by Carl F. Neal
Another concern about smoke is the physical damage it can do. Using large quantities of very smoky incense can, aside from making you feel ill, also lead to marks and streaks on walls, ceilings, and other indoor surfaces. The best way to avoid this is the most obvious: create less smoke. Use the techniques given in this section to reduce smoke volumes. If for some reason you insist on using significant amounts of smoky incense, you might also want to open a window and even add a fan blowing out to draw the smoke outside the room. Another consideration if you burn smoky incense should be smoke detectors. Incense (and candles) can easily set off smoke detectors, which can be very annoying during a ritual.
Mind-Altering Properties
As you may know, many natural incense ingredients are powerful and can have a significant impact on the brain itself. Burning incense is very similar to smoking the same materials. The incense burns, disperses its scent and smoke into the air, and then you inhale that air in order to smell the incense. As any cigarette smoker can tell you, inhaling smoke can have a dramatic impact on your mind and body. This is true of many botanicals (cannabis and frankincense, for example) and is something of which all incense users should be aware.
In general, this is one of the reasons that people use incense. Incense can deepen meditative states, change moods, and create other physiological changes within the user. However, if you are sober or in recovery, you may want to use care about exposing yourself to particularly powerful incense. A list of such ingredients might include (but would not be limited to) aloeswood, cannabis, coltsfoot, damiana, hops, lion’s mantle, mistletoe, mugwort, nightshade, tobacco, white willow bark, and wild lettuce. One of the benefits of incense in magical works is this physiological effect; however, if you work to avoid the ingestion of mind-altering substances, then you shouldn’t burn incense with any such ingredients. Naturally, you should also avoid any incense that contains any material to which you are allergic.
Animals
Some animals are very sensitive to smoke and scent, so pet owners need to be aware of this. Perhaps no creatures are more sensitive than birds. Even small amounts of smoke can be dangerous to birds, so I suggest that you keep all indoor birds well out of the area where incense is burned. Of course, you may already have experience with a particular pet and see no problem, but in general birds and smoke should be kept apart.
Other household pets sensitive to scent are dogs and cats. I have not encountered cases where dogs were more than mildly interested in incense, but they are aware of it and you should observe them while burning incense to make certain they are not uncomfortable with the odors. Cats, on the other hand, often love incense. Some incense contains catnip, palo santo, or other ingredients that cats will seek out. As a result, a curious cat might rip open packages, roll on incense sticks and cones, or even eat them! It is a good idea to keep any incense with these types of ingredients well out of the reach of pets. There is evidence that burning lavender can pose a health risk to cats, so be aware of that as well.
Incense is best preserved in a sealed container, but a container that seems well sealed to us might still emit an odor to an animal, so keep any potentially problematic incense well out of reach. Remember that children might also find your incense to be tasty or fun to play with, so keep it out of reach of young kids as well.
Fire
Although it seems obvious to write, incense requires combustion to release its scent and therefore presents a fire hazard. Make certain that you only burn incense in a fire-proof container. It should be large enough and sturdy enough to keep the incense and all its ash inside the container. If for sticks, it should hold the stick firmly with no wobbles. For cones, it should have a wide enough mouth that you can easily place the lighted cone into the censer. As you place the cone inside, your fingers should not touch the sides of the censer. For loose or moist incense, use a censer that is not only large enough but that will be able to take the heat from the charcoal. Although ceramic, metal, and stone all work well, I suggest that you avoid the use of glass censers for charcoal or cones. The prolonged heat can cause glass censers to crack. However, glass is generally fine for stick incense.
Ethical Concerns
Whether you use synthetic or natural incense, both kinds present ethical considerations. I don’t include ethical concerns in a book to try and force my opinions on others, but I do hope these comments will cause you to stop and consider the implications of your choices. Act according to your own feelings, but at least take a few moments to ponder your decisions so that you are an informed incense user.
Synthetic incense might contain harmful chemicals and you essentially have no way of knowing what or how much there is. Is that enough reason to avoid using synthetics? That’s a choice for you to make. Personally, there are a few brands of synthetic incense that I’m comfortable using. Although I once banned all synthetic incense from my house, I’ve come to learn that some of them don’t offend my nose. I don’t use them often, but there are times when synthetic is appropriate for me. It remains important that you understand the risks and some possible underlying causes of people’s discomfort with synthetic ingredients (such as the extender DPG).
Natural incense does offer its own ethical considerations. The most notable might be the endangered nature of some incense ingredients. I have watched the ethical arguments on this topic rage in the incense world for years now. Some are convinced that certain incense ingredients have no acceptable substitutes. They argue that, although immediate conservation is needed, the incense industry uses such tiny amounts of these materials that there is no harm in their continued use. Another group argues that we should suspend use of endangered materials completely, regardless of their usefulness in incense. Most incense users, once made aware of the concerns, are somewhere between the two extremes. I think it’s important for incense users to remain informed and exercise care in selection of incense or incense ingredients. Luckily, some of these concerns are being addressed by the free market (such as the growing availability of Australian sandalwood).
