Traditional Smudges

All North American First Nations people burn herbs or incenses such as Sage, Cedar, Sweetgrass or Juniper to purify places, objects or a person’s energy field.

These rituals are performed :
- Before a ceremony
- Before meditation
- Before an important meeting, or a spiritual gathering
- Before offering help or healing to a person
- To purify a new house before moving in
-To purify a place where there is movement of people, such as a store or an office
- To cleanse a house where painful events took place, such as a robbery or an illness
- To cleanse places where events took place to involved violence and anger
- To cleanse places where therapy takes place, in between clients

All our herbs are collected in a traditional way with the utmost care for the environment and with respect for the spirits of the plants. They are all wildculture, meaning they have not been cultivated and grow in the wild. When they are being picked, we keep in mind to leave sufficiently for future generations.

Often a shell is used to burn the herbs. The abalone shell was used traditionally. It is still used today because it looks great and that it has a high resistance to heat. In fact, any shell will do. A shell symbolises the element of water. In the alchemical process of the transformation of the smoke, we see 4 elements at play. The shell represents water, the match represents fire, the herbs and the ashes are earth and the smoke is air.

Blue Eagle has never been in favor of using abalone shells. It’s the equivalent of killing a living being to take its house. It also happens to be that the species is becoming endangered. We have therefore had a ceramic shell designed in the shape of the abalone shell. It still represents water because it is used during the molding of the clay. You can also further personalise it to have even more reminders of this element or you can wet it slightly before use.

To purify a place, place the herbs in the center of the shell. Light a wooden match and start the burning. If necessary, activate combustion by ventilating with a plume or a fan. You may wish to add some cedar to your original mix to prolong the combustion. When you have it going properly, and fumes are being produced, move the shell around you or around the object or place to be cleansed. The plume comes in handy to displace the fumes. When working on a person, one must do front and back. It is also possible to place the shell before oneself and to use the plume to bring the smoke to you. This can also be done by two people, which is the way it used to be done. Turn after turn, one person will cleanse the other as described.

Another tradition is to offer smoke in the 4 directions, starting in the North or the East and to pronounce a prayer will holding the shell. First Nations’ spiritual teachings say that the smoke takes our prayers into the spiritual world. As one can see the smoke dissipate skywards, it is said that it goes straight to the place of perfect form, the spiritworld or ‘Ungawi’ (CHEROKEE). As well as being an offering for which the spirits will be grateful, the smoke of the sacred herbs takes our prayer to the Great Spirit, also called the Great Mystery and many more names, which is unfathomable to human understanding. The smudging is a spiritual activity; the ashes remaining are therefore also sacred. It is best to disperse them in nature in a respectful manner.

To purify a dwelling, one must open a door and a window in every room where purification takes place. One starts on one side of the front door, going from place to place, making sure that everything is purified, including areas that have less air circulation such as closets and furniture. Eventually, one will have made their way around and end up at the other side of the front door.
To purify a person, ask the person to stand in front of you and displace the shell from toes to head, front and back, while waving some smoke towards them. 

An elder from the Apache Nation wanted to test this method of purification in laboratory conditions. With the help of scientists, she discovered that the smoke of the herbs was capable of neutralising positive ions by capturing them. This is why you want to keep ventilation in the places where you smudge to chase the negative ions. 

Positive ions in great concentration are bad for our health. One finds them in large quantities in polluted areas, or in enclosed or badly ventilated spaces. In contrast, negative ions are beneficial to your health. One finds them in abundance after electric storms (the air smells invigorating after a storm), or close to waterfalls and in woods. One also finds higher concentrations close to the sea or to Granite Mountains.

Today, one finds air purifiers that generate negative ions; these ions in fact neutralise positive ions which are responsible for keeping the pollution suspended in the air. After neutralising them, one may find quite a bit of this pollution on the ground where it fell coming out of suspension.

Native American smudges spirit away the positive ions, leaving negative ions in their place. It has been scientifically proven that the burning of incense chases undesirable ions or “bad spirits”. It is beneficial for your environment to burn incense on a regular basis.