SWEETGRASS BRAID:

1 two to three foot long braid.

Our sweetgrass is 100% natural and hand picked by our Native friends in their local regions. These plants were gathered in a respectful and ecological manner, as our company holds a great deal of respect for our Mother Earth. These bundles were created for tools of ceremony, ritual, and personal empowerment.

Hierochloe odorata, also known as sweet grass, holy grass (UK), manna grass, Mary’s grass, seneca grass, sweetgrass, or vanilla grass, is an aromatic herb native to northern Eurasia and North America. In Poland it is known as bison grass. It is used in herbal medicine and in the production of distilled beverages. It owes its distinctive sweet scent to the presence of coumarin.

Many Native tribes in North America use sweetgrass in prayer, smudging or purifying ceremonies and consider it a sacred plant. It is usually braided, dried, and burned. Sweetgrass braids smolder and doesn't produce an open flame when burned. Just as the sweet scent of this natural grass is attractive and pleasing to people, so is it attractive to good spirits. Sweetgrass is often burned at the beginning of a prayer or ceremony to attract positive energies.

Sweetgrass is used to "smudge"; the smoke from burning sweetgrass is fanned on people, objects or areas. Individuals smudge themselves with the smoke, washing the eyes, ears, heart and body. Natives of the northeast have long used sweetgrass as a smudging ingredient, often mixed with other botanicals.

Sweet grass was, and is, very widely used by north American indigenous peoples. It is one of the "four sacred medicines", the other three being cedar, sage, and tobacco. In Native American spirituality sweet grass is the sacred hair of Mother Earth; its sweet aroma reminding native people of the gentleness, love and kindness she has for them. Sweetgrass is traditionally braided in 3 strands representing love, kindness and honesty. As a sacred plant, it is used in peace and healing rituals. Leaves are dried and made into braids and burned as vanilla-scented incense; long leaves of sterile shoots are used by Native Americans in making baskets. - fromwikipedia.com