photo: Canva
What is palo santo? What is it used for?
Palo santo is the common name for Bursera graveolens, a tree that grows naturally in the region of the Amazon. Literally translated from Spanish it means “holy stick”, and many Indigenous communities refer to it as a “sacred tree”. Its aromatic wood is used to make incense with an intense, warm fragrance – woody and resinous, with sweet citrus notes. The smoke of palo santo is an integral element of many ceremonies of Indigenous peoples in South America. Since the times of the Inca Empire it has been part of plant medicine: burned by shamans during folk rituals, cleansing rites and healing work.
Traditionally, palo santo is believed to support emotional and energetic balance, cleanse the aura and space, protect body and soul and calm the mind. Today it is often used in yoga studios, meditation practices and home rituals. One could list its many praised benefits and purposes for a long time – but this article is not about promoting palo santo. Quite the opposite: it is about asking whether we really should be burning it at all.
Why does everyone burn palo santo and white sage?
We often hear that “the Earth has entered the Age of Aquarius” – whether we believe in astrology or not, it is hard to deny that many people are more openly searching for meaning, values and spirituality. The fast pace of consumer culture has made the question “to have or to be?” much more visible than 20 years ago. People turn towards meditation, yoga, mindfulness, plant medicine, retreats and ceremonies such as ayahuasca, San Pedro or psilocybin mushroom rituals.
This growing interest is, in itself, not a bad thing. The problem begins when spirituality becomes just another lifestyle trend driven by social media. Influencers and celebrities show their “self-care rituals”, often including burning palo santo or white sage, and their followers want to copy every detail of that image. If a big importer of palo santo incense pays for a sponsored post, the trend spreads even faster. Many people then reach for sacred plants without any knowledge of their origin, cultural context or consequences of mass consumption. And that “hell” is not the smoke itself – but the lack of awareness and imagination.
Why is the use of palo santo harmful?
The smoke from palo santo is not harmful in itself – in fact, the scent can be very pleasant. The problem is everything that happens around the extraction, trade and mass use of this plant medicine. Both palo santo and white sage (another heavily overused incense) have been pulled out of their original context and pushed into the mainstream, even though they are plants deeply rooted in the traditions of specific Indigenous peoples and should, in theory, be treated as a part of their cultural and natural heritage.
Modern global markets are ruthless and want to monetise spirituality as eagerly as any other trend. So why should we think twice before burning palo santo? Here are several key reasons.
Harvesting palo santo and the Amazon environment
According to lists such as those of the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) or the CITES convention, palo santo is not officially classified as a species on the brink of extinction. However, environmental organisations and local communities have been warning for years about the lack of real control over harvesting. A mature palo santo tree is usually 50–70 years old; unregulated exploitation can therefore destabilise entire ecosystems, not just one species.
In traditional practice, wood suitable for incense is obtained only from naturally fallen trees and should lie on the forest floor for around 10 years, slowly saturating with aromatic resins. Only then is it collected. With rapidly growing global demand, illegal logging and “shortcuts” have become the norm. Plantations are created without permits, sometimes even in protected areas. Smugglers and the so-called “Amazon mafia” cut trees that are still alive, ignoring natural cycles. Wood that has not matured properly can later be “corrected” with synthetic fragrance. On the other side of the ocean people feel they are burning a piece of spiritual luxury – but in reality they often inhale artificial perfume while the forest pays the price.
Certified palo santo
The market is flooded with palo santo sticks with no labels, certificates, or clear information about origin. Before you light such a piece of wood, it is worth asking: where does it actually come from, who harvested it and under what conditions? There are, fortunately, smaller companies that cooperate closely with Indigenous communities and work to ensure more sustainable harvesting practices. They participate directly in collection, prioritise fallen wood, co-finance local projects and try to support cultural education.
If someone is absolutely determined to use palo santo, choosing transparent and certified sources is the minimum ethical step. However, this is still an imported, exotic resource – and we have powerful alternatives available literally in our own meadows and gardens.
Palo santo is not eco-friendly – the carbon footprint of distribution
Even when wood is harvested with care, there is another problem: transport. To satisfy the whims of global spirituality trends, tonnes of palo santo travel across half the world on planes, ships, trucks and vans, generating a significant carbon footprint. We light a fragrant stick at home to “cleanse the energy”, while outside greenhouse gases continue to accumulate.
