5 Ways to Cleanse and Protect Yourself This Year

January often reminds us to go back to the basics and reset ourselves energetically for the upcoming year. Many people have new year’s traditions that they do, such as eating certain foods, abstaining from certain chores, and magick to bring prosperity and luck to the household.

This year, I decided to cleanse my house on New Year’s Eve instead of waiting until New Year’s Day. We were having house guests over the new year and I did not want to bother them by burning a bunch of candles and herbs in the house. I also wanted to get a jumpstart on cleansing before the old year was over, so that my household would go into the new year already cleansed of last year’s energy.

Although we think about doing cleansing and protection work at certain times, such as the new year, you can cleanse yourself and your spaces at any point. Some people make cleansing a part of their regular house cleaning or a part of their regular spiritual practice. Others may only cleanse when they feel like they need to.

I feel like cleansing and protection go hand in hand. Once you have removed the energy that you do not want, it is a good idea to follow up with protection work, so that unwanted energy doesn’t move right back in.

5 Ways to Cleanse Yourself and Your Space

1. Smudging

When discussing cleansing, many people immediately imagine smudging using sage, palo santo, or other herbs. Smudging is a great way to remove negative and unwanted energies, and there is a variety of herbs you can use to do smoke cleanse. You can use cleansing herbs alone or combine them. Aside from sage and palo santo, some of the herbs that you can use to cleanse with are cedar, lavender, rosemary, dragon’s blood, frankincense, rose, dill, basil, thyme, and juniper. This is by no means an extensive list, and with a little searching you can likely find even more herbs to use.

2. Oils

Although smudging is a popular practice, it is not always feasible. Perhaps you live in a dorm or other place that does not allow you to burn things. Someone in your home might have pulmonary issues and cannot tolerate things being burned when they are around. Or you could be like me and be terrified of setting off your smoke alarms (my house came with a plethora of hardwired smoke detectors). There are many ways to cleanse aside from smudging, such as using oils instead of burning herbs.

To smudge with oils, you could diffuse the essential oils of cleansing herbs in your space. There are also intentional oil blends for cleansing that you can diffuse. Oil diffusers, whether electric or one that requires a tea light candle, can be placed in a space and left for a time. They can also work quietly in the background, whereas smoke is a bit more obvious.

3. Cleansing Spiritual Bath

A spiritual bath is a bath that you take intentionally, with or without tools such as herbs, oils or candles. However adding cleansing herbs or oils to your bath is a simple way to make the mundane a sacred ritual. Even if you do not have any cleansing herbs at home, you can always use salt. Salt is a wonderful mineral that can remove unwanted energies and adds protection. I recommend putting any herbs you use in a bath inside of a bag so that you do not have to pick all the bits of herbs out of the tub afterwards. You can use an organza bag, a cotton pouch or twist your herbs up in cheesecloth or a coffee filter.

If you do not have time for a full soak in the tub, or you do not have a bathtub, you can take a cleansing shower. The simplest way to do this is to imagine that as the water runs over you and down the drain, it is washing away those unwanted energies. If you want to add cleansing herbs to your shower, you can hang eucalyptus or lavender stalks from your shower head. Or, before you get in the shower, you can brew your cleansing herbs into a tea. While you are showering, you pour the tea over your head and body. To save time, you could brew up a big batch of your cleansing tea and have it ready to go for anytime you wanted a cleansing shower.

4. Cleansing Gemstones

I enjoy working with gemstones because they are easy to use. Gemstones can help you cleanse and protect your space simply by being in that space. Now, you will need to cleanse and reprogram them from time to time, but for the most part they can be set down and forgotten about. Gemstones also work quietly in the background and will not be obvious if you do not want anyone to know what you are working on. You can place them in strategic places in your home where they will do the most good, or you can grid your space with them by placing cleansing stones in the four corners or your home or even the corners of all your rooms.

Selenite is a go to for cleansing. It is thought to purify the energy it encounters and can cleanse other items such as jewelry, spiritual tools and tarot decks. It is believed that selenite renews itself and therefore does not need to be cleansed. Clear quartz is also a great stone for purifying energy. You will need to regularly cleanse clear quartz and any other gemstone you use besides selenite. Amethyst is a versatile stone that I joke is good for everything. Because it has a high vibration, amethyst can be used to purify energy and protect.

5. Reiki

Reiki is a useful energy healing modality that can be used to cleanse your space and your items. Using reiki to cleanse is only helpful if you have a reiki attunement or have a friend who does. A reiki attunement allows you to access the reiki source and use that specific energy. In reiki, there are three levels of attunement. The first allows you to perform reiki on people and things that you are in contact with. The second attunement teaches you how to perform reiki long distance on someone or something that you are not close to. And the third attunement allows you to attune others to reiki. If you don’t have a reiki attunement and are interested in learning more, I recommend searching online for nearby practitioners. Even in the south, reiki is popular and reiki practitioners can be easy to find.

If you are attuned to reiki, you probably learned that you can reiki any and every thing. You can use reiki to cleanse yourself, your space or your items. I use reiki to cleanse spaces I am going to perform a ritual in and sometimes to cleanse my tarot cards in between readings when I am working an event.

