Cleansing and purification

Cleansing and purification are rites meant to clear a person, house, object or community of what is believed to cling to it: bad luck, spiritual stain, grief, or the presence of the dead. People use smoke, water, salt, fire, sound and sweeping. Examples include Hindu and Jewish ritual bathing, the Shinto harae, the Zoroastrian purity rites, the Mesoamerican limpia, and Christian holy water. This page covers the common ideas and the many local forms.

The elements

Four things recur. Water washes, as in the Ganges, in the Jewish mikveh, in Islamic ablution and in Christian baptism. Smoke rises, as with incense in churches and temples, juniper in the Himalaya and Central Asia, and copal in Mexico. Fire burns away, as in Zoroastrian temples and in the new year bonfires of Europe and Iran. Sound, from bells and gongs, is used in Buddhist and Taoist rites. A person may be cleansed after a death, an illness, a quarrel, a long journey or a crime, and a house after a move or a bad event.

The house and the person

Cleansing is often domestic: a home is swept before the new year, a newborn is washed in special water, a mourner is bathed after a funeral. In Mexico a limpia passes an egg or herbs over the body. In Japan salt is thrown at a threshold after a funeral. These customs mark a boundary, so that people can return to ordinary life. Purity ideas matter in food, in who may enter a temple, and in who may cook, and these rules have sometimes been used to exclude women, minorities and low-status workers.

Religion and borrowing

Religions treat purity differently. In Hinduism, Judaism and Islam, ritual purity is an organised system with rules. In some traditions the idea has been used to exclude, as in caste notions of pollution, which Indian law has banned in the form of untouchability. Smoke cleansing from Indigenous North American ceremony has been taken up widely, and many Indigenous voices object to commercial sale of sacred plants. Many such rites mark a threshold, so a pilgrim, bride, mourner or new parent is cleansed before moving to a new state.

Health and scholarship

Burning plants indoors can irritate the lungs, and some mixtures are not safe for children, pets or people with asthma. Scholars such as Mary Douglas, in Purity and Danger (1966), argued that ideas of dirt show how a society draws its lines. For many people, the practice is also simply a way to begin again. Cleansing is also often a social event, with neighbours bringing water, food or songs, and it can help a bereaved or troubled household feel it is not alone.