Space Clearing (Smudging)

Indigenous North American smudging

A 2024 ethnobotanical study states that Indigenous North American groups have used tightly bound bundles of dried plants in ceremonies, with the plants depending on the cultural group and region. It lists sweetgrass, several Artemisia species, white sage (Salvia apiana), eastern arborvitae and juniper as examples, without naming the nations involved. Guidance from Manitoba Education describes smudging as a tradition common to many First Nations that involves burning one or more medicines gathered from the earth. It names tobacco, sage, cedar and sweetgrass as four sacred medicines, with sweetgrass, sage and cedar used most often in a smudge.

University guidance written by the Office of Indigenous Relations at the University of Waterloo adds that Métis and Inuit people traditionally did not smudge, although many choose to include it today. These are educational and institutional sources, not accounts of any single nation's ceremony. The sources reviewed do not set out which nation uses which plant or how ceremonies proceed, and Machipedia does not reconstruct knowledge that communities hold as restricted.

Smoke customs in other traditions

The 1910 Catholic Encyclopedia entry on incense states that incense from resinous trees was common in pagan worship, that Herodotus records its use among Assyrians and Babylonians, and that it featured in Jewish Temple ritual. It reports no evidence of its use in Christian worship during the first four centuries. A seventh-century Roman ordo records it in bishops' processions, and by the eleventh and twelfth centuries it accompanied the Gospel and Offertory at Mass. The entry is a century-old reference work and reflects scholarship of its time.

A Trees for Life page on juniper folklore describes saining, a Scottish Highland Hogmanay (New Year) custom of blessing and protecting the household and livestock with juniper smoke, after which the house was aired. The same page mentions Central European juniper burning to remove witchcraft and burning during plague outbreaks. The page is a conservation charity's secondary account that cites a 2020 popular source, and the sources reviewed give no firm dates for the Highland practice.

An Indian study describes havan samagri as the mixture of wood and odoriferous and medicinal herbs used in oblation to fire across India, and it frames the smoke of such materials as an ethnopharmacological subject. The sources reviewed do not trace the origin of Chinese or other East Asian incense customs, so this page does not date them.

Adoption in New Age and Neopagan settings

The 2024 Utrecht-led study reports that New Age, Pagan and Wiccan practitioners took up smudging in the twentieth century, and that the commercialization of New Age practices from the 1980s onward brought bundles of North American plants into ordinary shops. The authors note that these movements receive little attention from ethnobotanists even though they drive an international trade in wild-harvested plants.

Smudging and space clearing

In Canadian institutional guidance, smudging refers to the burning of medicines such as tobacco, sage, cedar and sweetgrass in First Nations practice. In the ethnobotanical literature, a smudge stick is a dried plant bundle burned for purification. The phrase space clearing appears as a practitioner and commercial label for using such smoke on rooms, objects or people. None of the scholarly sources reviewed define space clearing formally, so this page treats it as an umbrella label rather than a single tradition.

Related terms

Saining is a Scots word for blessing and protecting, applied in the Highlands to smoke and water rites for a household and its animals. Sacred medicines is the term used in First Nations guidance for plants such as tobacco, sage, cedar and sweetgrass. Havan samagri names the herb and wood mixture burned in Indian fire offerings. Palo santo (Bursera graveolens) is one of the species the Dutch study found among commercial bundles. These labels belong to different traditions and are not interchangeable with one another.

Settings in Indigenous communities and institutions

University guidance from the Office of Indigenous Relations at Waterloo states that smudging uses the four medicines, that feathers and medicines are best obtained from Indigenous suppliers, and that materials should be put out completely, with ashes returned to the earth, often under trees. It describes indoor smudging in pre-approved rooms and a permit process that takes account of smoke detectors, and it stresses checking fire hazards. This describes campus arrangements, not the content of ceremony.

Commercial smudge sticks and home use

The Dutch study bought 29 different smudge sticks from online and physical shops, found at least 15 plant species in them, and recorded white sage in ten. It also held semi-structured interviews with 11 users, vendors and herbal experts and collected 33 questionnaire responses at a witches' fair. Respondents most often described using sage for purification, sometimes of the house, and two mentioned protection. This is a small Dutch sample and cannot be generalized to other countries.

Saining and havan as described in the sources

The Trees for Life account describes fumigating the dwelling and livestock with juniper smoke, then airing the house, and gives no more procedural detail. In the Indian havan study, smoke from burning wood and herbs was generated for one hour in a closed room as part of a microbiology experiment, which is a research procedure rather than a ritual protocol.

Purification and protection

In the Dutch study, users described burning sage for purification and, in two cases, protection. Herbal experts mentioned burning mugwort to prepare for a workshop, for creative thoughts, to cleanse, and against angry spirits. The study also notes that incense smoke has been used historically as medicine against respiratory tract and skin diseases, to repel house flies and to disguise bad smells. These are reported purposes, and the study does not evaluate whether any of them is achieved.

Saining, as described by Trees for Life, aims at blessing and protecting a household and its livestock. In Christian liturgy, the 1910 reference work reports that incense symbolizes the prayer of the faithful rising before God. Claims that smoke removes negative energy are belief-based statements, and none of the research reviewed tests them.

