Every psychic reading should start with an open mind and clear energy. Before you seek oracle guidance, you may want to yourself and your space by burning some sage.
This ancient practice is a spiritual cleansing ritual that can eliminate negative energy, bringing peace to your mind, soul, and body. Many people burn sage to clear the energy from a new home or when they feel bad vibes around them. This practice fosters a safe, positive space that encourages healing and happiness.
However, there’s more to burning sage than clearing your energy. Here are some of the most helpful benefits of burning sage, along with a list of the materials you’ll need for it and how to prepare yourself for this ancient cleansing ritual.
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The Origin of Burning Sage Ritual
Before diving into the world of burning sage, you should know where the ritual originates.
White sage, or Salvia apiana, is a fragrant evergreen plant within the same family as mint. Its scientific name comes from salvus, a Latin word that roughly means “to heal”.
The plant is only native to southwestern California and Mexico, making it a large part of Native American and Mexican culture. These cultures primarily utilize this sacred plant for medicinal and ceremonial purposes, including smudging.
Burning sage, or smudging, is a ritual thought to come from ancient Native American culture, so it’s a practice that is a couple of thousand years old. They used it to purify souls or places of negative energy. It connects people with the spirit realm, attempting to bring on positive spiritual protection.
Main Benefits Burning Sage Can Bring You
Here are five of the best benefits of sage burning.
It Reduces Stress and Anxiety
Sage has been a part of holistic medicine practices for years. It suggests that using it to clear negativity will decrease your anxiety, as anxiety is a negative feeling.
Science also proves its compounds can help reduce oxidative stress and boost mood. In return, you’ll feel calmer and more grounded. It works similarly to the way meditation works by calming the mind.
It Cleanses Your Home from Toxic Energy
If you’re going through a rough patch in your life and find yourself around negative people, it can feel like their toxic energy is following you around. It can be hard to rid yourself of this energy, so attempting to remove it from your safe space (your home) with sage burning may help you feel lighter.
The smoke from the sage can push toxic energy and negativity out of your home and welcome positive energy back in.
It Improves Intuition and Concentration
Along with the idea of reducing anxiety, burning sage helps to clear your mind due to its potential psychoactive abilities. Its mind-clearing abilities allow you to have an easier time concentrating and can open you up to the spirit world. It can connect you to your surroundings and increase your spiritual abilities and awareness.
When the negative energy gets pushed out, you can focus on happiness and achieving your goals. Unfortunately, negativity will always hold you back unless you can clear it.
It Helps You Connect With the Spiritual Realm
Sage-burning rituals can expel negative spirits and energy from a person or place. In return, you’re allowing positive energy, spirits, angels, and other spiritual beings to come in to offer you protection. Native Americans would typically do these rituals to connect with ancestors, which would help watch over them and offer guidance and protection.
Clearing your mind with sage will also make you feel more connected to the spiritual realm because it should help take away your worries and negative thoughts. You can focus on what’s most important to you when your mind is quiet.
It Empowers Specific Objects
Sage burning helps clean and empower objects like crystals and rid them of any negative energy they might have collected. This will help restore your crystals to their natural energy balance and return them to their job of healing and protecting you.
How To Prepare For Burning Sage Ritual?
If you want to try burning sage, there is a preparation process you need to go through before you begin. Here are some things to keep in mind.
Clear Your Thoughts
Never start your sage-burning ritual with high emotions. Instead, try calming yourself down and clearing your mind from everything. Meditation before the ritual may be helpful.
Set Intentions
You should think about your intentions for this ritual before you begin. What do you want? What are you trying to purify? It might help you express your intentions to yourself and the spirit realm.
Setting your intentions will help you create a mantra or guiding principle to repeat as you cleanse.
Practice Meditation or Yoga
Practicing yoga or meditation will significantly help you relax your mind and body. These actions show us that they can do things such as the following:
- Lower your blood pressure
- Regulate your heart rate
- Slow down or regulate your breathing if you feel anxious
- Improve your brain waves, bringing you into a more relaxed state of mind
- Decreases your metabolism
- Discourage illnesses
Yoga and meditation are also easy mindful activities you can do in the comfort of your own home.
Keep Your Windows Open
Before lighting your sage bundle, ensure your windows are wide open. The point of the ritual is to push out negative energy and purify your home. You’ll need somewhere to send the energy. Direct it out the windows or door to rid yourself and your space of negativity.
Doing this will also allow the sage smoke itself to leave your home. Smoke can be irritating if it lingers too long.
Remove Animals From the Room
Sage is typically a nontoxic herb to most pets if they happen to eat it. However, they shouldn’t breathe in any type of smoke. Burning sage creates strong-smelling smoke that can irritate your pet’s eyes and nose. It can also affect their breathing. Remove them from the area you’re saging to keep them safe.
What Do You Need For Burning Sage Ritual?
You can’t simply pull out some sage from your spice cabinet and burn it. You’ll need some supplies to do a sage-burning ritual properly. Here are the things that you’ll need to create a sage-burning kit. Each item represents one of the elements.
Sage Bundle
Sage bundles, or smudge sticks, are typically bunches of dried white sage tied up with string. Sometimes you’ll find bundles combined with dried flowers and other herbs. Some of these extra additives have meanings. You’ll have to pick the bunch that resonates most with you, depending on what you’re looking for in life.
If you’re wondering where to buy sage for burning, many wellness stores and websites sell them to the public for affordable prices.
The sage represents Earth, and the smoke the lit sage creates is air.
Matchbox
You can’t burn anything without fire, so you’ll need a matchbox to light your sage. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy. Just a simple box of matches is fine. Some people like to have specific matchboxes for their sage-burning rituals, but you can use whatever matches you have.
The matchbox represents fire.
Ceramic or Clay Bowl
When you light a sage bundle, it will create ashes. So, you’ll need something to catch those ashes, like a ceramic or clay bowl. These materials can handle the heat, so they won’t crack or break when the hot ashes land inside them.
Some traditional sage-burning rituals use shells for the bowl, but you can use a standard bowl. In most cases, the shell, or the bowl, would represent the water element.
Are There Any Side Effects of Having a Burning Sage Ritual?
Generally, sage burnings, which are usually short-term, will not cause any physical harm to you. If you inhale too much smoke you might feel a little light-headed. Other than that, you should be okay. This usually happens if you don’t open the windows or smudge an enclosed space.
The side effects of burning sage are pretty positive. You might notice the following: Heightened emotions and senses due to improving your intuition, and a feeling of calmness.
Conclusion/Summary
Burning sage is a helpful ancient ritual that can cleanse your body, mind, soul, and even a place of negativity. Burning sage has many benefits, but some of the best include a reduction in stress and negative energy, improved concentration, spiritual connections, and object empowerment. Try burning sage to bring more positivity into your life!
