various odours according to its age, the part used and the amount of resin it contains, etc. The art of incense is still practised in Japan, although it is not as well known as the tea ceremony, largely due to the lack of agar wood. Today, the aesthetic appreciation of incense is being revived, incense shops in Japan are offering new creations and incense study groups have sprung up. Apart from cultivating refinement of taste and discrimination, the incense ritual also helps train the mind and develop psychic concentration:
If one can suspend any preconceptions about incense to fully experience the ceremony, the happy result will be the ability to appreciate ‘incense time’ as one would ‘tea time’ for relaxation, refreshment and communion with others.7
Like many other Far Eastern countries, the Japanese also favour sandalwood, which they still burn on their Shinto shrines (the pre-Buddhist religion of Japan). It is clear that the use of aromatics for ritual purposes in the Orient is still very much alive today, unlike the Western traditions, which reached a height during the Greek and Roman period before undergoing a gradual but widespread decline.
THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
The Greeks’ love of aromatics and incense is deeply rooted in their history. Ritual incense burners or censers have been excavated from Minoan graves in Crete, dated to before 1500 BC. In The Odyssey, Homer (c. 850 BC) refers to an incense altar in the temple of Aphrodite at Paphos, in Cyprus. The goddess is supposed to have hidden her nakedness with a bough of myrtle and the fragrance of myrtle plays an important role in Greek incense ceremonies up to the present day.
In ancient times, the principal means by which the Greeks honoured their gods was by making human sacrifices and later by burning domestic animals. In the course of time, only a small portion of the meat was burned, together with libations (the pouring of wine) and incense, while the rest was consumed in a festive meal. By the sixth century BC, the Greek custom of making animal sacrifices had been largely replaced by the ritual offering of incense. A Greek inscription at Didyma (about 300 BC) lists frankincense, myrrh, cassia, cinnamon and costus being offered at the temple of Apollo.
The powdered type of incense was generally kept in a special box and burned either on an incense altar in the temple or at a household shrine using a brazier. At public festivals and military triumphs, censers containing incense were borne along by the procession, while large quantities were burned in front of temples and in niches and doorways along the processional route. At celebrations connected with the oracle at Delphi, Thessalian virgins carried baskets of incense and spices at the head of the procession.
Like the Egyptians, the Greeks also used incense to induce a change of consciousness. According to Plutarch, the Pythic Oracle at Delphi used a mixture of bay leaf and barley flour as an incense to help induce a trancelike state. Likewise, when the oracle at Patras was consulted, the priestess prayed and offered incense before gazing into the sacred well to seek an answer. It is more than likely that incense also played a prominent role in the ‘miracle cures’ of the priest-doctors of Asclepius – incenses are included in recipes on marble tablets within their temples.
At funerals, the Greeks burnt incense not only to propitiate the gods, but also as a symbol of transcendence. When cremation replaced burial rites, it also served the more practical purpose of disguising the odour of burning flesh and purifying the area of germs or infection.
It was the Romans, however, who began to use incense increasingly lavishly for this purpose, until vast sums were being squandered on it. It is reported that the whole of Arabia could not produce in a year as much incense as was burned in one day by the Emperor Nero upon the death of his consort, Poppaea. As Pliny pointed out laconically:
Arabia’s good fortune has been caused by the luxury of mankind even in the hours of death, when they burn over the departed the products which they had originally understood to have been created for the gods.8
With the Romans, incense also began to be used increasingly for secular rather than religious purposes. The Romans were renowned for their love of sweet-smelling perfumes and ‘unguents’, which they used to scent their hair, their bodies, their clothes, their beds, their baths and even the walls of their houses. Of frankincense, Ovid said, ‘If it is pleasing to the Gods, it is no less useful to mortals’9 and Plutarch observed that through scent alone, ‘imaginary worries are smoothed like a mirror’.10 Indeed, the enormous quantities of ‘foreign essences’ imported by the Romans, and the consequent pressure which incense and perfume put on the treasury, may have been a substantial factor in the final collapse of the Empire.
THE BIBLE AND THE JEWISH TRADITION
Nowhere has the ritual use of incense been more exactly prescribed than in the Jewish tradition. When the Jews left Egypt in 1240 BC, they took many Egyptian customs with them, including their use of incense. During their exodus, Moses was given a number of commandments by the Lord, including instructions on how to construct an incense altar and make a holy incense:
Take sweet spices: storax, onycha [labdanum], galbanum, sweet spices and pure frankincense in equal parts, and compound an incense, such a blend as the perfumer might make, salted, pure and holy. Crush a part of it into a fine powder, and put some of this in front of the Testimony in the Tent of Meeting, the place appointed for my meetings with you. You must regard it as most holy. You are not to make any incense of similar composition for your own use. You must hold it to be holy thing, reserved for Yahweh. Whoever copies it for use as a perfume shall be outlawed from his people.11
Incense, in this context, is regarded as something extremely precious and sacred – it is to be burned at the meeting-place of man and God. The high priests made their offerings in front of the curtains of the innermost sanctuary, but its use was forbidden to laymen. When Korah and his 250 followers rebelled against the priesthood, Moses and Aaron put them to the test by challenging them to carry censers filled with incense before the Tent of Meeting. Then the Lord appeared to the gathered crowd, destroyed the rebels with fire and ordered the bronze censers to be picked out of the ashes and hammered into sheets to cover the altar. Later, in order to protect the rest of the community, Moses said to Aaron:
Take the censer, fill it with fire from the altar, put incense in it and hurry to the community to perform the rite of atonement over them. The wrath has come down from Yahweh and the plague has begun. Aaron did as Moses said and ran among the assembly, but the plague was already at work among them. He put in the incense and performed the rite of atonement over the people. Then he stood between the living and the dead, and the plague stopped.12
Here, incense is being used for purification purposes, not only to wash away the sins of the people, but also to kill infection and prevent disease from spreading, much in the same way as it was used during the Great Plague of 1665. The priestly habit of burning aromatics between themselves and the populace during a service also served as a protective barrier against germs. Likewise, the purification rites of Hebrew women employed many aromatics. In the year before marriage, it was customary for Hebrew women to undergo a purification ritual for six months using firstly oil of myrrh, followed by a further six months using frankincense and other scented unguents. Women also generally wore a small cloth bag containing myrrh and other aromatics suspended as a necklet between their breasts. The perfume was slowly released by contact with the body. It is clear from Mesopotamian and Biblical sources that women were particularly skilled in the art of perfumery and