Hygienic and health claims

A 2018 Serbian study introduces its work by stating that burning frankincense and myrrh in places of worship has been described as having hygienic functions, refining the smell and reducing contagion by purifying the air. The Indian havan study likewise presents its subject as the effect of natural products' smoke for therapy and health care. These statements set out the traditional claim that the later experiments examined.

Medicinal smoke and airborne bacteria

Nautiyal, Chauhan and Nene (Journal of Ethnopharmacology, 2007) treated a closed room with smoke from burning wood and a herb mixture (havan samagri) for one hour. They report more than 94 percent reduction in airborne bacterial counts by 60 minutes, a reduced level maintained for up to 24 hours in the closed room, and absence of several named pathogenic bacteria in the open room after 30 days. Bacteria were identified with Biolog microplate panels.

The abstract does not report human health outcomes, a comparison smoke from white sage, or independent replication. The result concerns one herb mixture in a laboratory setting and should not be carried over to sage, cedar or sweetgrass smudging, to open rooms with ventilation, or to infection prevention in people. The authors' conclusion that diverse pathogenic bacteria can be eliminated from confined air is their own interpretation.

Frankincense incense in a church

Ljaljevic Grbic and colleagues (Journal of Ethnopharmacology, 2018) tested frankincense (Boswellia carteri) and myrrh essential oils and burned incense against microbes in vitro. In a sealed 17th-century church nave, incense fume reduced airborne viable counts by up to 91.43 percent for bacteria and 80.43 percent for fungi, and the oil vapor in a smaller space by up to 67.56 percent for bacteria. The authors suggest occasional use as an air purifier. The experiment involved a resin in a single building, not plant smudge sticks, and measured microbial counts rather than health.

What has not been studied

A PubMed search for smudging, smudge sticks or sage smoke combined with Salvia apiana returned one paper, the Dutch botanical inventory, and a search combining smudging, Indigenous ceremony, health and Canada returned none. A second research search service reached its monthly quota before further queries. No controlled study of smudging or space clearing for mood, stress, sleep or perceived energy was found in the sources opened. The reported Liu 2007 airborne-bacteria study named in the brief could not be located and is not cited.

White sage demand and sustainability

The Dutch study states that white sage is being overharvested in the wild to supply increased demand, while noting that no data exist on pressure on wild populations. One vendor interviewed acknowledged concerns about overharvesting yet continued selling because of customer demand. Some interviewees pursued alternatives, such as growing white sage on a balcony or cultivating the native plant Artemisia vulgaris or the North American Artemisia ludoviciana in the Netherlands.

A 2020 High Country News article by Taylar Dawn Stagner reports that a conservation organization lists white sage as threatened, and that sellers exploit unspecific guidelines. It also reports vendors citing cost as a barrier to sourcing from Indigenous suppliers. This is journalism that relays named speakers, not a population survey.

Protocol and commercialization

The same article quotes a Gabrielino-Tongva tribal illustrator who says it is against protocol to sell medicines, whether the seller is Native or non-Native. In the Dutch interviews, one explanation offered for the popularity of North American plants was an idealized image of Native North American peoples, and another was marketing. Waterloo's guidance advises obtaining medicines from Indigenous suppliers. These views come from specific speakers and institutions, and the sources reviewed do not show that they are shared by all nations.

What smoke adds to indoor air

Laboratory studies of incense, the closest studied analogue, report that smoke consists largely of soot particles in fine and ultrafine fractions with organic compounds. A 2011 analysis identified formaldehyde among 12 carbonyl compounds and six quinones. A 2024 residential experiment in California measured organic fine particle emission factors of 7 to 31 mg per gram of incense burned, and found that low-volatility indoor compounds such as phthalates partitioned onto incense particles.

A 2016 study found that incense marketed as environmentally friendly emitted less fine particle mass but more polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and these correlated with oxidative and inflammatory responses in cultured human lung cells. A 2021 review adds that incense smoke produces particles, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and carbonyls, and that mechanisms remain unclear. None of these studies measured sage, cedar or sweetgrass smudge sticks, so their quantities cannot be assumed for them.

Reported health associations in people

A 2024 meta-analysis of nine Asian case-control studies reported a pooled odds ratio of 1.33 (95% confidence interval 1.20 to 1.48) for lung cancer with incense burning. Only two studies supplied smoking data, exposure was recorded as ever or never, and recall bias is possible. In the Singapore Chinese Health Study, 63,257 adults were followed for a mean of 18.8 years, and current daily incense users had a 22 percent higher risk of chronic limb-threatening ischemia (confidence interval 1.04 to 1.43).

A cross-sectional study in Saudi Arabia compared 45 bakhour shop workers with 80 controls and found wheezing, breathlessness and chest tightness more common with exposure, with impaired lung function. The 2021 review describes respiratory findings in children as inconsistent. These studies involve frequent or occupational exposure to commercial incense in specific populations, not occasional ceremonial smudging, and they show association rather than proof of causation.

Fire and suitability considerations

Waterloo guidance asks smudgers to check for fire hazards and to extinguish materials completely, and it places indoor smudging in approved rooms where detectors are accounted for. The incense and exposure literature suggests that people with asthma, other lung disease or heart disease, and small children, are groups for whom smoke exposure is a recognized concern, but the studies reviewed give no safe exposure level for smudging. This information is educational, and persistent breathing symptoms or chest pain call for conventional medical assessment rather than a smoke practice.