Another ethical concern of natural incense is the use of animal materials. Once again, my personal position has moderated over the years. For the most part, I prefer not to see animals exploited for their use in incense. I would never support the use of an animal product where the animal’s death was required for harvesting. On the other hand, the use of animal products where the animal is unharmed (such as ambergris) seems quite acceptable to me. I have been exposed to forms of magick that include the use of biological products taken from the magician himself. I certainly see nothing unethical about that. Again, this is a matter for self-education. Perhaps one day the incense-using community will be large enough to support a book that explores these ethical questions in-depth. Until then, research on your own and make informed choices. Search your own feelings and ethics and I know you’ll arrive at the right decision for you.
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2
Scent
Of the five senses, scent is perhaps the most elusive and least understood. There are legions of artists and others who understand how to pleasure our sight. Armies of musicians will cater to all the desires that your hearing might have. Generations of chefs have built a vast knowledge of pleasing the sense of taste. Of course, satisfying the sense of touch is one of the oldest of all professions. Where are our noses in all of this?
We bombard our sense of smell with overwhelming fragrances on a daily basis, from deodorants and cleaning products to artificial air “fresheners.” For the most part, we are stabbing blindly to satisfy our sense of smell. There are historic and cultural reasons for this “scent gap.”
The Despised Sense
Once humanity became “civilized,” the largest motivators for addressing the sense of smell were negative. The birth of cities meant that people were living in very crowded conditions for the first time. When you combine that with animal smel
ls, a lack of sanitation, and a lack of bathing facilities, you can imagine that many civilizations were primarily concerned with blocking out unpleasant odors rather than creating pleasing ones. While a variety of civilizations overcame many of these problems, the focus of dealing with scent remained for a long time to minimize its offending aspects.
Incense in particular first rose to historical use because of animal sacrifices. It is easy to imagine the stench of rituals where many animals were burned whole. The priestly castes in many cultures learned that the addition of fragrant materials to an animal sacrifice could greatly reduce the negative impact on the sense of smell. Incense and perfumes were then widely used to cover a variety of unpleasant smells.
It seems that in some cultures, especially Western ones, the sense of smell was considered “base” and uncivilized. While the sense of taste was often celebrated, scent was seen as animalistic. It is well known that many animals have a much more sophisticated sense of smell than humans. Perhaps a type of “nose envy” drove some of the common beliefs about the sense of smell being subhuman. It is difficult to pinpoint why some cultures absolutely deplored the sense of smell whereas others celebrated it.
Another obstacle is the difficulty in discussing scent. English and most other European languages lack a sufficient lexicon to allow discussions about the huge variety of scents detectable by even the inferior human nose. Personally, I think this bias is the result of a spiraling combination of many factors. The end result is that the study of the sense of smell lagged far behind that of the other senses in the West.
In some parts of Europe, the sense of smell and the desire to cover unpleasant odors gave birth to the manufacture of perfume. Perfumery has been lifted to a very sophisticated art, but it is generally only practiced by a small group of artisans. Happily there is a growing movement in the United States for the making of perfumes by amateur perfumers and hobbyists. Many of this new generation of home perfumers focus on the use of natural materials. Perfumers do possess a language for discussing scent, but obviously they make up a tiny fraction of the population, so their specialized language is unknown to most of us.
It is also fortunate that this wasn’t the philosophy in all parts of the world. In the East, scent enjoyed a far more respectable station. The art of scent grew along with the other arts. As you will see later in this book, the study and pursuit of scent took on no higher elevation than it did in Japan. The finest incense in the world comes from that island nation and is a direct result of hundreds of years of study and experimentation.
Evolutionary Change?
The sense of smell is possibly the most ancient of all of our senses. As you will see a little later in this chapter, the primitive physiology of the sense is one of the reasons for this belief. When complex life forms first began to root around for food in the ancient oceans of Earth, the ability to detect odors provided an evolutionary leap. Smell allowed life forms that used the chemically active sense to prosper by guiding them to ample food supplies. Even today many animals use scent as one of their primary hunting or foraging tools.
Perhaps as humans learned to walk upright and moved further away from nature, the need for sight and hearing was more important to survival than the sense of smell. This is just my own conjecture, of course, but at least one reasonable explanation for our loss of refinement in our sense of smell grew out of our very survival needs and evolutionary path. This might even explain some of the prejudice against scent as being animalistic, since it is associated with our distant evolutionary changes.
