by Carl F. Neal
Smudging is often done as a first cleansing step before ritual magick. Like all incense, smudging is an excellent first step in separating sacred space from the ordinary world. Not only does smudging help to remove the negative energies and shift the mindset of those participating, it can also serve as a sort of magickal “announcement” that the space is about to be enchanted. Smudging doesn’t have to mean that, but it often does. The fragrant smoke tells all beings, both physical and spiritual, that a change has been made. It is a sort of preliminary invitation to deities and other beings beyond the physical plane. I like to think of it as turning on a “magickal porch light,” letting the world know that I am here and welcome to visitors.
Many different plants can be used in smudging, but sage and sweet grass are the most commonly used. In many Native American traditions, smudging with sage is seen as a process of cleansing and purification. This may be followed with smudging using sweet grass, which is sometimes seen as a plant that will draw positive energy. Other Native traditions see both sage and sweet grass as purifying plants.
Many different companies offer smudging bundles, but you can also make your own very easily. Although sweet grass and white sage are the most traditional, a wide range of herbs can be used. A bundle of dried rosemary is a powerfully fragrant way to smudge. Any herb that dries well on the stem might be a candidate for smudging. Flowers aren’t always the best choice, but the foliage from the same plant might be. Lavender flowers, for example, are pretty thin on their stems and you would need heaps of them to make a bundle. On the other hand, a bundle of lavender stems covered with leaves can work well. You can also mix stems with leaves and stems with flowers. You don’t need to limit yourself to a single kind of herb in a bundle either.
If you have several good candidates, try braiding them together. The herbs should be gathered while fresh and green, then bundled or braided before drying. You may need to tie the bundles with string at both the top and bottom. Many herbs are wrapped with string from top to bottom to keep them tightly bound while in use. The string will burn as the herbs smolder, so it’s a good way to help your herbs stay together throughout the process. Harvest McCampbell, the author of The Sacred Smoke, recommends using only 100 percent cotton string to avoid possible toxins released from synthetic string. I completely agree with her. McCampbell also recommends that you allow material gathered for smudging to wilt for a few hours before bundling, but make certain to tie up the bundles before the material dries or becomes brittle.
Rituals
Rituals using smudging techniques are surely as old as the first shamans in the earliest days of humanity—perhaps even earlier than that. While it is true that all ritual connects the modern practitioner to the ancient ones, smudging rituals (much like the use of a bale fire) seem to bring that connection into sharper focus. For many, smudging is simply a part of every ritual performed.
Home Cleansing
Even the happiest magickal household can accumulate negative energies. Much like a clean floor gathers dirt from the shoes of those who walk across it, any home can suffer from a buildup of negative energy simply from the forces of daily living and the various visitors that enter. This ritual is an excellent way to purge those energies with the cleansing power of incense. You can use it as often as you’d like, but I’d recommend it (or a similar ritual) at least once a year as a sort of magickal “spring cleaning.” If you live in a multi-family dwelling (like a duplex or apartment building), you should limit the ritual to the areas that are yours alone unless your neighbors consent to it. You don’t want any group forcing their beliefs on you, so it’s important to offer that respect to the non-magickal community.
For this ritual, you will need a large smudging bundle or braid and a large shell, dish, or censer (preferably with a handle). If nothing else is available, an old skillet might be a good choice. For best results, try to perform the ritual at a time of pleasant weather. If possible, open as many windows and doors in the home before you begin.
Start the ritual outdoors if at all possible. Carefully light the smudging bundle and place it in your shell or censer. Some bundles will smolder in the censer without a problem, but if you notice the bundle going out, you can lift it from the non-burning end and turn it or hold it for a few moments and it will likely resume burning. If the bundle ever goes out, it can be easily re-lit; just remember to keep matches or a lighter handy during the ritual.
Begin with an invocation of the powers or deities of your path. You can modify this rather generic phrasing to suite your own path or beliefs:
Great Goddess, Mother of us all,
Cleanse and purify my/our home.
Great God, Father and guardian,
Dispel all the unwanted energies
that dwell within.
If the building is not too large, circle it entirely while holding the shell or censer. You can use the invocation as a chant if you wish, or simply state it once before you begin. After completing the circle around the outside, enter the home through the main entrance. Before you pass through the doorway, smudge the entire opening.
How much time and effort you put into this smudging depends on how badly the home needs cleansing and how much time you have to devote. If the home is in need of deep cleansing, you should smudge every doorway and window, including closets and small bathroom windows. Every corner of each room and the length of each wall is also suggested for particularly needful rooms.
As you smudge each location, you can use a spoken invocation (such as “negative forces be gone”) in conjunction with visualization, or you can silently use visualization alone. First, visualize the energies in the home. As you focus, you will be able to “see” in your mind’s eye the energies in the building. Some will be energies that you’ve worked hard to accumulate (such as energies of blessing, luck, or others that benefit you and the people in your home). Other energies will be undesirable, such as those of doubt, despair, and anger. Cleansing can often clear out both the desirable and undesirable energies indiscriminately, but careful control of the process through visualization can help keep the energy you want and purge the rest.
