incense - Forms and use of incense, Manufacturing, Religious use of incense, Asian incense, Incense and cancer

A mixture of gums and spices which gives off a fragrant odour when burnt. It is widely used in many religious rites, and its smoke is often regarded as symbolic of prayer. Its use in Christianity cannot be traced before c.500. Its use in the Churches of the East is more widespread than in those of the West.

Chinese and Japanese society used incense as a time keeping device in the form of incense clocks.

Forms and use of incense

Incense is available in numerous forms and degree of processing. However, incense can generally be separated into direct burning and indirect burning depending on how they are used.

In general, large and coarse incense tends to burn longer than finer incense, and direct burning incense requires less preparation prior to its use. Stick incense is the most common and preferred form of incense used in Chinese and Japanese cultures, thus most of the incense produced in those countries are in stick form. In the West, due to Christianity's tie with Judaism, incense is most often burnt in the form of powder or whole lumps of incense material. When lit by a flame and then fanned out, the glowing ember on the incense will continue to smolder and burn away the rest of the incense without the continued input of heat. This class of incense is typically made of finely ground fragrant incense materials that have been bound together by a combustible binder.

Coil: Shaped into a coil, the incense is able to burn for an extended period; Cone: Incense in this form burns relatively fast. Cone incense containing mugwort are used in Traditional Chinese medicine for moxibustion treatment. Cored stick: This form of stick incense has a supporting core of bamboo. The core is coated by a thick layer of incense material that burns away with the core. When used for worship in Chinese folk religion, cored incensed sticks are sometimes known as Joss sticks. Solid stick: This stick incense has no supporting core and is completely made of incense material. Easily broken into pieces, it allows one to determine the specific amount of incense they wish to burn. This is the most commonly produced form of incense in Japan.

To use direct burning incense, the incense is set on fire and then extinguished, so that the incense continues to glow and smoke. The use of this class of incense requires a separate heat source since it does not produce an ember that burns itself. The incense is burned by placing them directly on top of the hot coals or on a hot metal plate in the censer or thurible.

This is the most common form of incense traditionally used in the Middle East and in Christian worship. Similar forms of indirect burning incense are used in the Japanese incense ceremony (香道 kōdō).

Whole: The incense material is burned directly in its raw unprocessed form on top of coal embers. Powdered or granulated: The incense material is broken down into finer bits. This incense burns quickly and provides a short period of intense smells. Paste: The powdered or granulated incense material is mixed with a sticky and incombustible binder, such as dried fruit, honey, or a soft resin and then formed to balls or small cakes.

Manufacturing

Incense manufacturing applies mainly to direct burning incense since it must be carefully blended and manufactured such that it has ability to slowly and evenly burn itself in entirety.

While indirect burning incense contains mainly fragrant materials, recipes and mixes for all direct burning incense consist of two things: fragrant materials and a combustible base.

Fragrant materials

The fragrant materials provides the aroma and the fragrant smoke when the incense is burned. Many types of fragrant woods, resins, herbs, and essential oils are used as incense or to make incense. Essential oils of these materials may be used to make incense, but the resulting incense is usually considered inferior in quality.

Agarwood Gum benzoin Clove Camphor Cedar Copal Cypress Frankincense Juniper Labdanum or ladanum Myrrh Nutmeg Patchouli Sage Sandalwood Star Anise Storax

Essential oil fragrances

The following fragrances are usually mixed into a carrier, such as wood powder or other solid fragrance material, before being formed into incense. Incense made primarily from essential oils are mainly used for pleasure and burned for their fragrances alone. Essential oil based incense is usually cheaper than original material incense.

Patchouli Cedarwood Sandalwood Ferula or galbanum Jasmine Rose Ylang-ylang

Perfumed incense sticks

This is cheapest type of incense.

Cannabis Strawberry Opium Night Queen Lily of the valley Watermelon

Animal-based materials

Ambergris Musk Operculum

Combustible incense base

The combustible base not only binds the fragrant material together but also allows the produced incense to burn with a self-sustained ember, which propagates slowly and evenly through an entire piece of incense. Commercially, two types of incense base exists:

Gum and oxidizer mixtures: Charcoal or wood powder forms the base of the mixture. Gums such as Gum Arabic or Gum Tragacanth are used to bind the mixture together while an oxidizer such as Sodium nitrate or Potassium nitrate sustains the burning of the incense. Fragrant materials are combined into the base as a powder prior to incense forming or after forming as essential oils. The formula for the charcoal based incense base is quite similar to black powder. Natural plant-based binders: Mucilaginous plant material such as makko （抹香・末香 incense powder）, which is made from the bark of the tabu-no-ki tree (Machilus thunbergii) (jap. The dry binding powder usually consists of about 10% dry weight in the finished incense.

Mixture properties

In order to burn evenly and properly, attention has to be paid to certain properties of the incense mixture:

Oil content: Resinous materials such as Myrrh and Frankincense must not exceed the amount of dry materials in the mixture or else the incense will not smolder and burn. Too little, and the incense will not ignite, too much, and the incense will burn too quickly and not produce fragrant smoke. Mixture density: Incense mixture made with natural binders should not combined with too much water in mixing, or over compressed while being formed. This either results in uneven air distributions or undesirable densities in the mixture, which causes the incense to burn unevenly, too slowly, or too quickly.

