Walking the Hedge

Clearing, Cleansing & Purifying Overuse

There is something I find very common to newbie ritual and Wicca based ritual and tool care. This is cleansing, purifying and charging everything before and after use. You all understand there is a difference bewtween clearing or purifying and blessing, right? Good!

Lets say that I am doing a ritual bath and I want to use the energies of some oak leaves for my bath … I can understand why you would want to wash any bugs off the leaves before you used them, but why cleanse them?

Why cleanse something of its energies, consecrate or charge it with your own energies and then try to use its energies? You just replaced those energies with your own. Once you cleanse and charge the oak leaves, they don’t have oak energies anymore, you got rid of those oak energies.

People constantly cleanse everything of everything and then wonder why they have nothing.

Cleansing and purifying something makes it a blank slate, it clears it of all energies. Unless you are careful to make sure in your words, focus and intent that you are only clearing certain energies, such as only the negative energies. But even then, there are plenty of times you do not want to need to do so. Take the oak leaves for example, what negative energies would some leaves I picked off of an oak tree have? None! Unless I failed to gain permission from the oak tree before I took pieces of it. And if I want oak energy, don’t I want all of the oak energy, not just the fluffy, white light stuff?

People, I’m going to let you in on a secret. There is no such thing a black or white, as pure evil or negative or pure good or positive. EVERYTHING is shades of grey, a mix of good and evil, dark and light. If you constantly remove the “negative” energies from something, you are only getting half the picture. Why is everyone so afraid of the dark anyways?

New pagans often wonder why their athame does nothing, when they clear all its energies before and after they use it every time. A ritual or magickal tool is a living thing; it isn’t going to function properly for you if you clear its energies all the time. Life needs energy to be alive.

Now, I know there is concern that your staff (only using a staff as an example) might pick up some really nasty vibes. But lets look at this with some common sense. You store your tools wrapped in silk, cotton, and plastic; material that protects it from outside energies. The only time it gets taken out of its wrapping is when you are placing it into a cleansed and concentrated area, then it goes right back in its wrappings. And you are the only person allowed to touch your tools, right? Where the heck is it going to pick up negative energies? Nowhere.

Plus, if your tool is already filled full energy, it won’t have any room for the “bad” stuff now will it?

By the way, you can consecrate or bless something without cleansing or purifying it first. Really.

Now lets say you do fill your staff up with some really nice energy. The energy will dissipate slowly over time or as you use it. Then it will need filling, charging back up again. But if you cleanse the thing every time, you’re just getting rid of the “good” stuff you worked so hard to fill it with last ritual.

All I’m saying is think long and hard before you go running off to purify anything. Does it really need it? The answer may just be NO.

Related posts:

1. If we don’t need tools, why even bother to use them?
2. The Flu and Divination
3. Repost: Instinct vs Research