Holy Smoke: Loose Herbs & Hot Embers for Intense Group Smudges & Smoke Prayers Review

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(More customer reviews)I got a great chuckle out of "using a smudge stick is like licking yourself clean." After having learned to do immersion smudging, smudge sticks have never been the same!!! I have been living in someone else's home since April and have not been able to do this, but I am moving to my own place again, so yippee, I may begin! I will have to disengage the smoke alarm, however!
This little book is chock full of herbal recipes, blends and ways to use sacred smoke. I read it the first time around and now, revised, it is even better! This book is very detailed and complete!! I am so ready to dig my hibachi out!!!!! If not the hibachi - the fantastic cauldron I bought recently!
Amy writes with humor and charm. It's like being with her in her backyard sharing "holy smoke" together.
"Holy Smoke!" This book is a must have for anyone into smoke and smudge - fantastic job, Amy!


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Holy Smoke: Loose Herbs and Hot Embers for Intense Group Smudges and Smoke Prayers is for is for anyone seeking to purify or offer prayers by burning herbs, especially in groups. Use special blends of loose herbs tossed on hot barbeque charcoal or bonfire embers to go well beyond a sage smudge stick, with billows of aromatic smoke created for whole-body Mayan-style immersion smudges. Recipes in the book use herbs, woods, resins and roots to create over 30 smudge and smoke prayer blends perfect for a variety of spiritual occasions. Learn how to lead cauldron circles for vivid memorable sensory outdoor smoke-based ceremonies that create catalytic change. For the pyro impaired, the book comes with a how-to primer on making fires, including the use of easy insta-light bags of natural charcoal. Also included is Herbal 101, an easy to follow guide for buying, preparing and storing herbs, plus Moonlady's Magical Herbs chapter for in-depth information on herbs in the book. A resources section provides books and web sites for further study.

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Smoke Plants of North America: A Journey of Discovery Illustrated Edition Review

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(More customer reviews)This is a good book written from her personal experiences. Anyone that likes to blend their own herbs will like mixes in the book. There were a couple of new ones that are not common blends but that were very good. Well written and easy to follow. Not a lot of in depth information but very to the point with good information. Worth adding to the library for future reference

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New illustrated version includes beautiful line drawings of plants that can be smoked. The author shares her personal discovery of over 150 wild plants -- legal, non-addictive, and enjoyable -- that have been smoked by Native Americans and others for centuries. Compiled here for the first time in print, this knowledge is drawn from personal experience, ethnobotanical texts, and contemporary herbalism. The book includes: over a dozen smoke mix recipes, a guide to gathering over 50 smokable wild plants, personal stories, and the original spiritual purpose of smoking.

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Uses and Abuses of Plant-Derived Smoke: Its Ethnobotany as Hallucinogen, Perfume, Incense, and Medicine Review

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(More customer reviews)This is a compendium listing 1400 plant species, so it could very well be boring. However, it is dedicated to plants that have been burned to produce smoke for various purposes, and it's the rich variety of these purposes that makes this book interesting. Obviously, burning plants to do something with the smoke is an ancient and practically universal behaviour, which in our time has been funnelled into the global habit of smoking mass-produced cigarettes, and thus disconnected from its diverse cultural roots.
The 30-page introduction categorises the uses of smoke: medicinal is the largest group by far, followed by religious/magical/ceremonial, and recreational. It also cites some of the more suprising examples, e.g. "in Bulamogi County, Uganda, men smoked various plants to rid themselves of their wives." (That's under magical, not under medicinal use!)
The species list spanning 148 pages from Abies amabilis through to Zornia glochidiata is clearly for reference and/or the specialist reader only. You may want to look up your favourite plants. About one of mine it says: "the latex of this plant was burned to produce smoke that was inhaled in parts of Iran for general gastrointestinal disorders." That's the quince tree (Cydonia oblonga). You may not want to read all 1400 entries, but the introduction is very enlightening for all of us.


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