My Adventures in Incense

Tweet

For those of you who answered my thread on incense several months ago here's my follow up on all the developments since that thread. First let me say that after I posted that thread I did a considerable amount of research. It was quite an eye opener! Almost all incense sold around the world is made with a number of synthetic chemicals and burn accelerators, some of which are mildly (and for the more sensitive folks out there, not so mildly) toxic to humans. For those of you who complained that incense gave you headaches, there's the reason why. Since my original idea was to make incense for religious, ritual, spiritual, aromatherapy or meditative purposes, I decided to narrow my research to strictly 100% natural ingredients such as woods, resins, herbs, florals, spices, oils and fruits. I found some incredible recipes, some of which were near 1,000 yrs old. I managed to find small quantities of a few ingredients, enough to make several test batches. Making incense sticks or cones by hand is not an easy task. Grinding up the raw resins in a mortar & pestle is very hard work. With my Fibromyalgia and arthritis it gets very painful as well. I tried using a coffee grinder but that tended to heat up the resins and turn them into a cement like sticky mess. If I'd had a large pepper mill or something similar for grinding it would have been much easier. I must say that the difference between 100% natural incense and the synthetically scented versions you buy at your local store is like night and day. True sandalwood, frankincense, Dragon's Blood, patchouli, does not smell like the synthetic perfumes we are all used to smelling. It smells, for lack of a better term, natural. Not sweet or thick but earthy. I now understand why a few of these things were considered to be more valuable than gold and only fit as gifts to the Gods in ancient times. So, after researching suppliers for a wide variety of these ingredients. I'm very sorry to say that I had to abandon the idea of making it in sufficient quantity to sell it. Most of the ingredients are prohibitively expensive to buy or import in smaller quantities. I would have to buy in huge mass quantities to get the price down to something remotely reasonable for retail purposes. Even buying in large quantities you are vulnerable to the pricing whims of the suppliers. Prices fluctuate drastically for some of these raw ingredients. Most cannot be or are not produced in the USA because the plants and trees from which they originate do not grow here. Most grow in Asia, India, The Middle East or Africa. There is of course a few alternatives which are less expensive, USA made and still 100% natural, but unfortunately they just didn't pass the test for me. They tended to smell like a campfire or charcoal briquettes. Fine for outdoor use but not so great inside the house. The other alternatives such as resin burning on makko and rice ash or charcoal disks are great but again, didn't pass the test for me. I enjoy the combinations of the resins and other ingredients left to mix and mingle together with the woods to create something unique to every batch. It's sort of like making spaghetti sauce, it's always better the second day. I still make it in small quantities for my own use. I don't think I could ever go back to using artificially scented sticks. I'm officially spoiled by the "real thing". It was a good idea while it lasted. Thanks to several of my myLot friends who asked for an update. I really appreciate your interest.