Incense and smoke

The teaching

As the long tradition of sacred incense teaches it.

What is burned

Incense is fragrant matter burned for its smoke. Resins are the oldest and the most prized: frankincense, myrrh, benzoin, storax, labdanum, mastic and the copal of the Americas. Woods follow, sandalwood, cedar and the dark, resin-soaked aloeswood of Asia; then barks and spices such as cinnamon and cloves; then leaves and herbs, bay, juniper, rosemary and sage. They are burned loose on a glowing coal, pressed into cones and sticks, or kneaded with honey into small balls.

Frankincense

Frankincense is the milky resin of small Boswellia trees of southern Arabia and the Horn of Africa, gathered as tears where the bark is cut and graded by its paleness. Its smoke is bright, lemony and clean. In the traditions it is the incense of the divine: of worship offered to God, of purity, and of prayer rising. When the Magi bring it to the child in Matthew's gospel, the Fathers of the Church read it as the gift owed to God, beside gold for a king and myrrh for one who would die.

Myrrh

Myrrh is the bitter resin of thorny Commiphora trees from the same lands, and its name comes from the Semitic word for bitter. It is the scent of mortality and also of love. Egypt used it in embalming, and in the Gospel of John, Nicodemus brings a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds' weight, for the burial of Jesus. Yet the Song of Songs says, 'A bundle of myrrh is my well-beloved unto me', and in the book of Esther the women of the palace are prepared for six months with oil of myrrh. Bitterness, death and desire meet in it.

The holy incense

Exodus gives the incense of the tabernacle exactly: 'sweet spices, stacte, and onycha, and galbanum; these sweet spices with pure frankincense: of each shall there be a like weight', blended by the art of the apothecary, pure and holy. Stacte is a resin gathered in drops; onycha is taken by some for the shell-lid of a sea snail and by others for a resin; galbanum is a bitter gum. It was burned on a golden altar every morning and every evening, and its recipe was forbidden for any private use. Rabbinic tradition counts eleven spices in the incense of the Temple.

In the book of Revelation the smoke of the incense rises with the prayers of the saints before God. That is the meaning incense has kept in Jewish and Christian worship: what is offered goes up, and the scent fills the holy place.

Egypt's three offerings

Plutarch records that the priests of Egypt offered incense to the Sun three times a day: resin at sunrise, to purify and quicken the heavy air of the night; myrrh at midday, to scatter the thick vapours the Sun draws up from the earth; and kyphi at sunset. Kyphi was compounded of sixteen things, among them honey, wine, raisins, resin, myrrh, mastic, two kinds of juniper berry, cardamom and calamus, mixed while sacred writings were read aloud to the perfumers. Its scent, he says, brought sleep, loosened the knots of the day's cares, and brightened the imagination as a mirror is brightened, so that dreams came clearer.

A fume for each planet

Agrippa gives the fumes of the planets by the part of the plant. To Saturn belong the fragrant roots; to Jupiter the fragrant fruits, such as nutmeg and cloves; to Mars the fragrant woods, such as sandalwood, cypress and aloeswood; to the Sun the gums and resins, frankincense, mastic, benzoin, storax and labdanum; to Venus the flowers, roses and violets; to Mercury the peels and the seeds, cinnamon, cassia, mace and citron peel; and to the Moon the leaves, of the myrtle and the bay. A sweet and precious fume, he adds, belongs to every good work.

Copal and the four medicines

In Mesoamerica the incense of the gods was copal, the resin of tropical trees, burned by the Maya and the Aztecs in their temples. It is burned still, in village churches, in rites of healing and on the altars of the Day of the Dead.

Further north, many Anishinaabe, Cree and other nations teach four sacred medicines, tobacco, sage, sweetgrass and cedar, whose smoke carries prayer and cleanses; the burning of them is what English calls smudging. That ceremony is theirs to lead and to teach, and its teaching is given in their own communities, by their own elders.

Sandalwood and aloeswood

In India sandalwood is the scent of worship: burned as incense, ground into a paste for marking the brow and anointing images, and carved into sacred things, because its fragrance is held to cool and calm the mind and to last. Aloeswood, also called agarwood or oud, is the heartwood of Aquilaria trees, darkened with resin where the tree has fought an infection. It is among the costliest of all incense, and prized from Arabia to Japan.

Listening to incense

Japan made of incense an art, kodo, the way of fragrance, in which one is said not to smell an incense but to listen to it. A sliver of aloeswood is warmed on a thin plate over charcoal buried in ash in a small cup, which passes from guest to guest; each holds it close, breathes in, and attends. Aloeswoods are sorted into six kinds, most of them named after the lands they were thought to come from, and their scents into five tastes: sweet, sour, hot, salty and bitter.

In the game called Genji-ko five portions, drawn at random from five kinds of incense, are burned one after another, the guests judge which of them were the same, and each of the fifty-two possible patterns bears the name of a chapter of The Tale of Genji. The ten virtues of incense, traditionally credited to the Song poet Huang Tingjian and spread in Japan, some say, by the monk Ikkyu, praise it among other things as a companion in solitude, a moment of peace amid busy affairs, and a thing that satisfies even in a small amount.

Censing in church

In the churches of East and West the censer is swung before the altar, the gospel book, the icons, the clergy and the people, and the coffin at a funeral. Its smoke honours what it reaches, marks it as set apart for God, and rises, as the Revelation shows it, with the prayers of those present. In the Orthodox churches the deacon censes each icon and then the people, honouring in each of them the image of God.

Burning it safely

The traditions burn a little, and so does the house. One stick or cone, or a pinch of resin on a charcoal disc, set in a holder that cannot tip, on sand or ash in a bowl that can take the heat, with the charcoal lifted by tongs and never by the fingers. A window stays open, for smoke is smoke, and burning charcoal in a closed room gives off carbon monoxide. Nothing burns unwatched, near curtains or paper, or within reach of a child or a pet; birds, whose lungs are delicate, are kept well away, and so is anyone with asthma. A minute of the scent is enough, and the rite asks no more.