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Incense

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Incense is material, usually plant resin, wood or herbs, that gives off fragrant smoke when burned. It has been offered to gods, burned in homes and temples, and carried in processions in many religious traditions, from ancient Mediterranean sacrifice to Zoroastrian households and modern Wicca.[1][2][3]

In the ancient Mediterranean

In Greek and Roman religion, offering sacrifice marked the relationship between people and the gods, and burning incense was one of the most common offerings. The historian Susan Ashbrook Harvey notes that refusing to offer incense to the Roman gods was used as a test of accused Christians as early as about 112 CE, and that Christians who gave in were nicknamed "incense-burners".[4]

Philosophers already questioned whether the gods needed offerings at all. Harvey describes how this raised the status of simple, bloodless gifts: Philo of Alexandria wrote that a little incense from a good person is worth more than thousands of cattle from a bad one. Critics went further. The Christian writer Arnobius asked why smells that please humans should please gods without bodies, and the Neoplatonist Porphyry claimed that even incense was a late invention, the earliest offering being burnt grass.[1][5]

In Christianity

Harvey argues that the earliest Christians seem to have avoided incense in their own worship for about three centuries, while still using the language of incense for prayer and good deeds. The theologian Origen, for example, wrote that incense stands for prayer and virtue.[4][5]

Incense came into Christian use gradually after the faith was legalised in the fourth century, first in honorific settings such as funeral processions, the moving of relics and the consecration of churches.[6] The earliest certain description of incense in a Christian service comes from the pilgrim Egeria, who saw it in Jerusalem around 381. By the late fifth century it was a normal part of Christian prayer, in church and at home.[7]

Harvey's central claim is that Christian writers changed what incense meant. Where it had been mainly a sacrificial offering, writers such as Ephrem the Syrian treated its fragrance as a way of knowing God: the faithful offer incense and God answers with the "fragrance of life".[8][9] She contrasts incense, which she sees as human movement towards God, with perfumed holy oil, which marks God's movement towards people.[10] Augustine called the Lord's Prayer daily incense on the "altar of the heart".[11]

In Zoroastrianism

Jenny Rose describes Zoroastrian homes being perfumed with incense every day, usually after the morning prayers and sometimes at sunset, while prayers are said for the household's wellbeing. Iranian Zoroastrians often burn rue or marjoram, while Parsis in India use sandalwood and a tree resin called loban. The smoke is also said to keep insects away, and fragrance serves as a picture of the good "fragrance" a person leaves through good deeds.[2] In the Parthian period, offerings of oil and incense were made to sacred fires.[12]

In modern paganism

Joanne Pearson notes that the tools of Wiccan ritual, including candles, water, salt, oil, incense and bells, are largely borrowed from Catholic practice. In consecrating a space, incense represents the element of air.[3] Michael Strmiska observes that many modern pagans burn candles and incense indoors as a stand-in for outdoor fires.[13]

Why does incense recur across religions?

Scholars do not agree on a single explanation, and the ones below are not exclusive.

  • Harvey argues that in the ancient Mediterranean, smell offered a ready-made code linking sacrifice, moral purity and divine acceptance. A pleasing scent could therefore stand for prayer and virtue as well as for an offering, which is why incense survived even when animal sacrifice was rejected.[1][8]
  • Harvey also stresses incense's practical advantages as a bloodless offering: it was cheap, simple and valued chiefly for its scent.[1]
  • Robert Yelle does not write about incense directly, but he argues that ritual in general works through "sensory pageantry", coordinating several senses at once to make a performance more powerful. On that view, incense is one channel among many for engaging the whole body in worship.[14]
  • Studies of modern paganism suggest a further, simpler reason: incense and candles can stand in for open fire where outdoor fires are impractical.[13]

These explanations deal with different traditions and evidence, and none claims to account for every case.

Incense and the trade routes

Because frankincense and myrrh trees grow naturally only in southern Arabia and the Horn of Africa, temple incense had to travel a long way. Egyptian rulers sent expeditions by sea to the Land of Punt for it, and Queen Hatshepsut's temple at Deir el-Bahri records one such voyage in carved reliefs.[15] Later, camel caravans carried it along the Incense Route from the Yemeni kingdoms through Petra to Gaza. According to Pliny, as quoted by James F. Hancock, priests at Shabwa took a tenth of the incense for their god Sabis, so the gods were paid even before the incense reached their altars.[16] In Rome the best frankincense cost about a skilled worker's weekly wage per pound.[17]

Incense, botany and medicine

The two classic incense resins come from just two trees: frankincense from Boswellia sacra and the best myrrh from Commiphora myrrha, growing in limestone country watered by the mist of the Khareef monsoon.[18] The same resins that perfumed temples were also medicines and embalming materials; see Frankincense and myrrh.[19]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Harvey, Susan Ashbrook (2006). Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination. University of California Press. pp. 21–24.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Rose, Jenny (2014). "Zoroastrians Present and Past". Zoroastrianism: An Introduction. I.B. Tauris.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Pearson, Joanne (2007). "Rediscovering Ritual". Wicca and the Christian Heritage: Ritual, Sex and Magic. Routledge.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Harvey, Susan Ashbrook (2006). Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination. University of California Press. pp. 19–20.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Harvey, Susan Ashbrook (2006). Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination. University of California Press. pp. 24–28.
  6. ↑ Harvey, Susan Ashbrook (2006). Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination. University of California Press. p. 74.
  7. ↑ Harvey, Susan Ashbrook (2006). Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination. University of California Press. p. 76.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Harvey, Susan Ashbrook (2006). Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination. University of California Press. pp. 76–77.
  9. ↑ Harvey, Susan Ashbrook (2006). Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination. University of California Press. p. 78.
  10. ↑ Harvey, Susan Ashbrook (2006). Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination. University of California Press. pp. 73–74.
  11. ↑ Harvey, Susan Ashbrook (2006). Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination. University of California Press. p. 81.
  12. ↑ Rose, Jenny (2014). "A Zoroastrian Presence from Seleucia to Sistan: The Parthian Period". Zoroastrianism: An Introduction. I.B. Tauris.
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Strmiska, Michael F., ed. (2005). Modern Paganism in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives. ABC-CLIO. pp. 40–41.
  14. ↑ Yelle, Robert A. (2012). "The poetics of ritual performance". Semiotics of Religion: Signs of the Sacred in History. Bloomsbury Academic.
  15. ↑ Hancock, James F. (2021). "Land of Punt and the Incense Routes". Spices, Scents and Silk: Catalysts of World Trade. CABI. section "Punt". ISBN 9781789249774.
  16. ↑ Hancock, James F. (2021). "Land of Punt and the Incense Routes". Spices, Scents and Silk: Catalysts of World Trade. CABI. section "Caravan Routes". ISBN 9781789249774.
  17. ↑ Hancock, James F. (2021). "Land of Punt and the Incense Routes". Spices, Scents and Silk: Catalysts of World Trade. CABI. section "Profits". ISBN 9781789249774.
  18. ↑ Hancock, James F. (2021). "Early History of Scents, Spices and Silk". Spices, Scents and Silk: Catalysts of World Trade. CABI. section "Smoke of the Gods in Antiquity: Natural history of frankincense and myrrh". ISBN 9781789249774.
  19. ↑ Hancock, James F. (2021). "Exotic Luxuries in Antiquity". Spices, Scents and Silk: Catalysts of World Trade. CABI. section "Use of Frankincense and Myrrh in Antiquity". ISBN 9781789249774.
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