Ah, Frankincense!... This is what life is made of!

Well, yesterday afternoon I had my second experience ever burning incense. The first was four years ago when I was staying with my grandmother in Italy. It was at the beginning of a weeklong festival of the Madonna della Misericordia (loosely translated Our Lady of Mercy). During this festival, a large statue of the Madonna is taken from the large mother church in the piazza and moved to a different chapel in town every evening, where she is welcomed with prayers and housed with reverence overnight before being carried to the next church the following evening. (Yes, in this small medieval town of about 1,300 people, there are about eight churches!) During the procession to each little church, the Madonna is carried on the shoulders of devotees along a path through the streets of the village. And on each side of the passage, sheets are hung from about two or three feet above eye level all the way to the ground, which, I was told, was the tradition used to greet a lady as she passes. (This may be from my subsequent reading of Joseph Campbell, but the wall of sheets also creates an effective barrier to separate the mundane world from the divine and thus to put the participant in a more spiritual frame of mind; in my case, it worked.) The passage from one church to another is also dotted with large bronze censers pouring forth a gentle perfume of incense, and since my grandmother was the custodian of the little church where the Madonna arrived on the first day, I got to help out.

She opened up the fireplace and burned a lot of wood until there was nothing left but ashes. She then shoveled the ashes into the large bronze censers, which we placed outside the church. I received a small plastic cup full of small, smelly yellow pellets, and was given the task of pouring them into the still-hot censers when the time came to make the incense. Well, when the time came, I had no idea how much smoke incense produces, so I dumped the whole kit 'n caboodle (maybe about an ounce worth) into the censer. Well, all of a sudden, a huge cloud of white smoke poured up into the street. We might have been in London or a bad episode of the old Adam West Batman, because this cloud of incense was more like a cloud of dry ice. Mind you, we were outdoors, and the smoke was thick enough to hide grown women and children from view. (Of course, they weren't very tall women). Through pockets of smoke, I have the distinct memory of what looked like disembodied heads turning to the side and hacking away. It was really embarrassing, but it smelled very nice, and the smoke died down to a moderate puff by the time the Madonna arrived. But I learned my lesson: USE INCENSE SPARINGLY!!

I don't know what gave me the urge to get my own incense. Maybe it was the lovely Wikipedia page with photographs (check it out while there still is a Wikipedia: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankincense). Or maybe it's the fact that I was a very practicing Catholic in my childhood, and there are some things I am really beginning to miss. Or, maybe it was the fact that I did a number of Nativity readings at an Evening of Readings and Carols just before Christmas and so had frankincense and myrrh on the brain. But anyway, I did a lot of searching on Amazon, and last week I finally found a store that was even better than my favorite online shopping mall: an incense specialty store in Cape May, New Jersey! Forget the fact that this place has an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau: I've been going to Cape May with my family a few times a year since infancy, so I KNOW their stores are all awesome. It's like a town law or something--whether it's antiques, teas, or homemade candies, Cape May is like the Portobello Road of the esoteric and dandy. So I ordered some Somalian Maydi frankincense, myrrh, spikenard root (yay, Biblical references), and Burgundy pitch, and it arrived this week.

By the way, in case you didn't know, frankincense and myrrh, like many other forms of incense, are resins that come from trees. When you cut through the bark and into the sapwood, some of the sap will begin to leak out. After two weeks, this sap, or resin, hardens, and it can be burned to release its distinctive fragrance. Frankincense is what the Catholic Church uses in a few of its rituals, and it may even have numerous health benefits. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8505251.stm) Of course, scientists are only just beginning to study these benefits, so for now, frankincense is no substitute for chemotherapy. Remember that, boys and girls! ;)

As for yesterday's incense burning, I wish I had some memorable Anthony Bourdain-ish comments as to the quality of the odors, but I find that gilding the lily just doesn't work when I try it. I'll just tell you what I did, and encourage YOU to go out and experience it for yourself!

I used an incense bowl filled with white rice ash (more of a Japanese technique, but hey, it works!). A piece of charcoal is lit, placed in the ash, and covered very lightly with ash. This is to reduce the heat that the charcoal gives off. The incense then goes on top of this layer of ash, or directly onto the charcoal. The heat melts or burns the resin, releasing its distinctive odor.

I burned the frankincense first, and I started off indoors. It gave off a sweet lemony scent and only a hint of smoke. It was just like being in church again. It brought back many pleasant memories, and I can still savor the scent of it right now. Apparently, however, my mother has very sensitive lungs. My mom has never smoked a day in her life, but she really started hacking when that trickle of incense smoke rose up, so I moved my incense burning outside. We opened the windows, and my mom felt better in a few minutes. I, however, still feel bad, so I'm not going to burn any incense indoors anymore, unless I'm in a huge church or reception hall. I have no idea what the neighbors will think I'm doing....

Outside, I next tried out the myrrh. Now, myrrh is okay, if you like the smell of cigarettes. It had a sort of deep, bitter scent vaguely like my grandfather's Marlboros had when I was a kid. I wasn't a big fan of this one. And yet, myrrh was one of the gifts the Wise Men gave to the baby Jesus? I guess people throughout history have liked the smell of tobacco. Kind of gives you a new perspective as to what people REALLY appreciated in Galilee and Arabia in Biblical times.

Spikenard root is another incense mentioned in the Bible (off the top of my head, I can't remember where). This one was really fun because it smelled like escargots in garlic butter sauce!! Now, I'm not much of a seafood person, but in the words of Matlock, "them's good eats." It makes my mouth water just to think about it.... I'm probably not going to use this incense very often, since it is very rare, but that's okay because all I really need to make this scent again is a good recipe for snails. And then I have the added bonus of getting to EAT them. Yum!

The Burgundy pitch (from French spruce trees) gave off a delicate pine scent. Not quite as strong as the pine smell in the local park, but still very nice.

My absolute favorites were the frankincense and the spikenard. They were totally worth the weeks of internet search and the price of incense burning equipment. Thank you, spikenard, I'm still thirsting for escargots. And as for frankincense, I think the Catholic Church might be able to win back another independent thinker if they used this more often. I don't know if you'd like it, but after a long day at work, the scent of frankincense and spikenard burning can really hit the spot. Maybe these ancients really knew what they were talking about.