If we truly care about harmony with nature, it is worth asking whether we really need incense that comes from another continent. Local plants – dried herbs, flowers and resins – can provide equally magical atmosphere, grounding and a sense of ritual, without unnecessary emissions from intercontinental transport.
The ethics of using palo santo
We can choose to ignore environmental arguments, but it is much harder to ignore the suffering of the people whose traditions we are borrowing from. The ethics of palo santo use is closely tied to the topic of cultural appropriation – the taking of cultural heritage and turning it into a product.
The “white world” has already taken land (colonisation of the Americas), labour (slavery, forced assimilation) and lives of Indigenous peoples. Today it is also taking their sacred: space of rituals, stories, symbols and plants. Palo santo and white sage are not just “nice-smelling sticks”, but integral elements of natural medicine that has been cultivated for centuries. Shamans and healers used them to treat, cleanse and harmonise the world within their communities – until global civilisation arrived with narcotourism and a desire to “touch the Great Mystery” without doing the homework.
Spirituality has become a commodity. Elements of religious rituals have been simply put on sale. What makes the hypocrisy even more painful is that not so long ago Indigenous people were persecuted for the very same practices that are now trendy in the West. They were forbidden to use their language and religion, children were taken away from families, communities destroyed. Stories such as the mass graves of Indigenous children discovered near residential schools in Canada ( read more) are only one example of this history. And yet now the same culture that tried to erase Indigenous traditions is buying up their medicine in pretty bundles. That stain of hypocrisy is hard to wash off.
You praise others, you don’t know your own – what to replace palo santo with?
We live in a time of spiritual rebirth, but instead of looking around us, we often run after what is most exotic: ceremonies in Peru, frog secretions containing bufotenin, Mexican psilocybin mushrooms, imported palo santo. Why? Very often simply because we know nothing about our own traditions and have been cut off from them.
If the Christian Church had not “baptised” and absorbed so many pagan Slavic customs, our local rituals would probably be much more visible today. We, too, had our wise women, healers and shamans. Slavic peoples also used psychoactive plants and mushrooms and worked with herbs to protect households and cleanse spaces. Instead of palo santo we have our own powerful plants that attract good fortune and ward off unwanted energies – we just rarely hear about them.
The keepers of this knowledge were so-called witches – women who understood plants, listened to nature and knew how to use herbs for body and soul. Many of them ended up burned at the stake all over Europe. A conspiracy of silence followed. The Church did everything it could to cut people off from direct access to such knowledge in order to better control society. Hallucinogenic mushrooms grew – and still grow – in ordinary meadows and pastures, but access to them was legally and socially blocked.
Fortunately, local Polish herbs are still legal and widely available. This means we can easily replace palo santo or white sage with them in our own rituals. Among many “witchy” plants that are worth exploring are mugwort (with wormwood being the strongest), goldenrod, lavender, angelica, yarrow and many more. Most of them are common “weeds” that grow in fields, along roads and in home gardens, but they carry deep symbolic and medicinal meaning in Slavic and European folk tradition.
If you would like to dive deeper into natural incense and learn how to make your own sticks, have a look at our article on herbal incense. And if you prefer ready-made local alternatives to exotic wood, you will find them here: natural incenses. Choosing herbs from your own climate is not only more ethical and ecological – it also helps you root your practice in the land you actually live on, instead of importing symbols from another continent.
In short: you praise the foreign, while not knowing your own. Now, dear reader, you can probably see why we choose not to use palo santo. We hope this text inspires you to reflect on how spiritual goods are produced, whose traditions they belong to, and what impact our choices have on people and ecosystems far away. Mother Earth gives each region what it needs – our task is to remember and respect this, instead of chasing after every global trend.
The content on the psychodelicroom.pl website is educational, research-based, and expresses many opinions that should be treated with caution. We advise against using any substances that affect consciousness, as all of these substances can both heal and be very harmful. In particular, we advise against cultivating mushrooms from growkits in countries where it is illegal – including Poland – because it involves criminal liability. We recommend that you dispose of the growkits purchased from us within 72 hours of receiving them.
Footnotes:
https://forageandsustain.com/why-we-need-to-stop-using-palo-santo/
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/indigenous-people-sage-and-smudge-kits_n_610874f5e4b0497e67026adb
https://natemat.pl/336715,palo-santo-czyli-modne-kadzidlo-oto-dlaczego-nie-powinnismy-go-palic
