Smudging Made Simple: A Modern Guide to an Ancient Ritual

I wanted to write an article about the practice of smudging. If you’re someone who has been bought a bundle of white sage or a chunk of Paolo Santo as a gift and you feel intimidated by the idea of getting smudging ‘wrong’ somehow - this is for you.

I would hear light workers and other practitioners refer to smudging when I was starting my own journey into this work - and there was no explanation as to what this meant, I think there was an assumption that ‘everyone knows what that is’. It seemed a bit shrouded in mystery to me - so I wanted to demystify it and leave you confident and happy to smudge your house, yourself, your pets and anything else you fancy really!!

What is smudging?

Smudging is an intentional ritual to cleanse an enclosed space, an object or an incarnate soul of discordant energy. 

It usually uses smoke from a natural material such as wood or dried botanical material. The smoke is wafted around the area that requires cleansing with strong intention that this is WHY you’re doing it. Sometimes the intention can be accompanied by spoken or sung words. 

The practice is based on ancient rituals performed by Native Americans, and many cultures have similar practices where smoke is used for cleansing in this way.

What do you mean by ‘discordant energy’?

Simply put, the emotions of fear, anger, guilt, sadness, shame or anything on the spectrum of those emotions (think anxiety, rage, grief, jealousy…) is discordant energy. When you have these emotions they ripple out into a space.

Discordant energy can attach itself to all kinds of things in a variety of ways, when enough of it collects together it can create a ‘thought form’ which has the effect of changing your mood when coming into contact with it. If there’s a space in your house where you notice more arguments happening, or a sudden wave of wistful thinking then it’s a sign that a lot of that flavour of discordant energy has collected there.

If enough discordant energy collects in the thought form it can snowball and create an entity - an entity is a sentient thought form, meaning that it can willfully attack or attach itself to anything with a higher vibration than itself. The higher your vibration, the bigger magnet you are for an entity!

When should I smudge?

It’s a great idea to smudge yourself, and your space every three to four months.

You should smudge more regularly if your space has a lot of different people passing through it, or if something unusually negative happens within it. As you become more used to tuning in to your intuition you may just feel called to smudge something, this can never do any harm so always go with it. I sometimes travel away for work, so my hotel room always gets a good smudge when I go away. 

What tools do I need to smudge something?

For smudging with smoke:

• A fireproof container that you can comfortably hold in one hand (could be a shell, could be a saucepan - as long as it can safely catch hot embers without setting your house on fire then you are good to go!)

• A fire source (matches or lighter)

• Something to create smoke, here are some ideas of what this could be:

  • A stick of Palo Santo - here's an article from Shaman's Cave on why this is a particularly good choice

  • Dried White Sage - if you’ve got a bundle of sage, pull a couple of leaves from this and place these inside your fireproof container - MUCH easier than trying to light the whole bundle

  • Incense (my light team recommend Havan Sambrani Dhoop Cups which you can buy on ebay)

For smokeless smudging you just a spray infused with things like White Sage. My absolute favourite is this one by Mimi Tarocchini in sage, cedar and lavender.

Be warned though - on occasions where I have tried smudging a space with particularly nasty energy the mechanism on the spray has gotten locked up or the nozzle has become blocked. So I would only recommend this type of smudging for things which are reasonably clear of funky stuff in the first place… I’ve also found that because these sprays are often not a clear liquid it can leave a mark.

One of my Glyphs of Light also has a similar effect to smudging, the extra benefit being that once it’s displayed intentionally within a space it just keeps doing its job and should keep it perpetually clear, it’s called ‘Twelve At Greater Highlight’. If you’d like more information on this I can send you a copy of it to print out at home, it’s still so new that I haven’t even had chance to scan it in yet.

OK, I have my tools and I am ready to smudge! What do I do?

1. GROUND AND CENTRE YOURSELF

Before you start your smudging. Centre and ground yourself, if you do not already have a favoured technique to do this I recommend saying the following light language out loud:

Secoo-Narim-Bee-Doh

Secoo-Am-Bee-Doh-Noss

Garusan

(Grounds you and releases self sabotage)

2. SET YOUR INTENTION

A vital step. Intention when working with energy is absolutely key to it being properly carried out. Your intention when smudging a space will be something such as:

“I intend to smudge this space to cleanse it of ALL discordant energy. 

I do this for the greatest and highest good.

And so it is.”

It is more powerful to say the intention out loud, but not mandatory for it to be effective.

3. OPEN A WINDOW, DOOR, OR VENT 

This is to provide the energy you are cleansing with somewhere to go. If there are no windows in your room, open a door and make sure there’s an open window somewhere in the building! With hotel rooms or similar - if there’s an air conditioning vent this will do the job too.

4. PICK UP YOUR FIREPROOF CONTAINER AND LIGHT YOUR SMUDGE TOOL

Once your smudge tool is smoking, pick a corner of your room to start in, you need to direct the smoke into each ceiling corner of the room plus any doorways or nooks within the room - lampshades are a good one. Each time you waft the smoke into a corner say the following light language - either out loud or in your head (once again, out loud is best):

Veh-Ray-Shwah

Eh-San-Eh-San

Cleansing

After that, there’s no hard and fast way to smudge a space. I would probably work systematically around a room in one direction, just so I didn’t forget a spot - but work in a way that feels right for you.

If you are smudging with a spray, the process is the same - you spray up into the corners of the space using the light language and ensuring there is an open window in the space.

If you are using smoke, make sure you put out your Palo Santo or sage thoroughly - but stub it out, don’t use water as you’ll never get it lit again.

5. CLOSE YOUR RITUAL

When you have finished smudging, it feels right to formally give this ritual an ending. For me, this would be something like:

“This smudging is now complete, 

this space is cleansed for the highest and greatest good!

And so it is.”

Happy smudging! 🙂