Forming incense

After the fragrance mixture is determined, the materials must be combined with the incense based and formed into desired shapes. Incense is either extruded, pressed into forms, or coated onto a supporting material.

Extruded and pressed: Small quantities of water are combined with the fragrance and incense base mixture and kneaded into a hard dough. The incense dough is then pressed into shaped forms to create cone and smaller coiled incense, or forced through a hydraulic press for solid stick incense. Coated: This method used mainly to produce cored incense of either larger coil (up to 1 meter in diameter) or cored stick forms. The sticks are evenly separated then dipped into a tray of damp incense powder, consisting of fragrance materials and a plant based binder, usually makko （抹香・末香）. 3 to 4 layers of damp powder are coated onto the sticks, forming a 2 mm thick layer of incense material on the stick. Incense that are burned in temples of Chinese folk religion produced in this fashion can have a thickness between 1 to 2 cm.

Incense base can also be formed into incense shapes without any fragrance material. These are purchased by hobbyists who immerse the preformed incense base in their own blends of essential oil mixtures to create specialized incense.

Religious use of incense

Biblical use

A compound of aromatic gums and balsams that will burn slowly, giving off a fragrant aroma.

The sacred incense prescribed for use in the wilderness tabernacle was made of costly materials that the congregation contributed.

At the end of the Holy compartment of the tabernacle, next to the curtain dividing it off from the Most Holy, was located "the altar of incense." 2Ch 2:4) Upon these altars, every morning and evening the sacred incense was burned. 2Ch 13:11) Once a year on the Day of Atonement coals from the altar were taken in a censer, or fire holder, together with two handfuls of incense, into the Most Holy, where the incense was made to smoke before the mercy seat of the ark of the testimony.-Le 16:12, 13.

In the Book of Revelation, which is woven with rich imagery, incense symbolises the prayers of the saints in heaven - the "golden bowl full of incense" are "the prayers of the saints" (Revelation 5:8 cf.

Christianity

Incense is employed by the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox churches, and churches of the Anglican Communion, and by some other Christian groups. This incense is usually blessed before it is burned.

A thurible, a type of censer, is used to contain incense as it is burned to honour Jesus Christ or - not liturgically - one of the Christian saints or angels. The incense is usually in the whole or powder form.

Aside from being burnt, grains of blessed incense are placed in the Easter candle and in the sepulchre of consecrated altars. Many formulations of incense are currently used, often with frankincense, myrrh, styrax, copal or other aromatics.

The smoke of burning incense is viewed by many of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox faith as a sign of a good Christian's prayer.

Buddhism, Taoism and Shinto in East Asia

Incense use in religious ritual was first widely developed in China, and eventually transmitted to Korea and Japan.

Hinduism

Hinduism was possibly the first religion in which incense was used and sacrificed to show loyalty to God. As part of the daily ritual worship within the Hindu tradition of India, incense is offered to God in His deity forms, such as Krishna and Lord Rama.

Paganism

Incense is also often used in Pagan rituals to represent the element of air, although more modern approaches to incense magic demonstrate that incense actually represents all of the elements. This is attributed to the fact that incense smoke wafts through the air, is created through the use of fire, the incense materials are grown from the earth, and combustible incense is formed using water. Incenses of a wide range of fragrances are also used in spell and ritual for different purposes. Second, burning the incense is believed to release the large amount of energy stored within natural incense so that it can be used by the mage.

The use of "perfumed", "dipped", or synthetic incense is generally avoid during magickal workings, since such artificial materials are believed to not contain the energies useful for magick.

The associations below do not hold true for all traditions, but provide a general look at the magical associations of incense.

Asian incense

Indian incense

Indian incense can be divided into two categories: masala and charcoal. Masala incenses are made of dry ingredients, while charcoal incenses contain liquid scents. Masala incenses are made by blending several solid scented ingredients into a paste and then rolling that paste onto a bamboo core stick.

Dubars

Dubars are a sub-group of masala incense. They contain both solid and liquid perfumes in a binder which never quite dries out, making the incense sticks soft to the touch.

Charcoal

Charcoal incenses are made by dipping an unscented "blank" (non-perfume stick) into a mixture of perfumes and/or essential oils.

Tibetan incense

Tibetan incense refers to a common style of incense found in Tibet, Nepal, and Bhutan.

Many Tibetan incenses have medicinal properties.

Japanese incense

Agarwood （沈香 Jinkō） and Sandalwood （白檀 Byakudan） are the two most important ingredients in Japanese incense.

Another important ingredient in Japanese incense is kyara （伽羅）.

Nippon Kodō （日本香堂） is the largest seller of Japanese incense in Japan.

Shōeidō（松栄堂） and Baieidō （梅栄堂） are 2 of the oldest incense makers in Japan.

Incense and cancer

Recently research was carried out in Taiwan that linked the burning of incense sticks to the release of carcinogens by measuring the levels of Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons within Buddist temples. V) Catholic Encyclopedia (1917) on Incense EWTN Catholic Questions: Why is incense used during Mass? General Instruction on the Roman Missal (GIRM) - incensation The Liturgical Customary of the Church of the Advent, Boston (Episcopalian) - Thurifer A Reason for Incense (Lutheran) The Archbishops on the Lawfulness of the Liturgical Use of Incense Anglican document from 1899.