How To Make Your Own Incense

by Rosalee de la Forêt

This next holiday HerbMentor newsletter is another herbal craft idea that comes from thousands of years of tradition.

The word incense literally means ‘to burn’. For thousands of years people have burned plants and resins as religious rites, as a purification process, for protection, to cleanse the air, to repel pests or simply to enjoy a pleasant scent perhaps masking bad odors.

Incense has a long tradition of use in the far east; some even say that the making and burning of incense blends is more of an art form than a utilitarian purpose.

Today we are going to learn to make cone incense. Cone incense was invented in Japan in the 1800’s. It is easy to make and burns relatively fast.

By making our own incense we know exactly what plants and resins are being used and we don’t have to worry about potentially toxic fillers in our incense. Even though we are using pure products, it is always best to burn incense in a well-ventilated area.

To make this incense I used a kit from Mountain Rose Herbs. The kit includes everything you need to make your own incense, including...

a variety of different powdered herbs...

a small mortar and pestle...

and a book on how to make your own incense, such as this one by our friend Tina Sams. This book contains a lot of different recipes for making your own incense. It also describes how to make powdered incense, cone incense and stick incense.

It isn’t necessary to buy the kit in order to make incense, however. You can also buy these powdered herbs at your local herb store or Mountain Rose Herbs.

There are many different incense recipes. I chose the following one as an example.

To make our incense we are going to combine the following...

3/4 teaspoon makko
1 teaspoon lemongrass
1/2 teaspoon frankincense
1/2 teaspoon sandalwood
1/4 teaspoon benzoin gum
Click here to go directly to the Incense Kit and the above book
Click here for Mountain Rose Herbs Main Product Index in case you already have some of the ingredients.

Makko is a prominent base ingredient for making incense.

Lemongrass is one of my favorite tea herbs, it has a lovely pleasant scent when burned. It is also used to keep away bugs.

Frankincense is a famous incense that comes from the resin of a boswellia tree.

Sandalwood is a heavenly scent. Be sure to source this from an ecologically sound source.

Benzoin gum is frequently used as a preservative in cosmetics and soaps. It has a mild, vanilla-like scent.

All of these powders can be combined in a small mixing bowl.

Next we’ll add small amounts of water to the mix until the powders can be formed into a malleable paste. I do this using a pipette dropper so that I can add water very slowly to avoid adding too much.

Add a little bit of water, stir, then add a little bit more until the mixture forms the consistency of play dough.

Once it is a paste, we can shape it into cones. To do this use your thumb as a base while you use your other hand to form the cone. Don’t make these too big or you’ll have difficulties getting them lit.

Place each of these cones on a piece of wax paper or other hard surface and let them dry for 24 hours.

After 24 hours, lay these cones on their side to allow air circulation to the bottom of the cone.

Depending on your climate these may take 25 - 36 hours to completely dry.

Once they are completely dried they can be stored in an air-tight container until ready to use.

To use these incense take one cone and place it on a fire-safe surface. Using a match or lighter, light the very tip of the cone, let it burn for a moment, and then blow it out.

The cone will continue to smolder, giving off a pleasant scent, until all the incense is burned. Remember to burn these in a well-ventilated area.

Incense is a great way to bring a variety of pleasant scents to your home.

These also make great gifts.

Again, you can get all you need right here to get started.

Have fun!

~Rosalee

BBC The Frankincense Trail -Egypt, Jordan,Saudi Arabia, Yeman, Oman & Palestine

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Miracles of the brain: Smell and Taste

The brain... an endless resource whose limits still remain undiscovered.

Even a minor defect in this structure of perfect design would cause significant changes in our lives.

Modern scientific research is bringing us ever closer to the functions and mysteries of this miraculous organ...

In our daily lives, we find ourselves in the midst of thousands of tastes and smells that add immeasurable color to our lives.

Just think of an overflowing bouquet of flowers, the fresh scent of reborn soil after a spring rain, the fragrance of the people we love...

The unique tastes of all the different foods we enjoy.......

Now let's think, for just a moment, what it'd be like if these tastes and smells were no more, if they didn't exist...

Even thinking for a split-second of being deprived of them is enough to appreciate what tremendous blessings these tastes and smells are for us...

Who offers us these blessings is God, the Creator of all living things. A passage in the Qur'an says it like so:

If you tried to number God's blessings, you could never count them. God is Ever-Forgiving, Most Merciful. (Qur'an, 16: 18)

Despite the overflowing variety of tastes and smells, we're able to perceive them easily, since God created these blessings along with the systems allowing us to appreciate them. These systems work flawlessly throughout our lifetimes.

This film is intended to make you better understand the awesome power and knowledge of God through a closer look at these perfect systems.

God explains His flawless creation as follows in the Qur'an:

He is God—the Creator, the Maker, the Giver of Form. To Him belong the Most Beautiful Names. Everything in the heavens and earth glorifies Him. He is the Almighty, the All-Wise. (Qur'an, 59: 24)

Now, let's examine the taste of smell and see for ourselves its unique design...

DESIGN OF THE OLFACTORY SYSTEM

What we call "smell" is composed of chemical particles called molecules which evaporate from objects. For instance, what we perceive as the scent of freshly ground coffee is actually molecules from the coffee itself flying through the air.

Now, the intensity of the smell is directly proportional with the intensity of evaporation. A just-baked cake fresh out of the oven gives out a much richer scent than a stale one. This is because the cake's molecules are flying very freely through the air due to its oven-baked heat. And molecules can cover a very large area when they are released.

Although many molecules have a smell, water does not, and this characteristic is a great blessing for us, for it prevents many problems. For instance, a dry rose and a rose with water drops on it smell exactly the same.

What distinguishes various smells from each other are differences in their structures. These differences are so delicate that through the change of a single carbon atom, a pleasant smell might be turned into a repulsive one.

The smells of different foods are the result of a particular order of bonds between atoms that form the smell molecules. Each molecule is planned to perform a task. Of course this excellent design was created by God.

But how do we smell, and how do we recognize smells? Now let's find answers to these questions.

Every time we breathe, the gaseous mixture of trillions of molecules we call air floods into our nostrils. Also contained within this air mix are microscopic smell molecules. Some of the air that enters our noses is channeled into the olfactory receptors by turbinate bones. It's in this way that the smell molecules reach the olfactory receptors at the top part of the nose.

The receptors in this area in turn send the information they get from these molecules to the brain, and the brain's smell center gathers messages from various smell receptors and assesses this information at lightning speed. This leads to the sensation which we perceive as "smell."

Briefly, the nose works like a chemical analysis laboratory. It is so sensitive that it can recognize up to 10,000 separate odors.

What's quite interesting is the breathtaking speed of all these processes. The time between the coffee molecules entering our nostrils and our recognizing their smell is far less than a second.

This flawless system obviously cannot be the result of a series of coincidences, as the evolutionists would have us believe. Like all the other systems of the human body, the sense of smell is also an extremely complex design. This is God's art of creation.

In our day, ongoing research is being conducted into the sense of smell. Every new insight into this sense serves to reveal just how superb this complex system is.

Now let's examine more closely the various parts of the system