Incense Magick

by Carl F. Neal

  In place of your typical stick of incense on your altar, use one of these “mini logs” as a representation of the traditional Yule log. Burning a large cylinder on a bed of ash is a wonderful symbol of that ancient tradition. If you are holding your Yule ritual outdoors but you are not planning to go through the involved process of creating and burning a Yule log, or if you just don’t have enough time, bring the same miniature Yule logs with you. They can be added to hot coals to create a burst of winter scent or can even be thrown into a lit fire. Hot coals work best, but if you are unable to have any kind of a fire at all then simply bring a rugged censer with you, with a lid or cover if there is wind blowing, and burn your miniature Yule logs within the censer. Even with a lid, the stiffer the breeze, the faster your logs will burn. You may go through quite a few of them in an hour if there is any significant amount of wind. To avoid the need to repeatedly light logs in the wind you can use incense chaining as described in chapter 12.

  Powder

  Powdered incense is perhaps the most versatile form of incense. It might seem confusing to have powder incense listed twice in this book, but keep in mind that it can be made both as non-combustible and self-burning formulas, which require different treatment. Powdered incense gives you the ability to draw or stencil with incense—no other form can boast that capability. Although it is subject to blowing away in breezes or drafts, and thus is essentially only suited for indoor use, powdered incense can be used in almost any situation with maximum visual as well as scent results.

  Preparing Combustible Powder

  Unlike loose incense, powdered incense must be properly ground to a fine consistency. Beyond that, combustible powder must be reliably self-burning. Any incense powder can be burned on charcoal, but the style of powdered incense needed for the following techniques needs to burn without an outside heat source. All of the materials you use in the powder must be finely ground and sifted through a screen mesh to ensure there are no large particles in the mixture.

  This type of powder needs to follow the same rules of composition as any cone or stick of self-combustible incense. As a general guideline, start with 80 percent base material and 20 percent aromatic material. Wood powder is the most common base material. Any wood is a good candidate as a base if it has good burning properties and either very little scent or a scent that complements your blend. It is also critical to keep the magickal properties of the wood powder in mind to ensure they align with the goals for that blend. The only aspect of making other forms of self-combusting incense is that you omit is the binder. The ash in your censer will act as a substitute for binding the incense.

  Specialty Burners

  In the incense market in the United States there are small incense companies that sell powdered incense and special burners for them. The burners have a single, long channel cut into them in an assortment of designs. The powder is lit at one end and burns its way through the tray. I personally haven’t found one that works well with natural powdered incense. I would guess that it’s the lack of oxygen to the bottom of the incense trail that’s causing the incense to burn poorly. I have often wondered, however, if the makers of this style of incense realize that they are making a tool that can be used in the creation of impressive incense trails and seals. For incense seals, you can fill the burner with your own powdered blend and cover it with a heat-proof material (such as a ceramic tile or sheet of metal). Invert the burner and carefully lift it to create a perfect incense seal. Conversely, you can invert the empty burner and gently press it into a bed of prepared ash. When you lift the burner it will have created an incense trail for you to fill with powder.

  Incense Seals

  Incense seals could be viewed as an incense trail without the ash. Drawing or writing is made with incense powder and it is burned much like one of the specialty burners does, only a line of powder is spread onto a non-flammable surface. One way to make this type of incense trail is with the use of a seal, which is a kind of stencil for powdered incense.

  Seals would typically be used on a smooth, flat-surfaced censer dedicated to the purpose; however, any surface that meets the requirements could be used. A stone or ceramic tile is a good choice. Even a fairly flat rock could be used. The incense seal is held near the top of the burning surface and the powder is scattered through the cutout areas in the stencil. It takes practice and a steady hand to use an incense seal, but the results can be very interesting. I’m not aware of any incense seals commercially available in the United States at this time, but you can definitely make your own. Simple designs can be made with paper notecards, while more intricate designs can be made from wood or metal.

  To make an incense seal, use a piece of corrugated cardboard or other thick cardboard. If none is available, you can make an acceptable seal using a stack of thinner cardboard glued together. The thicker, the better, up to ¼ inch. The seal won’t be able to hold up to the weight of the incense powder and will bend if a piece of the cardboard is too thin. Draw or trace a design on the surface of the cardboard. Keep in mind that you will get the best results if your design is a single wide line. It can wind and curve into any shape you wish, but the line should never cross itself. (That is a technique you can use with incense trails but is more difficult with seals.) If any part of your design is physically disconnected from the rest (for example, if you wanted to make a seal that made the letter “O” where the center of the letter would be disconnected), the part that you cut would need to be put back onto the seal using thin wire to allow the disconnected piece to almost appear to float. The wires are strong enough to hold the disconnected piece but thin enough that your incense powder will flow past the wires with virtually no change to the final look of the incense seal.

