Smudge Symphonies

White Sage - Smudge Melody

Sensitive, intelligent use of White Sage may be fruitfully compared to making beautiful music. Lucky Six Farms, which for decades has served as preeminent supplier of pure, certified organic White Sage products - essential oil, hydrosol, smudge bundles, cones, and whole leaves - knows the analogy is not nearly as far-fetched as it might first appear. In ages past, alchemists stressed that their operations, both material and spiritual, were more art than science, more akin to living performances of instrumental harmony than mechanical duplications of cut-and-dried formulae. The act of smudging, too, partakes of this rhapsodic character. As we have emphasized previously, White Sage embodies an empowered, vibrant plant spirit who should only be called upon when time and circumstances are right. White Sage’s melody is uniquely penetrating and clarifying.

White Sage - Smudge Harmony

Although White Sage products are traditionally employed alone in the context of purificatory rites undertaken prior to religious or juridical ceremonies, they have often been combined with a stellium of other herbs for synergistic effect. An excellent example of such aromatic harmony can be found in the smudge combination of White Sage and Yerba Santa (Eriodictyon sp.). When smoldered as a single bundle in appropriate proportions and situations, the pair are reputed to enhance psychic powers, especially insights generated as the result of focused divination. This complementary duo of well-known, sacred U.S. Western coastal plant spirits has become increasingly popular in recent years throughout Wiccan and alternative spiritual communities. It is a fantastic example of how our burgeoning noumenal awareness has given rise to novel creative understanding.

White Sage - Smudge Counterpoint

In music theory, counterpoint has always been regarded as the most sophisticated form of integrative harmony. Certainly, this is also the case with the intimate smudge combination of White Sage and Cedar (Thuja occidentalis). The latter, normally used by many North American Tribes to assist contact with benevolent ancestor spirits and banish malevolent influences, is traditionally conjoined with White Sage for very special occasions, when unusually intense purification must be reliably called forth. Nor does this exhaust fruitful aromatic combinations wherein White Sage plays a key role. By carefully researching how White Sage has been linked to other herbs, it is possible to uncover much interesting, hitherto obscure, knowledge.

By Alan Beck

Opening Chakras

Chakras In The Body - The Role Of White Sage

Most Asian meditative traditions - and more than a few schools of Western esotericism - note the importance of discrete energy vortices or chakras in the body. Usually appearing to our inner vision as akin to rotating wheels or dynamically petaled flowers, they are arrayed along the body’s central axis. Each serves to concentrate a distinct life-current, so directing psychic focus upon it may give rise to insights or abilities germane to areas governed by that particular energy. Numerous techniques may assist such programs, including visualizations, yogic postures, breathing exercises, and external aids. White Sage purification belongs to the latter group, and the entire integrated process is often understood as “opening a chakra.” Madre Grande Monastery and Lucky Six Farms often receive accounts of our White Sage products successfully employed as adjuncts to opening chakras in the body.

Chakras In The Body - The White Sage Audit

Although traditions may differ on the number of chakras and their precise locations, most recognize seven primary ones: root, sacral, solar plexus, heart, throat, brow, and crown. Ideally, opening chakras should be carried out in a reasonably balanced fashion, with no single center receiving an overabundance of attention. Thus, in the initial stages it is advisable to conduct an internal survey of all seven so as to ascertain which seem most energy deficient or unduly closed off to the healthy circulation of living currents. By simply preceding this spiritual audit with a formal White Sage smudging, clear understanding of the overall situation can be efficiently enabled. Repeating the procedure once or even twice after an interim of a few days will further concretize your understanding and increase your confidence in the information obtained.

Chakras In The Body - Cleansing, Clearing, Purifying

Once particular chakras have been recognized as needing opening, you can make each  in turn the center of meditative focus. Your approach should be gentle but firm. White Sage smudging via suitably sized bundle, cone, or hydrosol mist may be used during periods of prolonged or intense concentration. By stabilizing the mind on a particular chakra, the dynamic vision of that hub will grow vivid so its supporting channels of energy can be harmoniously cleaned, calmed, and ultimately normalized. By allowing White Sage’s naturally purifying influence to be conveyed and accurately translated inward, each chakra can be empowered to its full potential.

By Alan Beck

Smudge Is Not Incense!

Intellectual Bad Breath

We at Lucky Six Farms like to characterize popular confusion of incense with smudge as intellectual bad breath. Why? Because this foolish conflation seriously offends both the academically well-informed and the spiritually aware. I’ll focus on the former group first. Incense and smudge have explicitly divergent definitions. Incense is any material burned to fill the immediate environment with a putatively pleasant scent. Smudge is a sacred plant smoldered or otherwise employed for ritual purification. The difference is immediately apparent. There is virtually no conceptual overlap at all between the two substances.  And for those who stubbornly refuse to acknowledge or respect this fact, their mental situation is as appalling as terminal halitosis. Like its physical counterpart, intellectual bad breath is socially repellent.

