was blessed with finding an abundance of pine resin, in the last of the summer days. Inspired, I made a short tiktok on the beauty fo this natural tree medicine that can also be used to cleanse and bless your home.

see it here