from early times.
After the Jews’ arrival in ‘The Promised Land’, a guild of apothecaries or perfumers was set up. The most famous guild members belonged to the family of Abtinas. They acquired the monopoly of preparing the incense for temple worship and made about 370 lbs per annum (one mina for each day’s offering plus three minas for the Day of Atonement). The incense was carried from the House of Abtinas by a chosen priest in a golden vessel. Then, while the congregation waited outside in silence, the priest threw the incense into the fire on the altar, bowed towards the Holy of Holies and carefully withdrew backwards. The rising incense smoke veiled the manifest form of Yahweh from the priest and congregation and protected them from the danger of his immediate holiness. Also, perhaps it was the pervasive fragrance of the burning incense itself that brought about the imminent presence of the deity.
Around the time of Christ, the Abtinas family asked the Temple authorities for a price increase, which was turned down. When the Abtinas refused to divulge their formula, saying they feared that the incense might be used for idolatrous sacrifices, they were replaced by Egyptian apothecaries who had access to the original formula related to Moses – but who could not make the smoke ascend correctly. The Abtinas family were then reinstated at a substantially higher salary! According to Josephus, the Abtinas formula contained 13 ingredients, which, in addition to those listed in the original recipe, included myrrh, cassia, spikenard, saffron, costus, mace, cinnamon and their ‘secret herb’. This last one imparted the property of making the smoke ascend in the shape of a date palm.
According to Maimonides, the Jewish physician and philosopher, the use of incense in the worship of the Jews actually originated from the practice of using aromatics to disguise the disagreeable odours arising from the burning of sacrificial animals, although he also mentions that it must have raised the spirits of the priests as well. Later, the scent of incense came to replace the odour of burnt offerings altogether. At this time the Hebrews believed, like the Egyptians, that the gods were nourished by odours and that all ethereal beings fed on vapours, not on solid food. On Mount Sinai, the Lord revealed to Moses how he would vent his fury if the people did not listen to him by smashing their incense altars so he could no longer breathe their appeasing fragrance
Incense, of course, was already in use throughout Israel at the time of the Jews’ exodus from Egypt, and was in some areas an intrinsic part of their pagan form of worship. Excavations have revealed that there were at least seven different types of incense vessels in use during this period and that incense burning went back a far as chalcolithic times (fourth millennium BC) in Palestine. It is probable that the Israelites took over the Canaanite incense vessels which they used for the expression of local cult worship. It is clear that the priestly editors of the ancient traditions erased many elements of popular religion when they set about compiling the old Jewish texts, since they did not conform to their ideal.
CHRISTIANITY AND MODERN DAY RITUALS
There can be little doubt that the scorn and revulsion with which incense was regarded in the early days of Christianity resulted from its heavy usage in pagan rituals and by the Jews. Consequently, for the first four centuries AD incense was used in Christian churches primarily as a sanitary aid rather than a religious tool. However, in the fourth century AD, Constantine the Great inaugurated the Peace of the Church which affirmed the use of incense in Christian practice in response to growing public pressure. Since then, some Christian sects have taken to using aromatics intensively as part of their ritual, while others have virtually abandoned its use altogether. The Coptic, Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Churches still use incense extensively, made mainly from frankincense, sometimes in combination with charcoal, benzoin and storax. During the Mass, the altar is incensed first as a symbol of the grace that suffused Christ like a sweet odour, then follows the incensing of the faithful, a reflection of the grace shed upon them by Christ.
In the West even today, however, the burning of incense in the form of joss-sticks, made mainly from east Indian and west Australian sandalwood, still carries the stigma of association with pagan worship to a certain extent.
In conclusion, it is clear that the ancients used incense extensively as part of their way of life. It was employed mainly in ritual practices for the following reasons:
1) as an offering or bloodless sacrifice – a symbol of wealth
2) as a way of uplifting and altering one’s state of mind – to create the correct mood
3) as a means of ‘communion’ between the earthly and divine realm
4) as a protection against evil and to ensure favour
5) as a purifying agent for the psyche or soul of an individual
6) as a cleansing agent for physical body and the environment
7) as a pleasing perfume in meeting-places
But what is the basis for the universal employment of incense, in particular those ingredients derived from resins, woods and gums, as opposed to those from flowers, leaves or other sources? This was the question posed by the Syrian scholar Arnobius, in the fourth century AD. His scepticism undermines the whole concept underlying the ritual use of incense and could just as well be applied today:
What is this sign of respect which comes from the smell of the gum of a tree burning in a fire? Does this, do you suppose, give honour to the heavenly magnates? Or if their displeasure has been aroused at any time, is it really soothed and dissipated by incense smoke? But if it is smoke the gods want, why do you not offer them any kind of smoke? Or must it only be incense? If you answer that incense has a nice smell while other substances have not, tell me if the gods have nostrils, and can smell with them? But if the gods are incorporeal, odours and perfumes can have no effect at all upon them, since corporeal substances cannot affect incorporeal beings.13
According to the psychologist Carl Jung, an important aspect in the development of individual consciousness may be understood as the process of withdrawing projections, i.e. the process of recognizing qualities previously ascribed to external factors as being potential aspects of oneself. Thus, the gods and goddesses of ancient mythologies or religions might in modern psychological language be seen as different archetypes or facets of the Self, rather than as separate external entities:
All ages before ours believed in gods in some form or other. Only an unparalleled impoverishment in symbolism could enable us to discover the gods as psychic factors, which is to say, as archetypes of the unconscious. No doubt this discovery is hardly credible yet.14
Seen in this context, the use and effect of incense may be described in terms of its physiological and psychological impact on the human psyche.
In his book The Scented Ape, zoologist Michael Stoddard compares the scent of incense materials and their molecular composition with the makeup and odour of steroidal sex pheromones found in the human species. He concludes:
Suffice it to say that the inspiration men get from incense is that it stimulates them in a truly profound manner, unconsciously stirring vestigial memory traces associated with times when odorous sex attractants played a vital role in the preservation of the species. There can be no odours more able to stimulate the deep emotional levels of the brain than those associated – however distantly and indistinctly – with sexual attraction.15
Viewed in this way, the scent of incense, reminiscent of sex attractant steroids, can help to lift conditioned repressive tendencies enough to
