From the Carmina Gadelica, vol.II, by Alexander Carmichael, 1900:
The Incense
“In the day of thy health
Thou wilt not give devotion,
Thou wilt not give kine,
Nor wilt thou offer incense;
Head of haughtiness,
Heart of greediness,
Mouth unhemmed,
Nor ashamed art thou.
But thy winter will come,
And thy hardness of thy distress,
And thy head shall be as
The clod in the earth;
Thy strength having failed,
Thine aspect having gone,
And thou a thrall,
On thy two knees.”
The moral of this verse is not to be stingy with your incense burning and worship, among other things, but especially for offerings. I burn incense every day. Sometimes to scent a room and change its energy and sometimes for offering. I’m also known to burn special blends with rich and rare ingredients for rituals, sabbats, and esbats. Despite me and my man’s love of Nag Champa, we witches make all our own incenses in this house for our ritual and magical practices. There is no such thing as too much incense… unless you forgot to open a window, that is.
I created some new incense blends before Hekate’s Sickle festival and finally stole the time to photograph and list them in the Botanica. The first three magical incense blends are Ritual Incense (a rich blend of resins and woods for ritual and crossing between worlds), Lord of the Underworld Incense (a blend of darkly devious herbs for the dark one), and a new recipe of Divination Incense:
The other new incenses I created are a deliciously sinful Rose-Musk Amber Resin which smells even sexier than the Honey-Vanilla one (if that’s even possible) as well as West Cost Smudge which is a blend of four wildcrafted sacred trees – cedar, hemlock, juniper, and pine. It smells like the forests of the Pacific Northwest and is such a comfortable and familiar scent to me.
All the new incenses are available in my Etsy shop too!
quesion about the resins/amber incense, cause i have been experimenting to, do you know how long to heat the resins for, because the ones that i made are still quite sticky, but set.. like not quite set toffee, which made me ponder if i heated the resins longer, would they set harder, like toffee?? what do you think?
*ponders smells*
It is completely dependent on what kind of resin you are using and what the other ingredients are. Just keep playing!
Sarah,
Is there any chance you might make the “Divination” incense in a form whose magic could be liberated by heating it in water? I like to keep my ritual room closed off from the rest of the house because I have some pretty earthbound roommates, not all of my own choosing. That means that if I burn incense in a room with a closed door, I’ve got to contend with a very heavy smoke buildup.
If you know of methods that I could use after purchasing the solid incense, I’m open to that too!
May I say, as a terminally clumsy person with the scarred hands and botched carvings to prove it, how much I like seeing your carving projects?
So I went to the site and found your oils. Never mind the silly question. When payday shows up, so shall my order!
Lol! Glad you found the magical oils Vivienne! I have another alternative as well — my “Visions of the Seer” smoking blend can also double as a tea. Just add 1 tsp of the herbal blend per 1 cup of hot water and steep as you would with regular tea.
http://forestgrovebotanica.com/poisoners-apothecary/visions-of-the-seer/
Slainte!
Sarah
Wow, just thinking about the West Coast Smudge is driving me crazy. Can’t wait to get some for myself =)
I love it too. I thought the Four Wise Sages Smudge was my favourite, but the West Coast Smudge takes the cake!
I was just talking about this with a friend last night. She’s new and while we were setting up for a ritual she asked me why I had two incense sticks plus loose incense? Wasn’t that a waste? NOPE!
I shall have to send her a link to here