by Carl F. Neal
Beyond symbolism, botanicals are also the physical representation of the elements. Some of the energy that the sun and rain bring is quite literally stored within the botanicals. Nutrition is drawn from the soil and the energy from respiration is required for all organic life. Therefore, botanicals are both the literal and figurative representations of the elements.
Magickal Atmosphere
While natural incense is a powerful way to access or raise energy, it has a much more immediate physical and magickal influence upon us. While discussing the way that botanicals represent the elements is a wonderful, somewhat intellectual, way to discuss their power in magick, the immediate impact of incense on us as animals is another potent part of the magick of incense.
Since scent is quite unlike other senses and the impact of scent upon us is nearly instantaneous, you can observe how your body responds. When you encounter a soothing odor, your shoulders relax, your breathing becomes deeper, and your mood is elevated. Likewise, when you enter a room harboring a foul odor, your body instantly recoils. Your breathing becomes shallow, you avoid inhaling through your nose, and most of us will grow physically tense. A bad smell can certainly affect your mood as well.
This physical response to scent is a powerful tool for magick as well. One element of magick is the mental state of the mage, or magician. A shift from “normal” perception to a magickal frame of mind is one of the important steps to seeing through the Veil and working magick. The physical impact of incense can quickly facilitate the transition to magickal vision. If you use a particular blend of incense exclusively for magickal purposes, you will discover that simply smelling that scent will begin to shift your perspective.
Personally, I use several blends this way. I use one specific blend for cleansing space that I plan to use for magickal work and another any time I call upon my patron deities. Not only does that create a magickal atmosphere for me, it also creates a positively charged environment for the powers I call upon. It is a form of magickal preparation. Just as you would clean your house before guests visit, incense creates a welcoming magickal atmosphere and provides a type of energetic cleaning. In its own way, incense “magickally decorates” the spaces in preparation for a visit from great powers. Not only is it a cleaning process, it also serves as a sort of magickal announcement to the universe. You might think of it as hanging out a “welcome” sign for magickal powers. Incense creates an environment that is easy for those powers to enter and welcomes them into your space. Many mages use specific scents or blends to invite specific powers into their space.
Impact of Scent
It is difficult to overstate the usefulness of scent in magick. This goes well beyond incense, although I have always found incense to be the most powerful implementation of scent power. Aroma lamps, perfumes, and even powdered botanicals placed on clothing or skin all have benefits in magick. Scent can trigger specific states of mind and bring memories to the surface that have been long buried. Who hasn’t had the experience of smelling something that reminds us of an old friend or the joys of days long since passed? By bringing that power into your magickal workings, you can accomplish more with less effort. Incense and other scent products are tools that make working magick even more of a joy.
Historic Use of Incense in Magick
As we saw in chapter 1, references to the use of incense in magick or religious work are found all around the world. Historians have no idea when or how incense first came into use, but traditions clearly show that this practice is far older than writing.
It is easy to envision our ancient ancestors discovering the power of heavily scented woods soon after learning how to use fire as a tool. The sense of smell was vital to survival, and after encountering one fragrant wood, it is unlikely that a primitive person would have forgotten that experience. Instead, the energy and power of such woods was used in combination with the power of the fire itself to raise energy. Once this power was understood, it was likely a very short period until these ancient wielders of magickal power began to test other materials to learn the hidden powers within incense. To date, there is very little direct knowledge of the growth of early incense traditions. As cultures shared the knowledge of writing, their incense traditions had already become well established.
Taoists, Buddhists, and even practitioners of Shinto have long used incense. As in many other cultures, one common thread to magick incense use in Asia is the concept that the smoke from the incense carries the wishes or prayers of the users to other planes. As one prays, the words combine with the smoke from the incense to be carried to the gods and goddesses who may be swayed to help a mortal being. Asian tradition is rich with incense magick and lore. One of my very favorite such beliefs regards those who sell incense materials. It is said that unscrupulous merchants who sell incense made with inferior or vulgar ingredients under the guise of being of top-quality materials will spend eternity as “incense demons”—those cursed souls wander the Earth in search of incense smoke to eat, but are denied any pleasure from the wonderful fragrance.
Egypt was one major center of incense use and creation in the ancient world. Perhaps the most famous of all ancient incense blends, called kyphi, was the creation of an ancient Egyptian incense master. The care and attention to detail for the making of kyphi indicates a very sophisticated incense tradition.
Judeo-Christian religions also have a rich incense history, although few of the followers of those religions realize this in modern times. Ancient Hebrews recognized the power of incense and its critical contribution to their spiritual practices. In ancient Judaism there was a special class of priest who created incense. Modern scholars unimaginatively call this the “Incense Cult” of the ancient Israelites. This aspect of incense was so ingrained in their religious practices that being an incense maker was a highly revered position, much as the master incense makers of Asian cultures were revered. Ancient caches of incense mixed for the Hebrew temples have been unearthed in modern times. So powerful was this mixture that even after thousands of years, the fragrance is still distinct and quite potent.
