When I was writing Easy Alternatives to White Sage for Smoke Cleansing, it surprised me that I was unable to find any free tutorials on how to make your own herb bundles. Nonpoisonous herbs are fantastic for smoke cleansing, and can be tailored to your practice, the specific purpose you are using your herb bundle for, allergies, and available herbs.

Herb bundles are most often used for smoke cleansing, but they can be used for as many reasons as incense, including as an offering or sacrifice, or to empower a working or ritual. Making your own herb bundles opens up your possibilities of herbs and plants that will work best for whatever purpose you have at hand.

I gathered these herbs and plants from the yard where I live. Most of them came from my garden, but a couple were gathered with permission from the garden of my friend who owns the property. I harvested them the evening of the July 2021 new moon before I watered the garden and gave and offering of bloodmeal to the plants from which I gathered. The specific herbs I gathered are peppermint, thyme, rosemary, purple sage, basil, basil flowers, lavender, rose petals, rose leaves, & a single fresno chili leaf. Juniper is another excellent herb for this kind of bundle, but I did not have any available. The leaves of fruit trees like apple or orange will also work, along with just about any edible herbs, and many more plants.

Also in the photo is a spool of linen thread, some cotton cooking twine. The folding knife is my utilitarian athame, which I used throughout the process, from gathering to finishing off the bundles.

Some Notes About Obtaining Herbs for Making Herb Bundles

The herbs you use to make your bundle need to be fresh. Herbs that are already dried will crumble to pieces when you attempt to bundle them.

If you want maximum potency of your herbs, it is best to gather them in the early morning before the weather warms up, especially if you are gathering in the heat of summer, but gathering at other times of day works as well. I gathered in the evening because of my chronic illness. I have not been sleeping well, and rising early enough to gather in the garden was not an option. On the plus side, by waiting until evening I was harvesting during the peak of the new moon, adding to the power of the time of harvest.

It is also perfectly valid to purchase your herbs, but you do need to get fresh herbs for bundles, not dried. If you can get them whole, that will also work best. Not everyone has the ability to grow a garden, or the herbs you wish to use may not grow easily in the area where you live. Herbs that are used for cooking are going to be the easiest to obtain fresh.

Cooking sages are an excellent alternative to white sage if you are partial to using sage for smoke cleansing. They are plentiful, grow easily in most gardens, originate in different areas around the world, and are available for anyone to use for anything they want.

Any reason not to use a particular herb is valid, especially allergies, availability, or even if you just don’t like the smell of it. If you will be burning your bundle around other people, please do make sure that no one in the vicinity is allergic to any of the herbs in the bundle, and remember that smoke travels. It is not cute, and you are not “driving away negativity” if you inflict smoke on someone with allergies to it.

If you want to use an herb or plant that is not edible, check to make sure the smoke it generates is not poisonous or irritating before including it in your bundles. Odds are, if the wood of the plant is available as smoking chips for BBQ, it is safe to use.

Other Supplies

You will also need cord to bind the bundles with. Be sure to use natural fibers only. Synthetic fibers melt and will release noxious toxic chemicals when they burn.

What I had available was linen thread I use for embroidery, and some cotton kitchen twine. I believe that an ideal thickness of cord would be somewhere in between the two. My linen thread was thin enough that it had a tendency to cut the herbs, and the kitchen twine was overly bulky. Inexpensive options for cord would be cotton threads for embroidery, thicker kinds of perle cotton, and thinner cotton crochet yarn. Linen or silk yarn or embroidery thread will also work if they are thick enough, but are much more expensive. Wool is safe to use, but the smell of burning hair is generally unpleasant, so I do not recommend it.

You will also need something to trim your herbs, bundles, and cord with. I primarily used my utilitarian athame, which is a folding knife. I liked the added dimension of using a consecrated blade, but if you do not have one that is suitable to the purpose, use whatever appropriate tool you do have. It is not worth using a consecrated blade if you end up wounding yourself because it is the wrong tool for the job.

The Experiment

I gathered enough herbs to make multiple bundles so I could test several different things both in making the bundles, and in using them.

I wanted to see how unusual ingredients like rose and the fresno chili leaf would work in a bundle when burning it.

I made two 100% purple sage bundles in different thicknesses so I could see if that made a difference on how they smoldered.

I used different thicknesses of cord to see what worked better for binding, and to see how they behaved when burning the bundles.

I used a variety of both long-stemmed and shorter herbs to see how they acted when bundling.

Bundling Basics

The easiest herbs and plants to bundle will be both flexible and long without having thick stems, and have leaves that are firmly attached. If the plant can be gathered in a clump, it will naturally hold together and be easiest to wrap. This makes plants like sage, rosemary, and juniper particularly suitable to bundling.

If you are using herbs or plants that tend to crumble or are short, they will be easiest to bundle when they are the center of the bundle, and easier to bundle or larger-leafed plants are wrapped around them.

