Sacred Smoke Sticks Some of the things I love most during this season are the scents/smells. They bring back memories...
Sacred Smoke Sticks
Some of the things I love most during this season are the scents/smells. They bring back memories — some bittersweet — of Yule’s gone by. Aromas like pine needles, cinnamon, pumpkin, mulled spices, & frankincense. All of these are reminders of the winter holidays for many of us.
Something you can do when the weather gets cold is make seasonal sticks for sacred smoke. These are basically like any other sacred smoke stick – you bundle herbs together, tie with string, and allow them to dry out before eventually burning them, but here we put together a combination of plants that evoked the scents of winter.
Sacred smoke is ideal for cleansing your sacred space, and most people use sacred smoke sticks made of sweetgrass or sage for this purpose, but why not use more seasonally appropriate plants at Yule?
Some types of plants definitely work better than others. For instance, certain members of the fir family begin to drop their needles as soon as they begin to dry, which means you’ll end up with needles all over your floor, and not in your smudge stick if you use them. On the other hand, the trees with the longer, softer needles should work really well, and lend themselves nicely to a project like this.
Gathering Your Supplies
What you’ll need:
• Scissors or garden clippers
• Cotton string
• Seasonal plants, e.g., evergreens (pine, fir, juniper, balsam, and cedar). Of course, you can use other scents you find more appealing. You might try adding rosemary in addition to the pine, fir, and juniper.
Building Your Yule Sticks
Trim your clippings down to a manageable length, say between six and ten inches, but if you’d like to make shorter sacred smoke sticks, go right ahead. Cut a length of string about five feet long. Put several branches together and wind the string tightly around the stems of the bundle, leaving two inches of loose string where you began. Tie a knot when you get to the end, and leave a loop so you can hang them for drying. Depending on how fresh your branches are – and how much sap is in them – it can take a few weeks to dry them out. Once they’re done, burn them in Yule rituals and ceremonies, or use them for cleansing a sacred space.
Be magickal, y’all!