Incense is also quite important to later Christian religions, although in the last few centuries many denominations have lost those practices. In fact, incense played an important role at the very birth of Christianity. Consider that two of the three gifts presented to the Christ child by the three kings were frankincense and myrrh. Some say that the gold discussed in that famous story was actually another fragrant resin that was covered in gold (as is still done with some resins in the twenty-first century). While I cannot offer any facts about that one way or the other, the gifts of frankincense and myrrh were no accident; both were very valuable resins at that time. The resins had to make a journey of thousands of miles up from Africa just to reach the biblical kings. They then carried these precious gifts for their entire journey as the ultimate gifts for the newly born King of the Jews.
The most aged Christian institutions (the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christian churches) still use frankincense in their rituals. A large swing censer, sometimes called a thurible, holds burning charcoal onto which is thrown copious amounts of frankincense resin. It is still quite mysterious to me why myrrh has been left out of such rituals, but I am no expert on the inner workings of these religions so perhaps myrrh is still used in less-public rituals. Of course, traditionally, frankincense represents the masculine and myrrh the feminine. Perhaps that has something do with the non-use of myrrh.
Islam also recognizes the value of incense. In fact, the Mideast is one of the largest-consuming regions of fragrant materials. Rare gifts like aloeswood are often burned to display status in social situations. In that region of the world, incense is so popular that cars are frequently equipped with electric incense burners for continuous use.
In both the ancient Pagan world and in the Neopagan movements of today, incense is a part of nearly every ritual. In the ancient world, each Paga
n community had access to different fragrant materials. Herbs were one of the most commonly used materials, yet resins and fragrant wood were known all over the ancient world. It is also easy to forget how interconnected the ancient world was. Although many critical resins came from thousands of miles away, our ancient Pagan ancestors in Europe had access to a wide variety of fragrant gifts from Mother Earth.
Twentieth Century
In the modern world of magick, one of the first writers to frequently reference the use of incense was Aleister Crowley. The famous “beast” of the Golden Dawn is, to say the least, a colorful and controversial character from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. There certainly is not room in a book of this nature to discuss Crowley in detail, but a review of his magickal texts shows numerous references to using incense in ritual magick. Incense was mentioned in many, many of his magickal instructions.
The problem with Crowley’s inclusion of incense is the total lack of detail. It appears that he simply went to the Asian district of whatever city he was in and purchased any strong-smelling concoction that was described as “incense.” Crowley’s instructions on the selection and use of incense are nearly non-existent. Based on his publicly available writings, he had no concept of the composition of incense or knowledge of Asian incense-use traditions. However, he often acknowledged the power of incense to create the requisite magickal atmosphere.
Gerald Gardner, generally recognized as the “father” of the Wiccan religion, was also mostly silent on details about incense use. He did mention its importance in ritual, but Gardner omitted details about the composition of incense and the particular blends that he and others used while working magick. It is important to recognize that both of these magick men often omitted details from their public writings for a variety of reasons. It is entirely possible that both men knew a great deal more about incense than their public writings reflect. Unfortunately, most of us will never be able to answer that question.
In the mid-twentieth century, ritual magick enjoyed a large surge in popularity. Many writers began to apply ancient concepts to modern life and the current Neopagan movement was launched. One of the first popular writers on the subject was Starhawk. Her work tied the women’s movement to Paganism in no uncertain terms. She offered many of the first widely available magick instructions to the general public. From simple grounding exercises to instructions for casting and releasing a magick circle, she brought magick to many uninitiated for the first time in her 1979 classic The Spiral Dance. Although only scant reference is made to incense, she includes a note that is key to the use of incense in magick: “ A Witch depends less on traditional associations of herbs, odors, and colors than on her own intuition” (20th Anniversary Edition, p. 95). That sentence has brought many of us to a new understanding of the power of incense and scent in the pursuit of magick. This idea eventually led me to the practice of “listening” to herbs and incense to let them tell me how I could best employ their power.
Ten years after The Spiral Dance, popular Wiccan author Scott Cunningham brought incense into the forefront of magickal thought when he published The Complete Book of Incense, Oils & Brews. This early attempt to teach practitioners not only how to use but actually how to make incense, remains required reading for any user of magickal herbs. Cunningham stresses the importance of natural incense botanicals as well as the historic significance of incense in magick. This book sparked a bit of a revolution in the use of incense in modern magick. Since publishing that classic volume, Pagans, Wiccans, Druids, Heathens, Witches, and many other Neopagan practitioners began to explore and re-discover what our ancestors knew so well: the power of incense is unrivaled for versatility in not only shaping energy but in raising the energy itself.
