A Discovery of Incense . . . Sticks

Over the past 10 years or so, I've begun a rather informal collection of incense sticks from many dozens of incense companies, large and small. By informal, I mean that I purchase them for study, put them in any number of packed drawers in the Box of Aromatic Wonders (an antique chest of drawers) and forget that I have them. Until now.

Recently, I rediscovered where I had hidden my wee stash of incense from White Lotus Aromatics. Long story short, I managed to get a few packages of this wonderful incense that was discontinued by WLA years ago, and have set them aside to use on "special occasions". Then I also recently remembered that every day is a special occasion. I woke up well. My tribe is safe. We're ready to face whatever comes. That's cause for celebration! Bust out the incense! And I've been burning the WLA stuff daily ever since having that revelation. And it got me thinking about the incense stashes from other companies that I've been storing up.

My 'collection' is strictly all natural, however, I'm discovering that, for the most part, they really aren't. I'm not naming names or companies here because I don't want to. If I've got a beef, I'll work it out with them. Here I'm just going to talk about how real is real or not.

A few years back, when I began work on my blue lotus Kyphi, I went on the hunt for blue lotus scented incenses and found a grand total of one that I thought might be real. Fairly expensive stuff. I can't remember exactly what I paid for them, but I do know they weren't your run-of-the-mill 4-for-$1 type of deal, and coincidentally, I got four sticks in the packet. They were the shorter sticks, about 6 inches long, very lightly packed, and kind of a satiny purple color with shades of blue. I knew right off they weren't all natural. I detected zero blue lotus scent, though, in all fairness, they did smell good in a subtle single-note kind of way. I burned them all at once. All four sticks, each in different parts of the house.  What they smelled like was blue lotus absolute synthetic and the powdery notes found in orris root. Granted, the price tag on these four sticks was a bit high for incense, but not high enough. Quality blue lotus absolute is hard to find and can run into the hundreds of dollars for less than 5 mls. So, even as expensive as these sticks were, they weren't expensive enough to be made with blue lotus absolute, unless it was an undetectable drop in the entire formulation. Overall, the scent is pleasant, not overwhelming, and not heavily reliant on the types of synthetics that make bad incense, like the stuff you pick up at the head shops for 4-for-$1. 

Next up is some monastery incense I got a couple of years back. I was expecting something compounded and got instead a bag of rather scentless frankincense tears. All natural, but with a bit of deception in the description. Now that was disappointing. I was hoping for something a little more like Unsi, something compounded, and got, well, like I said, a bag of resin. You would expect something touted as 'hand crafted' to actually have had some crafting done, not simply scooping from a bin into a paper sack and slapping on a 'handmade by' label. I never burned any of this because, well, I've got loads of quality frankincense resins, I don't need to be gassing the house with whatever this stuff is. Kept for posterity and to kick myself in the butt over.

And, speaking of Unsi, I've got some of that too. Definitely made with synthetics, but also loads of naturals, and also extremely inspiring and educational, and purchased with the full knowledge that it wasn't 'real'. I've only burned a crumb or two because the synthie bits are too much for me. But, as I mentioned, very inspiring and ideas for natural replication stumbled over themselves from my mind to my notebooks, so looking to the future of The Scented Djinn's incense offerings will be some American made, non-traditional, all natural Unsi-like incense. Full disclosure. 

Onto the witchy incense. Also sold as 'all natural' and was not. Got a bag of blockage breaker incense, long sticks, about 12 inches, also lightly packed, neutral color, smelled like head shop offerings. This stuff wasn't terribly expensive and came 12 to a pack, but they were sold as natural and were not. These I kind of have an issue with. As a magical tool, if it isn't what you're saying it is, it negates the magical aspect. It felt like it was something they bought in bulk and decided they had a void to fill, in this case, 'blockage breaker incense', didn't bother charging the sticks, just repackaged and sold as-is. I mean, even though they weren't naturally scented, at least do some work on them. A little Reiki or Pranic Healing goes a long way here. They also didn't break any blockages, toilets, sinks, or mental. 

This is the short list. There are bundles more where this came from, but also includes things that are definitely natural and wonderful and inspirational. I'll talk more on those in a later post.