What is smudging?

What is smudging? #

Smudging, in the definition of the shamanic practitioner and teacher Christina Pratt, is cleansing “a power object, person, or ceremony with the smoke from a burning plant”, such as cedar, or a plant resin, such as copal. The plants she lists include sweetgrass, wormwood, tobacco, sage and juniper.¹ The writer Glennie Kindred lists plants that grow readily in Britain: native mugwort and wormwood, coltsfoot and mullein, kitchen-garden herbs such as sage, rosemary and thyme, and pines and cedars.²

The smoke is used on the body, on a room or working space, and on objects. Cleansing a crystal with smoke from a cleansing herb, such as sage or mugwort, is one of several ways of preparing a crystal for journeying, alongside rinsing it in running water or leaving it for a time in sunlight or moonlight.³

Why do shamanic practitioners smudge? #

Mostly to mark and help the move into the shamanic state. Moving out of ordinary, everyday consciousness begins before a journey starts, and most practitioners have a ritual way of doing it. Some use smoke to smudge themselves and the space they are working in. Others use the drum, the rattle or clapping to clear the space, draw a circle of protection, put on particular clothes, or light incense or candles.⁴

The purpose of any of these is to help move awareness from ordinary consciousness towards the altered state in which we can be aware of the spirits. For some people such rituals are elaborate, for others very simple, and smudging is neither required nor forbidden. It is the point of a ritual that matters, not the ritual itself, so the advice is to find what works for us and not get hung up on it. See What part do ritual and ceremony play in Therapeutic Shamanism? and How do I prepare for a shamanic journey?

Is smudging needed for protection? #

Not for a Lower-WorldLower-World. The realm of Mother Earth: pure, unspoilt, wild nature, with no technology and no agriculture. Home of the Peoples and of our own Soul, and completely safe: feeling threatened in a journey is a reliable sign of not having reached it. Read the full answer journey. With the basic precautions in place, a Lower-World journey is safe, so there is no particular need for additional protection. It does no harm, though, to smudge or clear the room beforehand, or to smudge or use some other cleansing ritual afterwards. If we have really trusted and listened to our GuidesGuides. The Lower-World and Upper-World beings a practitioner works with and learns from, of whom the Power Animal is the first and foremost. True Guides are ethical to their core; the shaman’s power comes from the depth of these bonds, not from the shaman. More about this during the journey, there should be no need for any specific cleansing after it, though it is good practice at least to ask the Guides to check us over.⁵ The wider question is answered in Do I need spiritual protection? What is energy hygiene?

Is smudging done in this world or in the shamanic realms? #

Both, and the shamanic side is the more important. Shamanic healing is largely done in the shamanic realms. When a shaman uses smoke to smudge someone in physical reality, what they are doing is acting out something that is happening at a much more profound level in shamanic reality.⁶ Physical smoke and smudging can be part of an extractionExtraction. Drawing a foreign body (an intrusion) out of a person and packing the hole with something healthy. The iron rule: only ever foreign bodies, never a part of the self: extracting a genuine part of self creates soul-loss. More about this in some traditions, though more commonly the extraction is done in a shamanic journey, not in this physical world.⁷

Smudging also happens within journeys. In a Lower-World healing, smoking and smudging are amongst the things that may happen.⁸ A hollowing-outHollowing-out. The core, lifelong discipline of setting aside the middle-world self, its stories, agendas and preconceptions, so the Guides can work through us. The image: the shaman as hollow bone. Read the full answer practice, the deliberate setting aside of the middle-world selfMiddle-world self. The everyday self (ego, persona, head-and-heart), made of our stories and experiences. A genuine and needed part of the Inner Tribe: of service, not in command. Read the full answer before a journey, may involve bathing, walking through fire, a particular crystal or herb, or smudging, whatever works for the person; and the Guides themselves may smudge the journeyer or give them a bag of herbs to carry.⁹ Smudging may also be part of a transformation journey, along with bathing or being washed.¹⁰ When it appears in a journey, its symbolism can be researched afterwards, like any other detail, as part of building up our knowledge of healing.¹¹ See What are hollowing-out and stalking our stories? and What is an intrusion, and what is extraction?

Is smudging cultural appropriation? #

It can be, and people answer the question differently. Some animist teachers ask newcomers to respect specific names and avoid particular plants. The animist teacher Quynn Red Mountain, for example, counts “smudge” amongst names that are specific to particular traditions, alongside “medicine wheel” and “chakra”, and suggests other words, such as “smoke clearing”. She also asks people to burn widely available plants rather than white sage, and to use a ceramic or metal container, not an abalone shell, so as not to overharvest living beings.¹² Cleansing with smoke is not confined to one set of plants, though. Pratt’s list includes copal and juniper as well as sweetgrass and sage, and Kindred’s draws on plants that grow in Britain.

Therapeutic Shamanism’s own line on appropriation is drawn between the teaching that belongs to all humans and the practices of particular cultures: adopting a culture’s practices, clothing and ritual objects, and offering its shamanism to others without having studied with a real member of that culture, would be appropriation.¹³ Applied to smudging, this would mean that cleansing with smoke from local plants, in a ritual of our own, is a different thing from taking a particular people’s ceremony and presenting it as one’s own. Instructions for elaborate rituals are deliberately not given, because shamanism is a direct and personal spiritual practice, and that means finding our own rituals; in this view, doing other people’s rituals begins to turn shamanism into a religion.¹⁴ Nor does a practice need an unbroken lineage to be authentic, since the test applied to a modern practice is simply whether it works.¹⁵ See Is Western shamanism cultural appropriation? and What is ‘plastic shamanism’?