Spiritual Bad Breath

For those accustomed to appropriate employment of ceremonial smudging, mistaking incense for smudge is tantamount to interpreting wrong-doing as virtue. Although miscellaneous incenses and perfumes have long played public relations roles for various organized faiths, such fragrances usually performed those duties more to overwhelm the smell of large crowds than to directly enhance connections with the Divine. In addition, substances traditionally utilized as smudge are also linked to manifested respect for the sacred in numerous other ways. For example, many Native American Tribes wrap or cushion the Holy Pipe with White Sage leaves. Salvia apiana leaves are also worn by Sun Dance participants and carried on journeys as a link to benevolent, protective spirit influence. For the indigenous wise men and women  of America, substituting some nominally nice-smelling material for White Sage in such contexts would be ludicrous and possibly dangerous.

White Sage Fights Ordinary Bad Breath

Interestingly, keeping a small White Sage leaf in the mouth is reputed to keep the physical breath fresh even as it energizes the mind while calming the body. White Sage leaves were often used in this way to provide extra energy during periods of protracted exertion or minimal food intake. Any way you look at it, then, smudge is most certainly not incense: the two are not even close in character or purpose. We are proud to provide certified organic White Sage products - essential oil, hydrosol, smudge bundles, cones, and whole leaves - to those who are knowledgeable about what they are, what they do, and why they are universally regarded as sacred. White Sage is smudge and should always be treated appropriately.

By Alan Beck

What's Eating You?

The Deep Roots Of Eating Disorders

We at Lucky Six Farms have noted that anorexia and bulimia along with a host of other nonspecific eating disorders are mentioned more and more frequently today. Certainly these are troubling trends, perhaps because they are now making their presence evident among hitherto resistant demographic sectors. Clearly, the rise and ever increasing prevalence of these conditions derive from much more than general food availability coupled with high caloric content. Obsession with attaining unrealistic body-image models appears to motivate most sufferers, but this observation only begs the question of why such peculiar psychological foci have attained power enough to wreck lives. Could there be further reasons yet to be uncovered? In fact, a wide range of studies indicate that the prevalence of eating disorders in post-modern society stems from deep rooted feelings of alienation and apathy. 

Eating Disorders Reflect Interpersonal Disconnect

We believe the blatant artificiality of post-modern life, its characteristic emphasis on mere superficiality and veneer, is a principal contributor to eating disorders today. In particular, we have learned to be concerned with objects at the cost of relationships and to value manipulation over interpersonal integrity. We long to cover our true selves with masks and thus strive to emulate images which best actualize such obscurantist goals. What is needed most in these circumstances, of course, is personal authenticity, that is, the desire to expose who we really are both to our own consciences and the opinions of others. Are there any ways we can actively encourage an honest approach to ourselves?

Pushing Eating Disorders From Our Table

Indigenous American Tribes plus a good many others who are seriously affiliated with Earth-centered spirituality have traditionally believed that mental clarity brought about through purification drew basic authenticity along in its train. The primordial linkage between one’s true self and surrounding life-forms, human and nonhuman, often manifests intensely following sincere efforts at purification. And realization of this true self invariably undercuts all self-destructive illusions, especially those which set problems like eating disorders into motion. Vanguard science itself has recently seconded those venerable concepts by illuminating remarkably ramified interconnections at the heart of our material existence. The certified organic White Sage products we offer - essential oil, hydrosol, smudge bundles, cones, and whole leaves - have long served as respected adjuncts of various purification regimes. We present them in the hope they can help uncover the true, empowered self within every person.

By Alan Beck

Reducing Post-Modern Pressures

Ubiquitous Stress And Anxiety

I find it both disturbing and fascinating that elevated levels of stress and anxiety are pretty much taken for granted today as standard features of post-modern life. The underlying causes for this condition are not hard to ascertain. Western civilization has encountered more profound changes during the last two centuries than at any other period throughout its colorful thousand-year reign. Prescient commentators have noted how so many pervasive technological innovations expressly designed to ease stress and anxiety have inadvertently magnified them instead. Our psychological predicament can be likened to squeezing one end of a balloon. Tension dissipated at the compressed end becomes instantly evident on the other. Often, a balloon will burst under repeated treatment of this kind, because rapid escalations of stress eventually prove too much to bear. The computer I’m typing on now provides a perfect real-world example: the wonderfully facile communication it enables is balanced - and perhaps offset - by the inherent stress and anxiety of corporate cubicle culture.

Traditional Approaches To Stress And Anxiety

Although we labor under burgeoning amounts of these irritants today, stress and anxiety are hardly new or unique. Problems they pose have long challenged both individuals and cultures. Traditional approaches to their alleviation invariably included prayer and ritual purification. Lucky Six Farms is dedicated to offering products capable of powerfully assisting the latter. We understand that effective purification is a multidimensional process. Since humans exist simultaneously on physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual planes, reducing stress and anxiety is necessarily a highly integrated process. Over eons, wise women and men learned which plant helpers could best balance and cleanse energetic currents flowing through and between these life-sustaining arenas. Perhaps the most prominent and potent is the southern California White Sage (Salvia apiana).