As you move through the home with your censer, watch the path of the smoke. As the smoke nears energy, good or ill, the energy will move away. For undesirable energy, that’s perfect. For energy you want to keep, either avoid smudging that area or, better yet, control the cleansing through visualization. As smoke nears a positive energy, use your own will to create an opening in the smoke that allows it to bypass the energy. In this way, you can keep what you want and dispel the rest.
As you smudge doorways and windows, you can use the smoke to create a magickal barrier to at least temporarily block any outside energies from coming through. This is a good step as you smudge each area. By “sealing” the door in this way, you can stop the dispelled energies from escaping back to any area you’ve already cleansed. Because of this, it’s a good idea to leave one window or doorway until the rest of the room is cleansed. That gives an easy exit for the energies that you force out. Sometimes, this isn’t an option (such as in windowless rooms), but you can still use tiny exits such as sink drains and holes for electrical outlets. The layout of some homes might leave you no choice but to go to the most closed room first and force the energies out one room at a time. For this same reason, if you choose to smudge closets you may want to make them the first stop in each room so that the undesired energy can be “flushed out” into the main room and not trapped beyond the smudged closet door.
Once every room and space has been smudged, the ritual can be completed by circling the outside one final time. A simple chant, such as “Bless this home,” can be added to help create a temporary barrier against outside energies. Naturally, such a simple cleansing ritual can’t serve in the place of a proper protection spell, but at least it can give you a clean slate. Negative energies will still accumulate, but periodic smudgings can he
lp keep your space free of significant unwanted energies.
Personal Purification
The daily acts of living can cause us to accumulate negative energies, just as objects can accumulate them. Simply walking in a crowd, dealing with an angry person, or performing an unpleasant task can bring us into contact with undesired energies. It is highly refreshing to “wash” these residual energies away through a personal smudging. This ritual can be performed with any style of incense, but I most commonly use it with a smudging bundle. This quick ritual is also a great addition to the conclusion of ritual bathing. If you do this, remember to dry off completely to ensure you don’t drip any water that might extinguish the incense or smudging bundle.
Begin with your dish or censer on the floor. The censer should either have a handle or be placed on a ceramic plate or similar fireproof material. It needs to be easily handled with material burning inside. Light the bundle and place it in the dish, then stand in front of it with your back to it. This ritual is best performed skyclad; if you do choose to wear clothes, make certain there is no fabric that hangs low. If the material comes in contact with the smudging bundle, it could ignite. Stand still for a few moments while the smoke meanders up your back. Look down at your feet and carefully step backward over the censer. Take care not to touch or bump the censer.
Take a second step back and kneel down. By this point, the bundle might have gone out, so you may need to relight it. With the bundle burning, lift the censer in both hands. Raise it to eye level and then carefully pass it above your head, completing the circle of smoke around your body. Finally, hold the censer in front of you and slowly turn a complete clockwise circle. Place the censer on a table (or some other safe surface away from you) and allow the smoke around you to carry away the negative energies you have collected. As the smoke dissipates, visualize it carrying away the undesired energies that pollute your life. Not only does this little ritual cleanse negative energies, it also has the added benefit of scenting you or your clothes. This is my favorite way to end a ritual bath (after drying off, of course) in preparation for ritual.
Sticks
A more modern technique for making incense involves using gums and barks as “binders” to “glue” powdered herbs together. This style of incense is not only self-burning, but the binder allows incense to be formed into many shapes, some practical and others that are purely artistic. Although a bit more skill is required to create these types of incense, they are generally much more convenient to carry and to use.
Joss Stick
“Joss stick” is a generic term referring to any solid stick of incense. To me, joss sticks represent the purest form of incense since they are self-contained and composed of nothing but pure incense materials. Burning a joss stick that is inserted into a censer will usually result in a “nub” of unburned incense in the burner or fill material. If you wish to burn the entire joss stick and waste nothing, try this amazing trick. Burn the stick on an ash bed rather than sand or other materials. Ceremonial Japanese white ash is the best choice, but any non-fragrant ash will work fine. Tap the censer lightly to slightly compact the ash. Light a joss stick and lay it flat on the surface of the ash. On any other material, the stick would quickly go out, but on a bed of ash it will burn completely and leave no “stub” behind.
Another advantage of the joss stick over most other forms of incense is the control they offer over the amount of smoke given off. A typical joss stick is quite thin, so it produces a thin stream of smoke. The amount of smoke given off by any self-burning incense is primarily determined by its composition and diameter. Fat incense gives off a lot of smoke compared to the same formula in a thin stick. There are times when greater amounts of smoke are called for, but that can be achieved, and better controlled, through the use of multiple thin joss sticks rather than one fat stick or a cone.
