Drinking thyme and burning sage

Last week I made myself a fresh thyme tea. That particular day I was feeling a little low and heard this tea had great antioxidant benefits.

In the end, the thyme was grounding and delicious and made me feel instantly better. The trouble was, it hadn’t only helped to cleanse my palate but it seemed to have opened me up a little more than usual.

I was beginning to feel cleaner on the inside and in the same breath, noticed more the energy of the space around me. As I scanned the space, I felt as though something was amiss. It wasn’t quite as light an airy as it usually felt. Perhaps it was the low mood I left hanging around me, I thought.

Keen to sort it out, I remembered a clearing technique I learnt from an old lady that lived in the mountains of Mexico. At the time I remember watching her as she was on her knees with a stick in the air, chanting some words into her mud hut house. Too afraid to interfere, I continued to watch for a while as the burning ember at the end of the stick produced a light smoke that swirled in and around her house.

“Hola.” I said to the old lady after she finished her business of smoking our her hut.

In her own spanish dialect she told me that she was cleaning out the flies. They left a lot of poisonous energy.

“What’s the stick you’re using?” I asked with a childlike interest.

“It’s white sage. We use it to purify the air.” She told me. “Do you not have a sage stick?” She asked me quizzically as if I were missing a limb.

Innocently, I told her that I didn’t know what a sage stick was.

“Come with me.” She said as she took me into her two room hut. “Here, take this. You should keep one with you at all times. It will help to keep bad spirits away.” She added as she passed me a sage stick.

“What was the chant you were singing?” I asked her, keen to be using the sage stick correctly.

“Oh that was just a chant I made up. What’s important is that you speak directly to the sage and set out an intention. You need to ask it to purify the air and clean bad spirits out. The smoke of the ember will circle around and clean it out of the energy field.” She told me.

Since that day, I often carry sage around with me as an incense or air purifier. So that afternoon, still feeling low, I went and cut some wild white sage from the fields around my home and thanked the sage before I made a new sage stick. Then naturally, I played my favourite mantra, asked the sage to take the dark spots from my house and immediately lifted my energy in the process of leaving a wonderfully grounding incense behind me.

Did you know that sage has been used as a healing plant for at least thousands of years? Whether drank as a tea, smoked or burnt as an incense, it’s believed to contain an incredible power in relieving the body of various diseases, in preventing the mind from anxiety and stress and in cleaning objects and the environment from bad spirits.

All of that in a beautiful magic wand, from the back of your garden.

So, if you’d like to make the same experiment at home, take a couple of snippets of thyme and drop them into your favourite mug with hot water and hunt out a handful of sage. Here’s a great example of what you’re aiming for in making your own sage dubbing stick.

With love and best wishes
Anneka and Teresa

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