The Physiology of Scent
The way that the mind receives messages from the nose is unique among our senses. Scents are transmitted from the nose to the olfactory bulb (directly behind the nose) and onto the olfactory cortex. From there scent information is sent to the area of the brain that controls behaviors and thoughts. Although very little study has been done on the direct physiological impact of incense, existing research does show that incense impacts our scent receptors much the same as an animal steroid or pheromones. If this research stands the test of time, it might explain why incense can have such an impact on our mood, including its ability to reduce depression. The reason for this is that our brains actually process scent through two different organs. In addition to the olfactory bulb and cortex, humans also have a vomeronasal organ. This ancient organ directly processes scents like steroids and pheromones. This certainly implies that incense could easily have impact on the mind in ways that we do not completely understand yet. This organ would not process scent as we normally think of it, and it’s completely possible that modern humans wouldn’t understand those impulses—our response would be on a purely unconscious level. Research has been done testing the impact of incense on sensuousness and depression, with some positive results. Incense may be helping us in many ways beyond the simple perception of a pleasant smell.
The Language of Scent
While cultures that have placed a high value on incense have developed many descriptive words to describe scents (specifically from incense), that is not something present in most Western languages. Although perfumery has developed its own language, this has not been widely adopted in the incense community nor is it an ideal vocabulary because of notable differences between incense and perfume.
As a result, incense enthusiasts have borrowed words from other disciplines and languages. Cooking, baking, perfumery, and even gardening terms are often applied to incense (“spicy,” “sweet,” “top note,” “bouquet,” etc.), but they are used inconsistently from one person to another. Even I am guilty of this, although I have worked hard to ensure consistency in my writing to avoid confusions that are so common in the incense world.
The Psychology of Scent
Scent has an emotional and psychological impact on us that I imagine everyone has experienced. Does the odor of a certain meal make you think of holidays as a child? Does a whiff of a particular perfume remind you of a love long past? The impact of scent on our minds and states of being is dramatic no matter how hard we may want to believe that we are beyond this primitive sense. Not all researchers agree on this point, but I find it to be logical and certainly accurate in my own life.
Smell can have more influence over how we feel about a room than the color or décor. Even a drab room can be warm and inviting when “dressed up” with the proper scent. Our minds easily associate scents with particular places or events. I personally experience this every time I step into an elementary school. That unique combination of scents from crayons, paste, books, and cafeteria food always brings back a flood of memories from my own childhood.
This scent memory not only plays a key role in the magickal use of incense but is also important to our memories of people and places. The fact that a church has a particular scent constantly reminds visitors of where they are and their own particular history in such places. Retailers use various scents to generate calm and happiness, and to create the most relaxing and comfortable environment to help loosen customers’ grips on their wallets.
The Magick of Scent
The connection between working magick and the use of incense was revealed long before the advent of written history. Undoubtedly prehistoric shamans of both genders passed the understanding of incense to their protégés thousands of years before such knowledge was ever recorded. Incense touches us in a deep way, and it is easy to see why incense is such a potent magickal tool.
The Power of Botanicals
Botanicals, in the view of the incense user or maker, are any organic materials used in incense. Most natural incense is made using nothing but botanicals and water, but occasionally natural incense includes minerals (like talc or potassium nitrate). Botanicals are the heart of incense’s power that touches us on many different levels. They are the reason that I never use synthetic incense in ritual or when doing any magickal work. It is not that synthetic incense will inhibit the process b
ut that synthetic ingredients add nothing to the process. Natural botanicals, on the other hand, bring tremendous energy.
Gifts from the Deities
Botanicals are indeed gifts given to us. Although many different attributes have been ascribed to different botanicals, those attributes are often debatable. While traditional uses for botanicals are often very appropriate, some traditions view the same botanical with different and sometimes opposing sets of attributes. While there might be disagreement about those attributes, there is never any argument about the power contained within.
How to best use that power depends on your traditions, training, and personal discovery. A botanical is often said to “speak” to the user. As a result, different people will use it in different ways, and none of them are incorrect. Whether you view botanicals as a natural result of the evolutionary process or you see them as magick incarnate, the tremendous power of botanicals is easy to experience. I personally find it impossible to deny the Divine after having used natural incense. The divinity of the universe is never clearer to me than when I am sharing a wonderful botanical with someone I care about.
The Power of Nature
One of the sources for the tremendous power of botanicals comes directly from Nature. The various woods, resins, and herbs that comprise natural incense are laden with natural energies. The power of the sun, rain, wind, and moon are all stored within the botanicals, awaiting release. Magick is a symbolic approach to the use of energy, so symbols are very important. Consider, for a moment, the symbology that these botanicals possess. A tree not only grows tall, reaching for the sky (air), but it also sinks its roots deep into Mother Earth (earth). Year after year, the rains (water) fall upon them, and the sun (fire) shines down to bring new growth. Thus, botanicals are the symbolic representation of the four elements.