A sage cleansing prayer for negative energy can help you remove negative energy that can be ‘stuck’ in your life, in your living spaces or even in other people.
The practise of burning sage and accompanying prayers form a powerful combination for removing negative energy.
A sage cleansing prayer for negative energy is as simple as a one or two sentence mantra that encapsulates the exact negative energy you want to release.
Treat the burning sage ritual with the respect it deserves. Avoid using white sage as it is cultural appropriation.
Before we dig into it, a word of warning: Be careful during the smudging process to not hurt yourself unintentionally.
I will cover a few different scenarios with different prayers you can use for your own smudging ritual.
How Do I Do An Energy Cleanse With Sage?
You do an energy cleanse with sage by burning it in a ritual where you create and repeat a prayer or mantra while the smoke forms.
The smoke carries the negative energy and releases it.
Smudging is an ancient practice. A practice used to clear out bad energy from a specific area.
You can burn sage to clean out energy at your home or office. This holistic method has become quite popular in the past years. And you can easily find sage in metaphysical shops or online.
Burning sage helps keep your energetic body in balance.
Especially, if you work with different people all the time. You are always interacting with various persons and you don’t know their vibrations.
Despite this, it is extremely important to be strategic with smudging and to focus on the areas of your home or working place where you interact with people the most. That may be where a lot of the energy resides.
Step 1: Getting Started
Before you start the ritual or process, you have to make sure that you have left a window or a door open. The smoke needs to get out. And sage causes a lot of smoke and it has a very characteristic smell.
For the process to be successful you’ll need a bowl for burning the sage. Then you’ll need sage, and a long match or a candle to light up the sage. You can also get a fan. Although the fan is not necessary it could be helpful if you have a large area such as an office to cover.
Step 2: Intention
Set an intention when you start the burning sage process. Say it as a mantra out loud. Setting an intention is very important as it is your intention that dictates the results – not your words or your wishes.
Take a moment before lighting up the sage and decide what you will purify from your life. What is it that you identified as negative energy?
After you decide on what your intention will be, summarize it as a mantra or a prayer to say repeatedly while smudging.
This mantra encapsulates your intention.
Your mantra can be something that you come up with on your own. It can also be something along the lines of:
‘’I release and let go of everything around me that does not serve my greatest good’’
Step 3: Smudging:
Next, you should light up the sage with your match or candle and hold it at a 45-degree angle. Let the sage burn for approximately 30 seconds.
Blow out the flame gently. Stop when you see the orange embers on one end of the sage.
Slowly walk around your house or your office holding the bowl and the sage in it. Allow the smoke to be windblown.
The sage cleansing prayer for negative energy is important here as it allows the negative energy to be released with the smoke…
Step 4: Release:
As you move around the space and repeat your mantra out loud, direct the smoke toward the open door or window.
Direct the smoke towards the item of your choice. It can be anything from a piece of furniture, clothes, or jewelry or a photograph of someone.
The smoke leaving is the negative energy going away from your reach.
Pay attention to areas such as corners, hallways, and even mirrors.
In any case, please be extra careful. Do not let the burning sage unattended for any reason. It is common that the smoke will set off fire alarms. Keep that in mind if you are smudging in a public building.
Carefully examine the sage’s ends to ensure no more embers are burning. Once it is put out, store it in a dry place out of the sunlight. And remember to leave a window open or even the front door. Inhaling the smoke of the burning sage is dangerous for your health.
If you have asthma or other respiratory issues then you are more sensitive to the smoke and prone to an adverse reaction.
What Do You Pray When Burning Sage?
Using a sage cleansing prayer for negative energy has become very popular and to some extent it became a fad.
There are lots of ‘scripts’ or even expert who will do it for you.
Don’t get fooled by fads. Remember that your intention is all-out important.
Different cultures had many different rituals when removing negative energy with smudging rituals. The smoke is deeply symbolic although native American cultures believed that negative energy would ‘stick to’ the smoke and be carried away with it.
So, what do you pray when burning sage?
Are the words important? No, not really. It’s all about your intentions.
Just being aware of the negative energy you want to get rid of is an important step because the awareness helps you create an intention.
There are a lot of mantras and prayers you can speak when you are smudging yourself or your environment.
Everything comes down to your intention. We can have negative energy around a lot of things in our lives.
If your intention is related to love then prayer can be something like this:
‘’I unlock this place to love. I release all the negative energy that prevents love, joy, and companionship from flowing freely into my life.”
This prayer brings your intention into the physical world from inside your thoughts. It sets the intention of being open to love in your life. And it sets the intention of compassion.
Some people will burn sage when they first enter a new home.
It is a way to clean out all the energy of previous owners they haven’t met. There is a prayer you can say if that’s your case.
The prayer starts with an introduction of yourself. State your name out loud. You continue the prayer by thanking the spirits that inhabited the land. You acknowledge them. And you state your intention out loud. In this case, your intention is to create a safe place that you can call your home.
State that:
I ask the spirits that are present to live in harmony with me/us.
The space that you will turn into your home is not only made out of walls. Think about all the indigenous groups that once were living in this environment.
You can even go further and learn their names. Some people offer things like flowers, to their new home or office.
If you have an intention to clean out all the bad vibes and all the bad energy from your place, then state a different prayer.
Speak something along the lines of…
” I command all the bad vibes and all bad energy and negativity within this area to leave. I command them to go into the light. You are not welcome to be in my/our presence. I command you to go to the light.”
If you are thinking about selling your place and you want to leave the house energetically clean, there is another prayer that you can use. It goes along the lines of I’m grateful for this home, as it held and took care of me for the past (number of years you’ve lived there) years. I honor the end of our cycle together.
I call in the person or family that is in perfect alignment to tend to this space as I did. I leave this home filled with love, joy, and harmony.
When selling a house, you’re not just closing a chapter in your life. You are also helping another person start a new chapter in their life, and this prayer allows you to do both things. You honor your home for all that it gave to you. And you also invite in the right family or person to live in that space.
Why You Shouldn’t Use White Sage?
Smudging is a distinctly Indigenous practice. It is a ceremonial ritual or prayer created and practiced by a lot of different cultures in North American Indigenous groups.
However, we must say that before smudging became popular thanks to social media, it was illegal, at least for indigenous groups, who were often suppressed violently.
Until 1978, it was illegal for Indigenous groups to practice their religion.
Many were persecuted and jailed just because they were trying to keep their practices alive. Burning sage was one of those banned religious practices.
Due to all that complicated history of smudging, when non-Indigenous people use white sage to smudge their houses or other places, it is cultural appropriation.
It infringes upon the cultural importance and authenticity of the ritual. The practice of burning sage is not something to be taken lightly.
That smudge stick is a symbol of all the pain, sacrifice, and resistance of Indigenous Native people. It represents the continuing legacy of Native Indigenous Spirituality.
When white people are making money and commodifying the Native ceremonies, it is no longer about who has the right to buy and sell. It is about power.
Non-native folks can learn how to cleanse their spaces in other ways. In culturally respectful ways.
Another big problem with using white sage is that white sage is an endangered species. Because there are a lot of non-Native American Witches that are using white sage for their rituals, it means that the native population can not perform their rituals.
Also, due to the increased demand for white sage, sellers resort to unethical harvesting practices to get their product.
Some of those unethical practices include poaching from land they don’t have permission to harvest from, overharvesting, and not leaving enough intact plants to ensure growth in the upcoming years.
Treat the ritual of burning sage with the respect it deserves. And be sure that you are buying sage from an ethical source. Do your research well to respect this cultural practice.