Ethical Harvesting, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Sage

Yesterday I acquired some sprigs of California White Sage at work.

Now I love the smell of white sage, and I know it has many purported magical uses. It can be used in healing salves, it can be burned for purification purposes, it can be used in magical workings to grant wisdom or protection, and so on and so forth. It's also delicious, and even though I'm an abysmal cook at best, I love to add it to pasta sauce!

But I would never be so irresponsible as to buy it in a big bundle at some metaphysical shop such as Moonfyre Metaphysical in Campbell, or Universal Connection in Willow Glen, even though I love sage more than any other herb.

California White Sage has been over-harvested to the point of endangerment. I love its smell. I love its energy. I love its taste. But buying large chunks of it is simply not sustainable. And for how much Pagan and new age communities are all about loving the earth, a lot of people are just unaware of this problem despite scholarly evidence.

And there are other plants you can use in place of sage. Rosemary is also good for protection and purification, and sweetgrass and juniper can also be used for burning purposes. Since I grow my own rosemary at home (a plant I will miss dearly once I move) I mostly end up using that even though in my heart of hearts I prefer sage.

But our gardens at work have to be kept in a very particular way. I've mentioned before I work at the world famous, beautiful but bizarre™ Winchester Mystery House. Victorian gardens are intense when it comes to upkeep - Mrs. Winchester's gardens have over 110 plants from all over the world, many of them herbs with medicinal uses like sage - and my boss said the sage plant had to be trimmed. Since these sprigs were going to be tossed in the trash anyway, I of course figured there would be no harm in asking if I could take them home.

And so they were bagged, labeled "Sarah's Sage - 1/24/16" (in honour, of course, of Sarah Winchester), and handed off to me. Half of them were rinsed and put in the kitchen for culinary purposes (along with some lemons from one of Sarah Winchester's own trees - there are myriad perks to working in such a place), and the other half are now being dried in my room, though I'm still unsure exactly what I'm going to use them for. At least they make my room smell delicious.

And hey, not everyone can say they have ethically-harvested sage from a world famous haunted mansion!

-Nym-