Protection Work

Once you’ve cleansed yourself, your space or your car (don’t forget to cleanse your car!), you may want to do some protection work. This helps to ensure that the space you just cleansed stays that way. Protection work is not going to last forever, you will have to redo it at some point, but it will help ensure your space stays purified longer. Like anything else, protection work can be as simple or complicated as you’d like it to be.

5 Ways to Protect Yourself and Your Spaces

1. Protective Herbs and Oils

As easy way to protect a space is to place protective herbs in the area. You can sprinkle salt or red brick dust across your thresholds, but that can be messy and easily scattered. I like to make herbal amulets (also known as mojo bags, gris-gris bags, or a fixed hand) by placing protective herbs into bags and putting the bags in places I want to add protection to. As you place each herb into your bag, it is ideal to speak over the herb and state that you are adding that herb to your bag for protection.

Sometimes we just have to use what is on hand, but if possible it’s best to use a black or white colored bag for this. Black is a protective color and can absorb or deflect negative energy. White is a very high vibrational color and is used to purify and raise vibrations. It is believed that negative energy tends to be low vibrational. If your vibrations or the vibrations of your space are high enough, some believe that negative energy has a harder time affecting you.

Many herbs that are used for cleansing can also be used for protection. You could easily make an herbal amulet to both cleanse and protection. Some of my favorite protection herbs are dragon’s blood, basil, rosemary, salt, rue, agrimony, nettle and angelica.

You can use the oil from any of these herbs except for rue. Dry rue leaves are safe to handle and make into a bag, as long as you are not pregnant. But fresh rue leaves and the oil are toxic. It is also not safe to consume (under any circumstances, ladies).

You can add protective oils to the herbs in your herbal amulet or diffuse them into your space.

2. Protective Gemstones

Gemstones are easy to use and can be placed just about anywhere you need protection. Protective gemstones can be used to grid your home, as I mentioned above. You can make protective amulets with them or add them to your herbal amulet. A safe rule of thumb is that if a gemstone is black in color, it is a protection stone. Of course, there are always exceptions. One of the things I like most about using gemstones is that there is a wide variety of gemstone jewelry you can wear for protection or any need really.

Some of the most commonly used stones for protection are black obsidian, black onyx, hematite, jet, black tourmaline, and amethyst.

3. Charging an Item to be Protective

Charging or programming an item is relatively simple. All you have to do is hold it your hands (preferably in your non-dominant hand with your dominant hand on top of it) and tell that item what you need it to do. You may need to do this for a few moments, or some people have a system where they speak their need a certain number of times.

Charging an item to be used for protection is a great way to make sure you are always protected. You can wear gemstone jewelry for protection, but you can also charge your favorite piece of mundane jewelry to be protective. Try programming something that you wear all the time to lend it’s protection to you. You can also charge an item and place it in your car for protection.

4. Pray for Protection

Perhaps prayer seems like an obvious thing for some people, but for others it may not be. For Pagans who have Church trauma, the idea of praying may not sit well. But if you are comfortable with it, it is another simple, unseen way to protect yourself. And it combines well with any other tools you are using for protection.

You do not want to pray and ask a deity you have no relationship with for help. They probably aren’t going to help you, they don’t know you and probably don’t care. If you do have a relationship with a deity, it does not matter if they are seen as a traditional protection deity or not, ask them for their protection. Because if you already have an established relationship with a deity, they likely do have an interest in you and will want to see you protected no matter their area of expertise is.

You can pray on a regular basis and ask your gods to protect you and yours. You do not have to wait until something happens to ask. And although prayer seems simple or maybe too easy to be effective, remember, if your gods answer your prayers then you are divinely protected. And anyone who messes with you will find out the hard way that you come with divine backup.

5. Protect Yourself with Energy

I have a few techniques I like to use for protection, and most of them can be done by anyone regardless of experience. However the energy work that I am going to talk about here is a bit more advanced. It is still something anyone can do, but it may require more practice to learn. Once you are familiar with working with energy, creating an energetic shield can take focus to make and hold. As you advance in your energy work, keeping an energetic shield up will require less energy and less focus. Meaning it is not as likely to disappear once you stop thinking about it.

I don’t have the space to get into the basics of working with and manipulating energy, but once you get a feel for working with energy you can use it to build a protective shield or bubble around yourself or your home. This will create a barrier for certain unwanted, negative energies and ideally keep those energies from getting to you.

As you gain more experience working with energy and shields, you can begin to experiment with ideas for protection. You can try changing your energy bubble to black or white for protection. Try adding the element of water to your shield to help move the energy in it around, washing away negative energy. Also think about incorporating visualizations to your shield to strengthen and empower it, such as movement, thorns or patterns. When it comes to developing your personal, energetic shield, the sky is the limit as long as you use your creativity.

Conclusion

There are many ways to cleanse and protect yourself. I didn’t even mention Florida Water, sound therapy, candles or egg limipas! So please tuck into your favorite spiritual books or websites, and check out all the methods of cleansing and protection. Because there are so many options, you are likely to find at least one method that you enjoy and is realistic to put into practice. And should you have questions, you can always find me at The Broom Closet.