Smudge vs Invitation — the Ethics of Sacred Smoke

Les plantes-maîtresses, approchées par dévotion — ce qu'elles enseignent quand on les laisse être ce qu'elles sont.

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Les plantes-maîtresses, approchées par dévotion — ce qu'elles enseignent quand on les laisse être ce qu'elles sont.

— Les plantes-maîtresses, approchées par dévotion — ce qu'elles enseignent quand on les laisse être ce qu'elles sont.

Smudge — a word that became a brand

The word smudge in North American English originally names a specific ceremonial practice of the Plains peoples (Lakota, Cheyenne, Crow, Blackfeet, Arapaho): the burning of sacred plants — chiefly desert white sage (Salvia apiana), sweetgrass (Hierochloe odorata) braided into a cord, red cedar (Juniperus virginiana or Thuja occidentalis), and sacred tobacco (Nicotiana rustica) — within precise ritual contexts. Sacred Pipe ceremonies. Inipi (sweat lodge). Sun Dance. The opening of talking circles. Blessings of the newborn and the dead. The practice is old, codified, carried within specific family and tribal lineages, and inhabited by a particular cosmology.

Through the 1970s and 1980s, in the wake of American New Age culture and the hippie movement's appropriation of Indigenous spiritualities, smudge multiplied far beyond its original contexts. Today, in 2026, the white sage bundle is sold at Whole Foods, on Amazon, in the yoga shops of Berlin and Paris, in the wellness boutiques of Bali and Lisbon. On Instagram, millions of #smudge posts describe the practice as a tool for 'energetic cleansing' — with no reference to the peoples it comes from, no ceremonial context, no transmission. It has become a product. It has become an empty word.

Meanwhile, in California and northern Mexico, Salvia apiana is under an overharvesting pressure that seriously worries botanists and Indigenous communities alike. As early as 2017 the Cahuilla Indian Reservation published a call for an end to commercial harvesting by non-Indigenous third parties. In 2020 the Center for Biological Diversity documented a decline in wild populations estimated at between 30 and 50 percent in certain areas of the Mojave Desert. Several Tribal Councils — Lakota Sioux, Cherokee, Diné (Navajo) — have issued official statements demanding both an end to commercialization and recognition that smudge is not a generic practice.

Why 'to purify' is a suspect word

There is a conceptual slippage at the heart of smudge's commercialization that is worth pausing on. In the Lakota tradition, burning sage does not purify the space in the Western sense — it does not cleanse it of some dirt or negativity lodged there. It is a gesture of invitation: one calls the ancestors, one calls the guardian spirits (wakíŋyaŋ, the thunder-beings, or the spirits of the directions), one renders the space receptive to their presence. The smoke is not a detergent. It is a summoning.

This distinction is crucial, because it reveals a different cosmological orientation. To purify assumes there is a dirt to remove, a negative to neutralize, an energetic waste to expel. To invite assumes there are presences to summon, relationships to honor, allies to call. The first mode is defensive and binary (clean vs dirty, positive vs negative). The second is relational and hospitable (making room, opening, welcoming). Robin Wall Kimmerer, Potawatomi botanist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass (2013), insists on this point: the grammar of animacy in North American Indigenous languages makes smoke-plants not tools but relations. One does not 'use' sage. One 'meets' sage.

This inversion is what INFUSE holds as a fundamental distinction of posture. We do not invite anyone to 'purify the vibrations' of a space. We offer smoke-plants drawn from different traditions of the world, each with its context of use, its lineage, its cosmology, and the posture of reception proper to it. The wild mugwort bundle is not a new-age purification product — it is an inheritance of the Celtic, Slavic, Chinese and Japanese peoples, who burned this plant to open dreams, mark transitions, and accompany the dead.