Although my name will never be listed among the greats I have discussed here, I hope to shed some tiny ray of light on the subject with this book and my previous book on the topic. Years of study and practice have shown me that I can never learn all there is to know about the power and use of incense. The topic is simply bigger than any one person. I hope that my words will inspire some readers to move the study of incense well beyond the mark any of us have set in the past. There is so much more to learn that I hope you will one day teach me the secrets you have uncovered.
In modern times we are blessed to have access to strange and wonderful incense ingredients from all over the planet. While frankincense of even the lowliest quality was once far too expensive and difficult for some people to enjoy, high-quality incense is only a mouse click and a few dollars away in modern times. Our new international transportation and commerce systems allow us to enjoy incense to a degree that is unrivaled in history. Unfortunately, this same situation has led to some cases where our ease of access might actually lead to the destruction of these precious materials. Aloeswood, rosewood, sandalwood, and others are in danger of extinction in our lifetimes. This topic is explored more in the next chapter, but it is important to understand that the materials that our ancestors so prized—which are now so inexpensive—could disappear before our eyes if we do not exercise caution. Perhaps the materials being very expensive was one of the factors keeping the materials safe from overharvesting or other extreme exploitation.
Personal Incense Associations
The concept of “listening” to incense is more deeply explored later in this book, but I wanted to make note of this important magickal concept early on. It is easy, especially for those new to magick, to pick up a book and use it to determine associations (or links) with specific magickal properties. For example, there are many books for those new to Witchcraft or Paganism (sometimes called “Witchcraft 101” or just “101” books) that will tell you that elm is associated with love and fertility while sandalwood is associated with energy raising. There is nothing wrong with using those associations if you are new to magick or if you feel that those associations are correct. However, I would urge you, my wonderful reader, to never rely upon those books or charts. Such associations can become very personal. You might discover, as I have on more than one occasion, that a particular botanical serves a different purpose for you. You might see dragon’s blood as a cleansing scent while nobody else in the world does. Does that make you wrong? Not at all.
Herbs, woods, resins, and other botanicals are individuals, just as you and I are. They might tell secrets to you that they will not tell to me. They may have uses that only a few individuals can comprehend or properly utilize. Never depend solely on someone else’s view of the proper use of a botanical. Their opinions are a starting place but never an ending. Many of such traditional associations grow from the use of the botanicals for hundreds or thousands of years, so traditional uses are certainly not without merit. Many different practitioners have found a common experience that has become a part of our common lore. Still, that does not mean you can’t find a new use for the same botanical or that it can’t impart special knowledge to just you. It is even quite possible that your use of the botanical will not work for others; it might be for you alone.
Sadly, there are tons of “experts” out there who will tell you that there is only one way to do things. Do not let anyone tell you that you are using a botanical in the wrong context, e.g.,“you can’t put vetiver in a love blend!” It might be a good idea to consider their input and question your choice of materials, but if you do so and still feel the use is right for you, then do not be concerned about the opinions of others. They are only opinions. Let the botanicals themselves tell you how best to utilize them, even if your use is contrary to what you have read in a book somewhere (including this one). Your personal magickal associations are the true heart of incense power.
Although the use of incense is far older than written history, it is accessible to the twenty-first century world with just as much power as it had in those ancient times. While the detailed history of incense use is sketchy at best, it does not take an anthropological genius to understand the
natural progression of incense use in magick and spirituality. History gives us perspective and understanding of a time long gone, but the botanicals still speak to us today. That gives us the chance to not only utilize the ancient secrets of incense but to find new approaches and uses in the coming centuries.
[contents]
3
Incense Ingredients
Many books will give you a more in-depth look at the huge variety of aromatics that are used in incense making. The listing that follows isn’t intended to be comprehensive or detailed but rather just an introduction to the wide world of incense. Check the bibliography of this book for some good ideas on where to go with your research. Remember that any associations that might be mentioned in the descriptions here should not be taken as a rigid fact. Spend time with the aromatics and they will speak to you and guide you in their use. For those who purchase incense, find an incense maker who will disclose the ingredients or create custom incense for your needs if you want specific blends. If all else fails, you can buy single-aromatic incense and use the air-mixing technique described in chapter 6.
Aromatics
Acacia (Acacia senegal): Also known as “gum Arabic,” it has a somewhat astringent scent, almost like a mint. The scent is quite mild, and acacia is primarily used in incense for its magickal properties or as an incense binder.
Aloeswood (Lignum aquilariae): Aloeswood is normally graded into one of six different types (kyara, rakoku, manaka, manaban, sumotara, and sasora) based on the place of origin. This is the most highly regarded aromatic in Japanese incense (and the foundation for the kodo ceremony) and is treasured across the world. Also known as iron wood, agarwood, and eaglewood, aloeswood is endangered in the wild.