Magical cleansing is typically one of the first skills that new witches today are told to learn. While I think cleansing is overemphasized, I do think it’s a useful skill, so I’m going to provide some brief notes on cleansing: What it is, what it does, when it’s useful, and when it’s not.
Anecdotally, I see most beginner advice focusing specifically on cleansing your home. This isn’t a bad idea, but I think it’s important to consider why you’re doing it and for what purpose. Typically cleansing is done to remove unwanted energy currents or residuals from a space, and is sometimes done in tandem with a banishing, which removes unwanted spirits from a space.
Cleansing is a great tool, but it isn’t a catch-all and it’s also possible to overuse it. If you’re setting your workspace to zero every day or every week, e.g., by salting and blasting the whole thing, then you’re removing unwanted influences, but you’re also removing any positive lingering magical patterns that may be building up. Using the same tool over and over again for the same kind of work can attune it more closely to that type of working, which can make your work easier or more effective. But if you’re wiping it clean afterward every time, it can’t accrue that pattern.
Similarly, doing a blanket banishing as part of your cleansing routine directs good spirits to leave as well as nastier ones (and the nastier ones may fight you on it). If you want your house purely to yourself, and have strict boundaries around the matter, that is one thing. Personally, I enjoy living in a spiritful house where my ancestors, guardians, allies, and curious (benefic) visitors can exist and collaborate with me. When I do a banishing, it is very directed. Often I am banishing a specific spirit rather than all spirits; otherwise I will specify spirits that mean me harm or will not work for my benefit. For the most part I don’t do banishings as a “house cleaning” event, and they are rare for me: Spirits who mean me harm are broadly, typically, kept out by the spirits who live with me who see me as a friend or ally. I would obviously not want to banish those spirits.
On the other hand, I do cleansings frequently. I do many different kinds; I’ve spoken at length previously about how cleaning the home physically is 95% of cleaning your home spiritually (and it may please the house or hearth spirit besides), for which my regular tools are brooms, cleaners (such as vinegar), cloths, and so forth. These tools can be anointed, enspirited, or otherwise worked with to better enact spiritual cleaning as well as physical tasks. For the rest, there’s smoke cleansing and washing (e.g., infusing water with cleansing herbs or materia and using it to wash).
A brief note on smoke cleansing, which I may return to in more depth at a later time: The first exposure most novices get to smoke cleansing is smudging, or burning white sage. Most people should not do this for a variety of reasons, and for most, a better alternative would be to look into saining (often done with juniper). Personally, I often use frankincense, myrrh, cedar, or local plants. There are many options.
For tools and for myself, I often go to salt; some people use witches’ salt, some use table or sea salt. After touching something that I want off, I like to wash my hands (with unscented soap if possible), and typically use plain table salt after my hands are dry. I also have blessed salt and blessed water that I use, which specifically abjure negativity, injurious spirits, and so forth. For routine handwashing I find that to be overkill, but it is useful. You can use the same principles to run and bless a ritual bath, fully immersing your body, which I would do either on a monthly basis or as needed.
I use the same approach for tools that I don’t want to carry any influences that I didn’t put there, most frequently my tarot cards, but also things like my mortar and pestle or ritual knives. Salt can shorten the lifespan of some of these tools, so it’s important to be careful with when and how you use it. I also use smoke cleansing, as described above, depending on the circumstances and what feels right. For example, I have a tarot deck for which each card has been run, front and back, through myrrh incense. This limits the physical lifespan of the deck but is beneficial for the work I do with it.
In particular, I cleanse every tool thoroughly when I first acquire it. Many of the things I use come to me secondhand, and unless I know that it was previously in the custody of another witch who treated it exactly the way I liked (like an heirloom tool), I prefer to set it to zero and erase any influences from its previous owners or circumstances. This can also double as a way to interact with and get to know the tool. I have a silver icon that came to me by way of a thrift store, and I spoke to it, introduced myself, and told it its purpose as I washed it with unscented soap and water, rubbed it with consecrated salt, then worked on it with silver polish. This was a positive and practical way to connect with the icon.
For tools, I also tend to be of the mind that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure: I don’t let most people handle my tools. For example: Despite this being part of some tarot reading techniques, querents are not permitted to touch most of my tarot decks. I keep two Rider-Waite decks for this reason, so that I have one that is only for my touch.
But by and large, I tend to think most people cleanse too much. You don’t take a shower every time you take a quick walk outside. You don’t (or shouldn’t) use antibacterial soap every time you wash your hands. Similarly, you don’t need to clean every hint of energy off of you all the time. Your spirit is (generally) not so weak that a smudge of bad intent is going to do serious harm to you. Being in an ecosystem means picking up, and leaving, ambient power everywhere you go and every time you interact with something. When you sit with a houseplant, the houseplant also sits with you: This is not necessarily something that needs to be cleaned off but can be beautiful and relational.
There are some folk workers I know through whom I can feel the spirits they work closely with, or the kinds of powers or currents that they work in most frequently. People who do frequent herbal work or death work come to mind. Some of these currents will also simply leave marks on you that cannot be washed off, and this is also part of living in the spiritual ecosystem, much as extensive work with roses may leave thorn pricks or dye may stain the fingers.
The featured illustration is “The Hand Washing (Allegory of Water)” by Bernhard Keil.