Leaves that are long or broad will also be easy to bundle, and can be used to wrap smaller herbs or plant matter.

Make sure all the plant matter is facing the same direction. That is, make sure the tips of the leaves are all pointing the same way. When drying flowers or plants, hang them upside down so that the moisture will gravitate towards the leaves and be able to evaporate more easily. If you hang them so that the moisture gravitates into the thicker stems, you are more likely to get rot or mold because it will take longer for it to dry.

Bind the bundles as tight as you can, to encourage a good smolder when you burn them.

When you wrap have two free ends of cord and tie them off every inch or so, so that the cord will not entirely unwrap as the bundle burns (video below shows this process). While wrapping these bundles, I quickly found that with the herbs it was easiest to spiral wrap first using a single length of cord, to hold all the plant matter together. After that I tie-wrapped the entire length of the bundle to ensure that it would hold together later when it is burned.

Leave yourself some cord length on the stem end of your bundle so you can use it to hang the bundles for drying.

Wrapping the Bundles

I recorded myself wrapping bundle 6 (purple sage, rose petals, peppermint). It took me about ten minutes to wrap the bundle thanks to my tremors. Details about the specific bundles and what I put in them are listed below the video.

Bundles 1 & 2 (purple sage)

The first two bundles I wrapped were the only ones that I made from 100% purple sage. I was just figuring out how to do the wraps, so I did not thoroughly photograph the process of wrapping them. The first bundle is deliberately very thin, and the second is normal thickness so that I can test if that makes any difference on how the bundle smolders.

My partner is hospitalization allergic to sage smoke, so the only reason I included sage in any of the bundles was because I know that is the most popular herb for making smoke cleansing bundles. You do not need to use sage if you do not want to. Lots of other plants, and smoke in general, work just as well.

Bundle 3 (basil, basil flower, peppermint)

This bundle was made with basil, basil flowers, and peppermint. It is wrapped with linen thread. The basil flowers had a tendency to break off as I was wrapping, and would have worked better cradled within larger leaves, so that is what I did later on. The mint was easy to wrap, but I did not use enough of them to easily cover and hold the basil flowers. The linen thread was also too thin, and had a tendency to cut the herbs.

Bundle 4 (thyme, lavender, rose leaves)

This bundle was made with thyme, lavender, and rose leaves. It is tied with linen thread. The thread cut the leaves even worse on this bundle compared to the previous.

When I attempted to tie-wrap this bundle like I did the previous ones, plant matter was constantly falling out. It was much easier to hold it together by spiral wrapping down to the tip, and then tie-wrapping back up to the stem end of the bundle.

Bundle 5 (rose leaves, rose petals, peppermint)

This bundle was made with rose leaves, rose petals, and mint. It is wrapped with cotton kitchen twine, to avoid the problem of having the cord cut the leaves while trying to wrap it. The rose petals are sandwiched in the center to help prevent them from falling out while wrapping, and the rose leaves top and bottom were used to hold everything together.

This bundle was particularly challenging to wrap, and many of the rose leaves defied efforts to wrap them close. I spiral wrapped from base to tip, and then tie-wrapped back to the stem end.

Bundle 6 (purple sage, rose petals, peppermint)

This bundle was made with purple sage, rose petals, and peppermint. The naturally clumped purple sage made an excellent base for this bundle, and I sandwiched the rose petals between that and some peppermint. This is the bundle I recorded myself wrapping.

Bundle 7 (rosemary, lavender)

I made this bundle using rosemary and lavender. The lavender easily broke apart, so I couched it in the tougher rosemary. Again, spiral wrapping followed by tie-wrapping was easiest.

Bundle 8 (purple sage, basil flowers, fresno chili leaf)

I made this bundle using purple sage, basil flowers, and a single fresno chili leaf. The combination of the three plants is potent for aggressively cleansing or banishing.

Bundle 9 (thyme, peppermint)

I made this bundle with the herbs that were left in the basket, which were thyme and peppermint.

Drying the Bundles

Be sure to hang your bundles from the stem end, so gravity will cause the moisture to wick to the tips of the leaves and evaporate out. Since the weather where I live is very hot and dry right now, I have hung my bundles outside to dry. If the weather was high humidity or cold, I would hang it in my home, somewhere relatively warm and dry, like near a heater or oven. In ideal conditions, it may only take a few days for the bundles to dry, but it is best to leave them for 2-4 weeks to ensure they dry all the way through.

Another option is to use a dehydrator if you have one. Just set your bundles in it and leave it running for a couple days to make sure they dry through to the center.

I believe you could also dry bundles in an oven set to low or minimum temperature. Place them on a rack so air can flow entirely around them, without trapping moisture against a sheet pan, and leave them for a few days until they have dried all the way through. A convection oven would probably also work well if it can be set to a very low temperature. The biggest risk of using an oven is cooking the bundles instead of just drying them out.

More to Come

I will burn the bundles later this month, and post here about how that works out.