A History of Incense

Incense is a wonderful thing.  It gives warm ambiance and soothes the soul.  My mother has burned it all my life and I feel very comfortable and at ease whenever the ‘fires’ have been lit.  My favorite type is sandalwood.  I really appreciate the strong, deep, traditional, scents. I also love watching the patterns of the smoke and the way it flows.  It can be entrancing.  Studying doesn’t seem as daunting a task with a warm cup of tea and incense aglow.  Researching is one of my passions, so today I looked up to see what I could find on the history of incense.  I had already known that it had been used in Hindu and ancient Egyptian rituals to worship deities, but I wondered if I could find anything more in depth.  Basically all I found was that almost every ancient culture used incense for religious rituals and perfume.  High standing people in societies, such as rulers, burned it for pleasure.   Incense use decreased with the prosecution of pagans who used it to reportedly summon the spirits of nature gods and goddesses.  One tale of incense lore that particularly stood out in my mind was Irish, stating that leprechauns would, when feeling threatened, burn incense in their cauldrons of treasure to dissuade anyone from stealing it.  This investigation did remind me of the inclusion of incense in the bible.  I had been associating it with old cultures and hippies for a while now.  So really, incense has been all the rage with societies around the world for thousands and thousands of years.