Is Sage a Closed Practice, and How Do You Source Your Altar Ethically

Do you have a bundle of white sage sitting on your altar right now, and somewhere underneath it, is a small, unspoken worry about whether it should be there at all?

I've held that same bundle and that same worry, tucked right behind it, for way longer than I want to admit.

This conversation has been going on for years now, spreading right alongside how many of us found witchcraft through TikTok and Pinterest boards without anyone teaching us where any of it came from, land or lineage.

Some corners of the internet insist the whole question got settled ages ago while other corners insist it was never that simple to begin with.

The two sides of the sage debate

The internet has picked exactly two teams on this one

Team one says smudging is closed, full stop, no exceptions, and treats anyone burning a sage bundle who isn't from one of the nations that practice it as causing harm regardless of intent.

Team two says sourcing is the only thing that matters, so if your bundle came from a small ethical shop instead of a big box store, you're covered, culture aside.

I've never once felt like either side was considering the whole truth, because plenty of people I trust land somewhere in between and get told by both sides that they're not taking it seriously enough

The environmental harm and the cultural harm of white sage

The answer really comes down to whose ceremony this is, and whether the plant survives us wanting it this much.

White sage isn't officially endangered, yet, but it's in real trouble, and most of us have no idea how real.

The California Native Plant Society has tracked more than 15,000 pounds of sage poached from a single Southern California preserve in the last decade alone.

There are barely any commercial growers of this plant. So most of what ends up in a $40 starter kit was pulled straight from wild land, often illegally, off public and tribal territory that was never anyone's to strip in the first place.

Smudging, the way most of us were taught it, comes from specific Indigenous nations, nations that were legally barred from practicing their own ceremonies in this country for close to a century.

That only changed in 1978, when the American Indian Religious Freedom Act finally protected the right

In 2018, Sephora pulled sage bundles from a mass market witch kit after Indigenous voices spoke up about exactly this history. This is two harms stacked on top of each other, an endangered plant and a closed practice, both often only considered in isolation.

Ethical alternatives to white sage

There are ways you can change your practice, so anyone who wants to practice a non-Indigenous form of smudging, can. You get to keep clearing your space with integrity and instead put something different in your hand while you do it.

Rosemary carries centuries of use for clearing and protection across traditions all over the Mediterranean, so it was never tied to one closed practice to begin with.

Lavender does something similar for calm, and it's gentle enough to keep near kids or pets without a second thought.

Mugwort has a long relationship with dream work and threshold moments, which makes it a strong stand in for anything you'd usually reach for sage to mark.

Cedar and juniper both carry old associations with protection and grounding, and either one holds up just as well as a bundle or burned as a chip on charcoal.

All of them keep showing up as alternatives that don't carry either weight, no closed practice trailing behind them, no poaching crisis either.

Sourcing gets simpler here too. Grow your own on a windowsill, buy from a small farm instead of a mass retailer, or forage responsibly if you have land of your own to do it on.

You can do so many things:

• Burn one
• Steep one as a tea and let the steam carry the work instead
• Hold a sprig in your palm while you perform your ritual
• Leave dried bundles on your altar, and more

A simple cleansing ritual to try right now

Let's try this together

Grab whatever's closest, a sprig of rosemary, a few dried lavender buds, even the jar of dried herbs sitting in your kitchen cabinet works.

Light it if you can, or hold it close enough to catch the scent if a flame isn't an option for you right now.

Set one small intention for the space you're in, nothing elaborate, just what you want this space to hold.

Inhale fully through your nose Hold at the top Exhale and release out the mouth.

Move whatever you're holding slowly around the space, or around your own body if that feels more right today.

And notice what softens, even a little, in your chest or your shoulders.

That noticing is the whole cleanse.

Give yourself permission to keep learning

You've been allowed to burn sage for years without knowing any of this, and you're allowed to change what's on your altar starting today, no penance required first.

Growth looks like this far more often than it looks like getting it right the first time. Caring enough to ask the harder question instead of skipping past it says something about you. That's worth trusting over any old habit, and it's worth trusting the next time a question like this one shows up too.

If this is the kind of nuance you want more of, the newsletter is where I go deeper on ethical sourcing and questions exactly like this one.

Come find your way there if it feels aligned ;)

Adorning you with rainbow sparkles of rosemary and good intentions