Author Archives: Naomi Cowan

Sage Burning

Nationality: American
Age: 48
Occupation: Student
Residence: Glendale, AZ
Language: English

“I believe in like burning sage to purify your home. I use sage and herbs. When I’m feeling like negative energy or negative stuff starts happening. I believe that it’s something someone else is doing to me or spiritually happening to me, so I burn sage and bless my house.”

Where did you learn about this?

“I learned about this kind of stuff until I lived on the Hoopa reservation. I never learned about this stuff before moving. I started opening up spiritually when living up there. I was aware of this stuff because my mom was clairvoyant.”

Can you please tell me about how you burn the sage? 

“Protection of house. You burn sage and pray and intent. Clearing things. Things happening in your home, you burn sage. Thanking your home when you live in your house because your house is a living energy. It protects your family. It is a safe haven. I also use it for my crystals. I ground myself and I saw a prayer. I usually say Our Father. I mix my Christianity beliefs within my medicine because that’s the one true god i believe in. I walk through the house and open doors and windows and say the Our Father on each part of the house. And I blow it on myself and the house before I blow it out. I also do crosses on door entrances.”

Context: The informant identifies herself both as a Spiritualist and a Christion. She spent a portion of her 20s in Hoopa, California where she learned a lot of spiritualism from the people she met and connected with on the reservation. She has a mixed background of European and Native American ancestry.

Analysis: Burning sage to purify your home is a commonly recognized Native American ritual that has been adopted by many Spiritualists in the US. Through this practice, the informant is connecting to her roots, which have been lost within her own family. Often, Native American ancestry can be eradicated in European family lines, so many people try to reestablish those connections with that part of their identity. Through this reconnection, the informant also blends her Christian beliefs that have been dominant throughout her entire life. Her approach to sage burning shows the complex ways we blend folk beliefs with religion and spiritualism.

Looking specifically at the act of burning sage, the informant identifies the symbolism in the home, how the home is meant to protect us. Sometimes homes can be believed to be haunted or negative energies might enter the home. Sage acts as a way to contract these spooky unknowns in our homes. As ghost stories tend to be centered around property, sage smudging also focuses on property, cleansing the home to be a safe and welcoming space rather than an ominous one. 

Clairvoyance & Dream Interpretation

Nationality: American
Age: 48
Occupation: Student
Residence: Glendale, AZ
Language: English

“Clairvoyance runs in our family. I was taught about it at a very young age. My mom educated me about it at a very young age. Dream interpretation and stuff like that and astral projection and meditation. I’ve gone into trances with binaural beats and left my body.”

What does clairvoyance mean to you?

“Clairvoyance means to be empathic, feeling other people’s emotions, feeling certain types of energies in a room, sleep paralysis. My sleep paralysis is when my body is splitting when I leave my body at night, so you get stuck in between. I’ve had to learn that when in a sleep paralysis, I pray in my mind. I explained this bruja around the corner who explained that my spirit is splitting from my body. My dreams are not normal dreams. I can tell the difference. I can feel all my senses. I can smell, I can touch. Most people are unable to do that. I can feel pain. I have every emotion, fear and everything. That’s not normal.”

Has this always happened for you?

“That’s happened to me all my life. My mom had premonitions. I believe dreams are not necessarily dreams.”

Are there any rituals you do to enhance your dreams?

The informant described using tourmaline or “any stone that gives properties or elements to psychic clairvoyance or astral projection” She puts the stone under the bed, pillow or on her bedside. She described that she grounds herself before going to sleep by “creating a bubble like white light for purification and protection,” as in meditation. She says that she “imagines a safe place in the bubble like a garden or river of amethyst.” She emphasizes the importance of protecting yourself and setting intentions because people that don’t might bring something back with them from the other realm.

Analysis: While dreams themselves are not traditionally considered folklore, I would argue that the informant’s described beliefs about her dreams can be interpreted as a folk belief. Coming from her mother, the informant has been passed down this belief and continues in the practice of dream interpretation in the present day. She also described her mother’s dreams to be premonitions, or seeing the future, while her own was described to be more along the lines of astral projection. This shows some variation within her own family’s interpretation of their dreams. She also describes some ritualistic precautions before attempting to go into this dream state. Meditations, usually guided meditations, are often used to go into trance-like states, which she does herself while also dabbling in binaural beats. Using binaural beats shows the constant evolution of folkloric rituals and practices as she is incorporating modern day technologies into her practice. 