Joss sticks work well in many rituals. For a shorter burn time, simply break a stick to the desired length. They can be empowered just like any other form and are available in scents you won’t find in any other form. This is because a joss stick is thin and has an enormous surface area. The result is that incense makers can create blends that will burn in the joss stick form that would be difficult or impossible in another style. Thinner sticks always burn better than thicker ones made from the same recipe. There is less material to ignite and superior oxygen flow, so even difficult aromatics (like parsley) can be considered practical ingredients.
Masala Stick
Magically speaking, masala sticks are nearly identical to joss sticks. The only physical difference between them is the wooden rod in the center. That rod should be accounted for both physically (by the incense maker) and magickally. It has to be physically considered when the incense is formulated to ensure that it will burn properly in spite of the wooden rod. I have read in some books that the rod is there to help the incense burn more evenly but from a physical perspective, it is only there to provide support to the incense.
Accounting for it magickally means accounting for the wood type’s magickal energy. Using pine, for example, in a ritual of banishment may bring in undesired or wasted energies. If the rod in your masala stick is made of pine, then it might not be the best choice. I feel that as long as a material doesn’t run counter to your magickal purposes, then it is unlikely to result in any ill effects. You are, however, releasing energy that serves little or no purpose in your ritual, which is somewhat wasteful. I see charcoal as a neutral component unless it contains saltpeter. Wood, however, is never neutral.
Some masala sticks are very well served by the wooden rod. Companies like Juniper Ridge in California focus on many wood-based incense and the inclusion of a wooden rod seems very appropriate to those scents. While not all woods are complementary, they will generally work in harmony with one another.
Timing
In ancient times, before the advent of reliable mechanical clocks, incense was employed as a time-keeping device. It still serves very well in that role in magick. Although you can use many different forms of incense as magickal timekeepers, joss sticks and combustible powders are good choices for most people. The joss stick in particular can be a fairly reliable timer.
Still, incense clocks have some obvious drawbacks. The speed the incense burns can be greatly affected by air currents, temperature, humidity and the composition of the incense itself. If you choose to use incense in this role, you need consistency if timing is critical to you. Choose one scent for timing and use nothing else. The best way to find the needed consistency is to use incense with a solid history. There are numerous Japanese incense companies, for example, who have been making incense for hundreds of years. If you use the same scent from that company exclusively, you should have a fairly consistent result. On the other hand, if you make your own incense, I would recommend the use of an extruder (essentially a metal tube that functions like a pastry bag to squeeze incense dough through a specially designed tip) to make joss sticks of identical thickness. Make as large a batch of incense as you can manage. That way your entire “stock” will have the exact same composition of ingredients and thus the same burning properties. A change as simple as switching sources of sandalwood could radically impact the burning times of your incense.
When you select a scent to use for timing, choose a scent that you like and that can serve as an all-purpose scent. A cleansing scent, such as sandalwood, is a great choice. A scent that is seen as power-drawing is also a good choice. Dragon’s blood or aloeswood are excellent choices. If you study their properties closely, you could even use multiple scents for timing. (This, however, would require calculating the burning times of each type.)
To determine the burning time of a joss stick, break off a 1-inch piece of the stick. Light and lay it flat on a bed of lightly compacted ash. Use a stopwatch to time how long the stick burns and record the time in seconds. The more times you do this test, the more accurate your results w
ill become. You should do this at least three times (which you can do simultaneously if you observe each stick carefully). After you’ve conducted the test, find the average by adding together the seconds from each test and dividing the result by the number of tests you conducted (average = total seconds/number of tests). That will allow you to calculate a “seconds per inch” burn time on that particular scent. If you know it takes 150 seconds for a scent to burn 1 inch and you want to time part of a ritual to be 10 minutes long, you can calculate that you need a joss stick 4 inches long (10 minutes = 600 seconds, 600 seconds/150 seconds per inch = 4 inches). For even more accuracy, conduct the same test with 3- or 5-inch sections of joss stick.
If you’re like me, that kind of precise timing isn’t needed in your rituals. I prefer to use what I sometimes call “natural incense” timing. I may use several different scents for timing in a ritual, but I select a length of stick that “feels right.” I know from experience roughly how long the stick will burn, but I don’t try to determine it to the second. This supports more of a philosophy of allowing fate to choose the precise length. It makes each ritual unique in timing and can even be a form of divination or introspection. I know roughly how long a stick is likely to burn, but with random lengths of incense, a particular part of a ritual might move faster or slower than expected. If the time is short, I generally take that as a sign that the energies I need are already present or my question (during divination) is of no concern. If a section takes longer than expected, I will dwell on that part of the ritual and see if there is some important information I’m not seeing clearly.