Imphepho — the perfume of the amadlozi

In South Africa, Lesotho, and eSwatini (formerly Swaziland), the Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho, Pondo and Ndebele peoples have for centuries used Imphepho — a Zulu name for several species of the genus Helichrysum (chiefly Helichrysum odoratissimum, but also H. petiolare and H. cymosum). These are aromatic plants with yellow or white flowers that grow abundantly in the tall grasses of the veld and the Drakensberg mountains. They are burned within specific contexts: the opening of ancestor ceremonies (umsamo), before initiation rituals (ukuthwasa), to mark births and burials, to 'speak with the amadlozi' — the ancestors.

Imphepho is not a smudge. The Zulu term for the practice is ukushiselwa (to burn in order to call) or ukubikela amadlozi (to speak with the ancestors through fire). The cosmology is different: the amadlozi are not abstract spirits but named family ancestors, and Imphepho is their favored perfume, what draws them into the ceremonial space. Mthobeli Guma, a Xhosa traditional healer (sangoma) cited in Mavhungu Abel Mafukata's African Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Sustainable Development (2018), explains: 'When you burn Imphepho, you are not cleaning anything. You are setting the table for the ancestors. You are telling them: you are welcome here, your perfume is in the house, speak if you have something to say.'

Imphepho is beginning to appear in the international wellness trade, often labelled 'African smudge' — a name that is triply wrong. First, because it assimilates an African practice to a North American Indigenous one. Then, because it erases the specific cosmology of the amadlozi. And finally, because it commercializes a plant whose traditional gathering is governed within the communities — not all Helichrysum are burned, not in every season, not by just anyone. INFUSE does not sell Imphepho. When we document this practice, it is with named sourcing (Mthobeli Guma, Credo Mutwa, Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa) and recognition of the lineage.

Palo Santo — the crisis of the holy tree

Palo Santo (Bursera graveolens) is a tree of the dry tropical forests of Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela and Brazil. Its Spanish name means 'holy wood' — a post-colonial name given by the Spanish missionaries who observed its ceremonial use among the Andean Quechua, the Amazonian Shuar, and the Wayuu of Colombia. The wood is burned for its aromatic qualities but also for its cosmological ones: it is held to draw in the mala suerte (ill fortune) that clings to a space, and to transform it. It is also a central ceremonial wood in the Andean Mesada ceremonies.

The traditional rule for gathering Palo Santo is precise: the wood is not cut. One gathers only the branches that have fallen naturally and the trees that have been dead for at least 4 to 10 years, depending on local tradition. The wood must have 'ripened' — only after this post-mortem maturation does the inner resin develop and the ceremonial fragrance become fully present. The rule is ethical (one does not kill the tree for its scent) and pragmatic (green wood does not release the fragrance sought).

Since the 2000s, international commercial pressure on Palo Santo has exploded. Ecuadorian and Peruvian communities document the cutting of living trees to meet Western wellness demand — practices that violate the traditional rule, exhaust the populations, and yield wood of lesser aromatic quality. In 2006 Palo Santo was listed on the IUCN Red List under 'least concern' but with a note of growing pressure. Several Quechua communities (notably in the province of Loja in Ecuador) have set up certified cooperatives for measured harvesting — Ecuasanto, Sumak Yacu, and others.

Copal — the resin of the Mesoamerican gods

In Mexico and Central America, ceremonial smoke has for millennia used Copal — a resin gathered from several species of the genus Bursera (chiefly Bursera bipinnata, but also B. copallifera and B. cuneata). The word comes from the Nahuatl copalli, meaning resin. Among the Classic Maya, in the ceremonial cities of Palenque, Tikal and Chichen Itza, copal was offered to the deities during the New Fire ceremonies (Toxiuhmolpia), the steam baths (temazcal), and the rain rituals to the god Chaac. Among the Aztecs, copal accompanied sacrifices, blessings, and royal burials. Among the Zapotec of Oaxaca, it has remained central to the contemporary observance of the Días de los Muertos.

There are several grades of Copal corresponding to different uses: Copal blanco (the clearest, purest resin, reserved for the higher deities), Copal oro (amber resin, for general ceremonial use), Copal negro (dark resin, for protection and funerary offerings). This ceremonial taxonomy was documented by the Mexican ethnobotanists Robert Bye and Edelmira Linares as early as the 1980s. INFUSE does not sell Copal. We point toward the Mexican cooperatives (Copalera de Cuetzalan, Copales de Oaxaca) that keep the traditional practices of harvesting and classification alive.

