10/13/2026
🌿 HERB OF THE WEEK: WHITE SAGE
Today is Indigenous Peoples' Day, and I wanted to use our Herb of the Week to talk about a plant that comes up constantly in modern witchcraft spaces:
White sage (Salvia apiana).
You've probably seen it sold in bundles and marketed as a cleansing or purification herb. You may have also heard that people shouldn't use it.
But why?
White sage has deep cultural, spiritual, and ceremonial relationships among Indigenous peoples of what is now Southern California and northern Baja California, including the Kumeyaay, Cahuilla, Chumash, Tongva, and Luiseño peoples, among others.
These are distinct peoples with their own languages, histories, traditions, and relationships with the land. White sage isn't simply a generic “Native American cleansing herb.”
For these communities, the plant can be part of much larger relationships with place, ceremony, medicine, and community.
And then modern spiritual culture came along and turned it into something very different.
White sage became a nearly universal symbol of “cleansing” in witchcraft shops, crystal stores, wellness spaces, and social media. Often, the cultural context was stripped away completely.
There's also an ecological side to the conversation.
Commercial demand for white sage has contributed to concerns about wild harvesting, overharvesting, and irresponsible sourcing. A bundle sitting on a store shelf doesn't necessarily tell you where it came from, who harvested it, or whether it was harvested responsibly.
That doesn't mean every person who has ever burned white sage is intentionally disrespecting Indigenous people.
And Indigenous people themselves don't all have identical opinions about outsiders using the plant.
But I think the criticism deserves more consideration than simply saying:
“It's just an herb.”
Because it isn't *just* an herb when it has centuries of cultural relationship behind it.
And learning that history doesn't have to mean someone is telling you what you're “allowed” to do.
It gives you information.
Then you get to decide what kind of practitioner you want to be.
🌿 So what can you use instead?
Honestly?
A lot.
You can make an intentional herb bundle from plants you already have a relationship with.
🌿 Rosemary — often associated in European folk traditions with remembrance, protection, and purification.
💜 Lavender — commonly associated with peace, rest, cleansing, and calm.
🌿 Garden sage (Salvia officinalis) — a completely different species from white sage, with its own European history of culinary and herbal use.
🌿 Mugwort — associated in various European traditions with dreams, protection, and liminal spaces.
🌿 Plants from your own garden or local landscape — perhaps the most meaningful option of all, especially when you take the time to learn where they grow, what lives among them, and how to harvest them responsibly.
You don't need white sage to make a cleansing bundle.
You don't need someone else's sacred plant relationship to make your practice meaningful.
Learn the plants around you. Build relationships with them. Let your own landscape become part of your practice.
That's not about having a “better” herb.
It's about understanding that there are countless ways to practice with plants without treating every beautiful tradition we encounter as something available for us to purchase and use.
🌿 Have you ever replaced something in your practice after learning more about its cultural or ecological history?
What did you choose instead?