Girl Scouts’ Bridge Ceremony

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Language: English

“Everytime in Girl Scouts that we went up a level; so, Daisy to Brownie, Brownie to Junior, Junior to Cadet, Cadet to Senior, and Senior to Ambassador. We had a Bridge Ceremony to mark the transition. There are a lot of different ways that we did them. But, generally, they include a bridge or something to like physically pass from one side to another. And generally, before this ceremony happens, you will talk to the level above you to ask them about wisdom and what questions you might have and you talk to a troop in the level below you and pass on your wisdom to them”

“And then at the actual ceremony there’s plenty of stories that everyone has to read a bit and it’s all about like the Girl Scout Promise and Law. Sometimes you just skip straight to calling each girl across the bridge and then giving them their next badge that goes on their vest to signify ‘hey, you’re older!’ So each girl crosses the bridge. Yay! You’re all the next level”

What are some variations?

The informant described having “something reminiscent of the year below or the year that you are,” such as when transitioning from brownies to juniors, they had brownies and junior mints.

“There’s a lot of variations on that. One year, we limboed into cadets, I think. We started having pool parties, so we kind of just jumped into the next year. 

But the actual physical bridge is a big one. The most institutionalized version of this [would be that] many people when they bride to cadets fly to San Fran to cross the Golden Gate Bridge because thats when you’re younger girl to older girl. You’re expected to start volunteering and helping out with events and stuff. You’re going into middle school, so it’s a big transition.”

Analysis: While this ceremony is institutionalized in the idea, the international organization of Girl Scouts provides endless opportunities for multiplicity and variation of this tradition. In fact, not all troops even participate in this tradition since it is not a required ceremony. Other troops even have completely different ceremonies for transitions. These ceremonies signify the girls’ growth each year and excite them for moving up in the ranks. The bridge itself has a symbolism of moving on into the next state of life, which becomes a little looser as they get older and the bridge becomes less literal. The informant even recognizes an important coming of age transition into cadets and sometimes go to San Francisco, emphasizes the weight of their new responsibilities of an older girl. These ceremonies set the tone for the new expectations each year and celebrate their achievements thus far as well as getting passed down wisdom from the girls a level older, making them feel more prepared for their next year of life. 

Grandma’s Earrings & Brooch

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA

“When my grandma passed away, the two things that I got from her were a pair of ladybug earrings and a butterfly brooch. So I started as a tradition wearing one of these items. Anytime I had a big presentation, anytime I had a big event, anytime I went to a family event where my grandpa was going to be there, as a way to invite her. I don’t know. It just felt like if I was wearing one of those, she was with me and she was able to see what I was doing and still keep up, even though she wasn’t alive. It definitely got to the point where times when I was like ‘oh, i don’t really want to wear either of these. They don’t go with my outfit’ but I’m not going to say that grandma can’t come to Christmas dinner. So you wear the brooch or you wear the earrings so that grandmas with you.’ I do that for a lot of things.”

Do you also view them as good luck charms in a way?

“Oh, definitely yeah. I mean it’s just like having someone on your side/ I mean, I don’t think it physically brings me good luck. Even though I know butterflies are signs of hope and I know ladybugs are signs of luck, I don’t view it very strictly in that way. It’s supposed to be my grandma and she’s going to help me get through it.”

Did you start doing this on your own?

“Yeah, I started a couple months after, so I’ve been doing it for about nineish years now.”

Analysis: After the death of close relatives, especially grandparents, we receive family heirlooms or some sort of memorabilia from their lives. Particularly with jewlery, we tend to inscribe intense meanings onto these items, feeling that they are a connection to the person’s spirit. Wearing their jewelry is like carrying them with us, just as the informant described. By having her grandmother with her, the informant has the confidence to face stressful events as well as accompanying her at family gatherings. The informant specified that she feels an obligation to wear the items around her grandfather since he had lost his wife. In a way, this creates a special bond with her grandfather who sees his granddaughter carrying a piece of his wife as she lives through her. This is one of the many ways of coping and supporting family members in their losses of loved ones.

Walking Home Backwards After a Funeral

Nationality: American & Trinidadian
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Glendale, AZ
Language: English

“A superstitious belief in my family and some of my friends have is that after a funeral, we will enter our homes backwards.It’s mainly so the spirit doesn’t follow you home, especially if you go to the graveyard site or cremation site.”

Can you please explain to me how they enter the house backwards?

“From what I’ve seen from my parents, they fully enter backwards, so they don’t start facing our house or like the front door if that makes sense.” She goes on to explain to me that “someone’s been there to let them in, or it just matters that they enter the first door frame facing backwards.”

Context: The informant identifies as a Hindu.

Analysis: In Hindu traditions, this superstition is common after funerals. It is believed to prevent the spirit from following the family home and getting stuck there, essentially aiding in their transition to the afterlife. This tradition is also a way to purify the home from any lingering negative energies after death that might have followed the family home. Spirits and ghosts in folklore tend to be tied to a property or area, so this practice prevents this from happening to their loved ones. This superstition has also shown up in other folk superstitions, and the consistency of walking backwards out of a cemetery seems to be the common trope. This practice shows how universal superstitions might be if you look beyond the religious contexts.