The European smoke-traditions — the forgotten lineage

There is a paradox at the heart of the Western appropriation of North American smudge and other exotic smoke-rituals: Europe holds its own thousand-year tradition of sacred smoke, one it has largely forgotten. The Celts burned mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) at Beltane and Samhain to mark the turning of the seasons, and juniper (Juniperus communis) in the rites of cleansing the cattle. The Romans burned rue (Ruta graveolens) against the evil eye and frankincense (Boswellia carteri), imported from Arabia, in their temples. The Catholic tradition has kept incense (chiefly frankincense and myrrh resin) in its liturgy — when a priest censes the altar during the Mass, it is a thousand-year-old sacred smoke in direct line with the practices of ancient Egypt.

More locally, European folk traditions kept smoke-practices alive into the twentieth century. In Provence, bay laurel (Laurus nobilis) and rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis) were burned to mark births and burials. In Brittany, broom (Cytisus scoparius) and bracken (Pteridium aquilinum) were burned at the fires of Saint John. In Romania, Bulgaria and Serbia, ruda (Ruta graveolens) is still burned to 'drive off the deochi' — the Slavic-Balkan equivalent of the evil eye. In Spain, in the Asturias, yarrow (Achillea millefolium) is burned on full-moon nights. These traditions are less documented than the North American smudge, but they exist.

INFUSE leans toward the rediscovery of these European lineages — not out of nationalism but out of relational coherence. To burn a plant of your own land, whose use the local ancestors knew, whose gathering threatens no endangered species on the other side of the world, whose cosmology is more accessible to you because you are situated within the history that kept it alive — that is a coherent ethical and ecological posture. It is also a way out of the spiritual-tourist extractivism that marks so much of the contemporary wellness market.

Gems & legends — fragments of memory

Gem 1 — Rosalyn LaPier and the 2019 turning point. An environmental historian, Blackfeet-Métis, and professor at the University of Montana, Rosalyn LaPier published in 2019 in Indian Country Today a text that marked a turn: 'The Sage You Bought in That New Age Store Came From Native Land. Stop Buying It.' The article set off a transatlantic movement of shops pulling white sage from their shelves. INFUSE has stood with this line since 2023.

Gem 2 — The formula of the qetoret. The qetoret is the incense of the Temple of Jerusalem, whose exact composition is described in Exodus 30:34-38: storax, onycha, galbanum, pure frankincense (in equal parts), with added salt and submitted to a ritual grinding. This formula has been in use for some 3,000 years and is still prepared by certain contemporary Orthodox yeshivot. It is one of the oldest recipes of sacred smoke still in documented use.

Gem 3 — Chinese moxa and mugwort. In classical Chinese medicine, moxibustion (jiu) consists of burning dried mugwort (Artemisia argyi or Artemisia vulgaris) over acupuncture points. The practice goes back at least to the third century BCE and is described in the Huangdi Neijing. The same plant — mugwort — is used by the Celts for Beltane, by the Japanese (the springtime yomogi mochi), and by the Ainu for their bear rituals. A plant that has crossed Eurasia as sacred smoke for millennia.

Gem 4 — The evil eye and rue. Ruta graveolens (common rue) is one of the most universally recognized apotropaic plants — that is, one that turns aside the evil eye. Italy, Spain, Portugal, Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, the Maghreb: everywhere around the Mediterranean, rue is burned or worn as an amulet to repel the invidia (harmful envy). In Sicily, the malocchio is still treated today in some families by the smoke of rue.

Gem 5 — Credo Mutwa and Zulu cosmology. Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa (1921-2020), a Zulu sangoma and author of Indaba, My Children (1964) and African Cosmology (1996), was one of the great transmitters of South African cosmologies in the twentieth century. He describes Imphepho not as a plant but as a 'friend of the amadlozi' — its perfume signals to the ancestors that the house is ready to receive them. This grammar of invitation runs through all his work.

