Your real estate broker has finished signing all the legal docu-
ments with you. Hopefully, you had an LA Lofts Realty broker
on your side of the table! Now, with much anticipation and
excitement, you hold the keys to your new Downtown LA loft
in your hand and turn the key to your new front door! You
step inside and take a deep breath and start to look around,
walking from room to room, opening cabinets, checking un-
der the sink in the kitchen, looking at the skyline view from
the living room balcony, when suddenly you feel something
strange. You can’t quite put your finger on what you felt but
you certainly don’t remember the space being “quite” like it is
now, empty of furniture, family photos and all the trappings of
the previous occupants. You are now alone in your new empty
home and it doesn’t exactly feel like you remembered it to be.
What do you do?
Well, you say to yourself, it’s time for a smoke! No, not the
cigarette or cigar version, but its time to light up a wand of
white sage, or sacred smoke, as the Ancient Ones called it.
Our Native American ancestors understood the art of clearing
space and setting new intentions for a dwelling. Considering
everything is energy, vibrating and in motion, it stands to rea-
son that some of those vibrating little particles of energy just
may have decided to hang around your new home.
In Feng Shui, one of the key principles of the practice involves
understanding the “Predecessor Law”, or finding out just what
happened in the space to the people who lived there previous-
ly, before you arrived. Was it a large promotion that prompted
their move? …Or a divorce, or a bankruptcy? Did they sue
the contractor who built it? Or perhaps someone passed on
in the home or recovered from an accident there? Or perhaps
they found their love for life partner and said their “I do’s” in the
living room!
With one’s powerful individual intentions, an abalone shell,
white sage wand, open windows and a lighter, one can clear
the past and reset the energies, recalibrate the property to an-
chor in the energies most supportive to the new occupant’s life
goals. If you are not feeling up to this on your own, and there
are many who believe that only trained Shamans should work
with these tools, there are certainly gifted practitioners that are
sensitive or attuned to energy patterns and can clear them ap-
propriately. It is important to approach this clearing reverently
and to honor the gifts from the planet and those ancestors that
walked before us, generously leaving this information for our
own earth walk.
SAGE
For driving out negativity and for healing, white sage is pre-
ferred.
The botanical name for sage is Salvia (e.g. Salvia officinalis,
Garden Sage, or Salvia apiana, White Sage). Salvia comes
from the Latin root salvare, which means, “to heal”.
With the sage wand lit and the abalone shell below to catch
any falling embers, begin your new home clearing ritual with
clockwise circular motions allowing for the smoke to fill the
air and to cleanse the space of any discordant energies/ex-
periences that may have remained from the previous occu-
pants. Allow yourself to flow from room to room, calling forth
that which you are choosing to allow into your experience and
thanking the “unseen guidance” that is supporting your new
journey. Close your ceremony in gratitude and make a sim-
ple offering of something personal to Mother Earth. It can be
a rock, crystal, a lock of hair, tobacco, a flower or anything
special to you that will be left by you in thanksgiving. If you live
in a high-rise building, you can leave your offering in a plant if
you wish.
Now, retrace your steps and re-enter your new home, confi-
dent that the space is now ready to support your dreams and
goals!
Lori Tierney is an author, interior designer and Feng Shui prac-
titioner.