Local Herbal Incense

I love making natural herbal incense in the form of herbal smoke bundles for space cleansing and working with my clients. I grow the herbs myself and harvest them with respect, leaving offerings in exchange. I grow the herbs myself or forage them from the local area and choose herbs that are connected to cleansing, protecting and healing as well as herbs that smell amazing!

When we work with our local plants we build a relationship with them, especially when following the laws of what is known as the ‘honourable harvest’ (a term popularised by Robin Wall Kimmerer in her wonderful book Braiding Sweetgrass) – which means always ask before you take, leave something in return, take no more than you need, no more than 10% of the plant, leave enough for the plant for other pollinators and so where applicable it will self-seed and grow again next year etc, and never take the first or last of anything. We are so disconnected from nature that many people forget the simple reality that for instance, if you pick all the elderflowers for cordial, there will be no berries!

Although we can readily buy bundles of White Sage from the USA in the shops these days and it’s become very popular for smoke cleansing/smudging etc, but its popularity means in many cases it’s being harvested in unsustainable, disrespectable ways and it’s becoming scarcer for the indigenous people who have traditionally worked with (rather than ‘use’) that plant.

And it seems such a shame to buy in a herb flown hundreds of miles when we have our own sacred, native herbs such as Mugwort, Vervain and Yarrow and the now naturalised Rosemary, garden sage and Thyme. So it’s so much better for our environment to get to know our local herbs and wild plants and their properties rather than buy plants that are getting scarcer and have been shipped around the world. You can so easily grow plants like sage, rosemary, thyme on a window sill from cuttings, that will have connections to the land and ancestors and their traditional censing practices. They smell wonderful too!

It’s so fulfilling to use your own, handmade herbal incense in ceremonies and rituals! I do sell bundles similar to these in my Etsy shop and I have also created some tutorials on social media how to create them.

I’m planning some small, in-person workshops on how to make beautiful smelling herbal incense bundles like these!

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