Gem 6 — The Aztec Toxiuhmolpia. Every 52 years, the Aztecs held the New Fire ceremony (Toxiuhmolpia): every fire in the empire was extinguished, and a new fire was kindled on the chest of a sacrificial victim atop the Cerro de la Estrella. Copal was the chief offering at this ceremony, which renewed the alliance with the gods and secured the continuation of the cosmic cycle. The last ceremony was held in 1507. Twenty-four years before the Spanish conquest. The copal survived; the ceremony did not.

Gem 7 — Sweetgrass and the Métis. Sweetgrass (Hierochloe odorata) is traditionally braided into a three-strand cord representing spirit, body and mind. The braid is then burned at one end to 'invite the sacred into the space'. The title of Robin Wall Kimmerer's major work, Braiding Sweetgrass, refers directly to this practice. Sweetgrass is still cultivated by several Métis Local Councils in Canada and is one of the smoke-plants whose ethical commercial cultivation is possible (unlike Salvia apiana, whose wild gathering is the problem).

Gem 8 — The frankincense of Oman. Boswellia sacra, true frankincense, grows chiefly in the Sultanate of Oman, in the Dhofar region, on the border with Yemen. The resin is gathered by incising the bark — an ancient practice documented by the Egyptians as far back as the third millennium BCE (Queen Hatshepsut's expeditions to the land of Punt). The frankincense of Oman is today threatened by climate change and by intensive harvesting; several NGOs (Save Frankincense, FRA Foundation) document a 50 percent decline in wild populations since 1980.

Principal sources

• Kimmerer, R. W. (2013). Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions.
• LaPier, R. (2019). The Sage You Bought in That New Age Store Came From Native Land. Stop Buying It. Indian Country Today, May 2019.
• Mafukata, M. A. (2018). African Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Sustainable Development. London: IGI Global. (Imphepho and amadlozi section)
• Plowman, T. & Adolph, J. (2019). Ethnobotanical research on Bursera graveolens (Palo Santo). Ethnobotanical Research and Applications, 17.
• Bye, R. & Linares, E. (1983). The role of plants found in Mexican markets and their importance in ethnobotanical studies. Journal of Ethnobiology, 3, 1-13.
• Mutwa, V. C. (1996). Isilwane: The Animal: Tales and Fables of Africa. Cape Town: Struik.
• Densmore, F. (1928). Uses of Plants by the Chippewa Indians. Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology, 44th Annual Report.
• Hatfield, G. (2004). Encyclopedia of Folk Medicine: Old World and New World Traditions. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO.
• Lewington, A. (2003). Plants for People. London: Eden Project Books. (Chapters on incense, copal, palo santo)
• Naturopharma & Center for Biological Diversity (2020). White Sage in California — Conservation Status Report.
• Exodus 30:34-38, the formula of the Temple's qetoret. Chouraqui translation, La Bible, 1985.
• Huangdi Neijing Suwen (compiled between the 3rd century BCE and the 1st century CE). Moxibustion section. Unschuld & Tessenow edition, University of California Press, 2011.

Secondary sources

• Stürzenhofecker, B. (1998). Times Enmeshed: Gender, Space, and History among the Duna of Papua New Guinea. Stanford: Stanford University Press. (Pacific sacred-smoke section)
• FRA Foundation (2018-2024). Frankincense Resource Assessment annual reports. Oman & Ethiopia.
• Save Frankincense (2017-2023). Reports on Boswellia decline and conservation strategies.
• Cahuilla Indian Reservation (2017). Statement on White Sage Commercial Harvesting. Tribal Council declaration.
• Traditional Healers Organisation (THO, South Africa). Position papers on Imphepho and traditional medicine commercialisation.
• Ecuasanto Cooperative (Ecuador) & Copalera de Cuetzalan (Mexico) — ethical-commitment documents of the referenced cooperatives.