Gathering Your Own Magic: Harvesting Plants
Some of the best plant medicine available grows right in your own backyard. There are many types of materials that can be bundled and/or dried to use as a smoke cleansing tool. The most powerful medicines are ones that are close to you, and to your generational and ancestral ties.
If you harvest your own herbs, be sure to ask the plant first whether you may harvest (trust your intuition about what the plant says in reply), and make sure that you give thanks to the plant afterward. If you have an offering to exchange, even better. My dear friend and potent healer The practice and energy of gratitude is important for all spiritual work.
Creating Your Smoke Cleansing Bundle
Once harvested, bundle the plant material and wrap it with cotton twine. You will want them bundled tight, but not too tight – there needs to be enough air able to move between the plant material that it will light, and smolder. Allow to dry in an area of your home where it will dry well – too much moisture in the air and it could mold. Once it’s dried, you’re ready to use your new smoke cleansing bundle.
You can even add things like thinly sliced, dried orange slices or cinnamon sticks to your bundles for a special blend and warm inviting of new energies. Whenever possible, try to ensure that the plants you gather are organic and pesticide-free.
Smoke Cleansing Plants and their Healing Properties
- Black Sage / Culinary Sage / Purple Sage / Desert Sage – Excellent for clearing. Encourages healing, fertility, longevity, and mental clarity.
- Wormwood – Clearing. Wards off parasitic energies and spirits.
- Vervain – Clearing. Restores balance and strength by repairing fragmented thoughts/hearts/souls, and instills inner peace.
- Mugwort – Clearing. This messenger plant connects us to nature. Protective in nature, it is often used to encourage lucid dreaming.
- Cedar – Clearing. Creates a protective force field around whomever or wherever you use it.
- White Pine – Clearing. Very purifying, and inspires forgiveness.
- Holy Basil – Clearing. Relieves stress and anxiety, promotes prana (life force), and encourages honoring nature.
- Mints – Cleansing. Bright, refreshing, and calls in abundance in all forms.
- Rosemary – Clearing. Excellent tool for transitionary periods and fresh starts, and strengthens memory.
- Thyme – Clearing. Instills courage, strength, and is a helpful ally when grieving, and when collective consciousness is oppressive, negative, or lacking hope. Fosters communication with the Fae.
- Juniper – Clearing. Invites warmth and abundance, while acknowledging opening the door for balanced shadow work.
- Lemon Balm – Clearing. Encourages sweet dreams, purification, and inner beauty.
- Lavender – Clearing. Uplifting, calming, and brings light into the darkest corners of our hearts.
- Creosote / Desert Chaparral – Clearing. Useful for inner journeying and engaging with time through visions of your decisions and their results. Soothes joint pain.
- Cypress – Clearing. Opens psychic pathway and connects to ancestral wisdom.
- Goldenrod – Infuses spaces with the mindset of manifestation and abundance.
- Mullein – Clearing. Banishes evil eye, and assists in removing hexes and breaking curses.
- Bay – Clearing. Wards off illness.
- Roses – Clearing. High vibration plant opens psychic channels and heart center, encouraging growth, clarified purpose, and balance in your life.