Reducing Stress And Anxiety Naturally

Our White Sage essential oil, hydrosol, smudge bundles, cones, and whole leaves provide numerous avenues for attenuating the burdensome titer of stress and anxiety generated by ever-familiar barrages of hectic demands and unforeseen obstacles. Whether you choose our smudge stick’s measured, formal ceremonial or our hydrosol’s quick mist near pocket or purse, you may always rely on the organic purity - the very quality so valued by indigenous peoples - required for White Sage to work its ancient magick.

By Alan Beck 

Cosmic Cycles, Human Cycles

Eternal Life And The Mystery Cults

Ironically, mature civilizations inevitably focus on issues of eternal life. Western thinkers, both modern and post-modern, have shown great interest in the ancient mystery cults. No doubt such curiosity is justified by numerous historical parallels linking those troubled times with our own. Cults of the Magna Mater, Isis, Dionysus, Cybele, Mithra, and others flourished most in an era when daily vicissitudes generated by a newly formed and rapidly burgeoning empire emptied traditional belief systems of their relevance and emotive power. Life became precarious; death loitered menacingly around every corner. History provides ample evidence of the problem, as all hope of secure, let alone eternal life receded into a glowering distance.

Oppressive anomie coupled with a general feeling that something new and spiritually vibrant was needed filled the psychic atmosphere of those bygone days. When this yearning became almost palpable, the mystery cults proffered their intriguing solution. The question we ask today is: exactly how did those strange rites fill the yawning inner void which extended across lines of class, gender, and learning? Precisely what could they offer that comforted and satisfied so many whose hearts, under the baneful Roman eye, had grown cynical and cold? Could their hidden treasure be the confident assurance of eternal life?

Eternal Life Through Organic Vision

When our Lucky Six Farms staff raised these questions with monks and friars of nearby Madre Grande Monastery, the resultant discussion proved provocative and illuminating. Because both groups have long been involved in day-to-day issues of organic farming in the service of sacred vegetation, certain answers presented themselves with unusual vigor. One aspect of the mystery rites was shared in common by virtually every cult: an apotheosis wherein a sheaf of grain or similarly common plant was presented, bathed in radiant glory, to new initiates. Although forbidden to give clear voice to the principal mystery doctrines per se, all devotees agreed that the central concept involved new life after ostensible death, rebirth  after burial, resurrection following destruction. Both the Monastery personnel and those at Lucky Six Farms are well acquainted with such notions, since they lie at the very hub of ecologically sound organic farming.

Eternal Life Via Practice And Product

When such matters are broached, it is all too easy to lose the thread of meaning in a labyrinth of semantics. It is a maze in which today’s academics too often flounder. However, in whatever terms it is couched, the critical point here is simply this: Cosmic cycles so evident in our farming do not stop at the soil but, in fact, infuse every aspect of our lives and thoughts. We are profoundly connected to the Earth and share the essentially perennial nature of all her living forms. It is indeed in that spirit of eternal life and the purity underlying it that we offer our White Sage products. 

By Alan Beck

Earning Earth-Friendliness

Putting Down Our Ecological Footprint

What is the real size of the Lucky Six Farms ecological footprint? Recently, several industrial manufacturers of low-grade, synthetic incense inaugurated a campaign against the purchase and use of White Sage smudge bundles and allied products. In particular, they rail against traditional aromatics made from wildcrafted leaves, proclaiming that such harvests decimate long-established, indigenous stands of California White Sage, thus moving this precious vegetative resource close to extinction. In addition, they assert that entire native ecosystems are being trashed by small wildcrafting enterprises. Are these horrifying allegations true? Are we ruining our natural environment and ravishing Mother Earth? Does our ecological footprint resemble an oversized hobnailed boot more than an earth-friendly moccasin?

Defining Our Ecological Footprint

Interestingly enough, the root of all these allegations lies unobtrusively within the dictionary, in the precise definition of the term “wildcrafting.” We cannot speak for other ventures, but for Lucky Six Farms wildcrafting means now exactly what it always has always meant: purposeful hand cultivation from heritage cuttings and seeds on carefully prepared beds. Thus, we first till and naturally enrich the soil of expansive private fields leased from Madre Grande Monastery, then prayerfully plant our Salvia apiana one at a time in the earth. Because White Sage is a perennial, most stands cultivated in this way will sprout new leaves and flowers several times per year for quite a number of years after initial planting.

Our Ecological Footprint - Fact Versus Falsehood

The fact is that false representations of what actually constitutes American wildcrafting usually emanate from large-scale fragrance industries specializing in cheap, lab-created synthetic scents and exceptionally dubious sources of natural aromatics. By leveraging their advertising budgets as new-found champions of environmental integrity, they believe they have hit upon a wonderful way to undercut genuinely earth-friendly competition. We at Lucky Six Farms know that such falsehoods have a very short shelf life for savvy customers. We are proud that so many Native American Tribes - foremost authorities on what does and does not respect our Mother Earth - continue to purchase our offerings even as they shun those of our detractors. So the ecological footprint of truth and love always proves the lightest of all.

By Alan Beck