  Cut out your drawing. You need to make the cutout line from 1⁄8 inch to ¼ inch wide. The entire design can be as large as you like as long as it will fit on your burning surface. When it comes to cardboard seals, you are more limited in design by the material. Lines need to be fairly simple, and the line should never get too close to touching another section of line. If you have used corrugated cardboard, it is a good idea to cover the cut edges of the design. That way, when you sprinkle incense powder through the seal, none of it will get lost in the pockets inside the cardboard. Tape can cover the edges very easily. If you used a thick piece of solid cardboard or thin pieces glued together, you still might want to use this step to ensure the design has a very smooth edge.

  Once you’ve created your stencil and prepared your powder and burning surface, you are ready. Lay the seal on the burning surface and sprinkle the powder through the openings in your stencil. Carefully lift the seal from the burning surface and it is ready. Light one end of the trail and enjoy. You do need a powder with very good burning properties, since this technique doesn’t have the advantage of oxygen-rich ash beneath it. Pure sandalwood powder is a good choice for incense seals.

  An incense seal made from cardboard–notice the tape along the edges.

  Incense Trails in Ash

  I’ve talked about using ash as a fill material in censers, and trails in ash is the ultimate advantage that ash has over all other mediums. You can take the art of incense to a whole new level visually as well as use a variety of mixtures in the trail for surprising scent changes as the burn progresses. For example, put a sandalwood blend for the first half of the trail and a frankincense blend for the second half. You can change scent every few inches if you choose to.

  The concept of the trail is simple, but that gives it the flexibility to create a virtually endless variety of designs. You need to begin by “fluffing” the ash in your censer. This means you should stir it or sift it to capture more air and to give you a more flexible surface with which to work. After fluffing the ash, lightly tap the censer on a flat surface to slightly compact and level it. You can then make impressions in the surface of the ash and fill those impressions with incense powder. Just as
with incense seals, the incense will slowly burn along the “trail” you have created.

  Drawing in Ash

  This is the fastest and easiest way to make trails in ash. Toothpicks, chopsticks, skewers, feather quills, and even capped ink pens can be used to draw the trail. Depending on the size of your censer, you can write words and even phrases, draw elaborate scenes, or any geometric shape. Just remember that it is best to not allow your line to cross or touch itself. If the “burning line” of incense were to touch incense at any other point, it will ignite. If, for example, you drew the letter “K” in your ash as a trail to be lit at the bottom left tip of the letter. The burning line would move up the left leg of the “K” until it reached the point where the left leg joined with the two diagonal lines. At that point the burning line would continue moving up the left leg, but it would also ignite both of the diagonal lines.

  Drawing an incense trail in ash.

  This can be used to great effect to set off secondary burn lines, but at the same time you can create an overwhelming amount of smoke. If you are drawing a very thin trail, such as with a toothpick, this is less of a problem than when you are making deep and wide trails. For your first trails, I wouldn’t suggest trying anything complex. Why not start with a spiral? Without lifting your drawing instrument, continue to draw more and more layers of the spiral, taking care that it is composed of only one line. Don’t put the spiral arms too close together. I would suggest that you keep at least one trail width between sections of the line.

  Once you have the trail made in the ash, you can add the powdered incense. (Just as a reminder, use only self-combusting incense powder. Don’t use incense powder designed for scattering on charcoal.) To place the powder with some amount of precision, I use a 3x5-inch notecard folded in half along the longer edge. This creates a long trough in the center. Place a few teaspoons at one end of the card and fold the two halves together at the other end. Spread the two edges just far enough apart to allow a small amount of powder to slip over the edge of the card.

  Place the notecard, with the folded end closest to the ash, an inch or so above the trail. By holding the card with one hand and gently tapping the side of the card with your free hand, you can cause controlled amounts of powder to slide off the card and into the trail. Don’t worry if your first few attempts seem shaky or don’t come out as clearly as you would like. With practice, you will quickly master this aspect of trail making. Move the card along above the entire trail and fill the trail with powder. Fill the trail until it is even with the top of the ash. Ideally, you want the top of the incense exactly level with the top of the ash. You can slightly compact the ash and incense combination after pouring for more reliable burning, but this tends to distort the shape.

  Filling a trail with incense powder.

  All that’s left to do is light the trail. There are several ways to accomplish this. Perhaps the purest is by lighting a joss stick and inserting the burning end into your trail. Don’t insert it deeply or the trail may not light. You can also lay a burning match on the end of the trail or hold a butane lighter to the tip of the trail. It is not always easy to light a trail with a lighter, so prepare for the lighter to get hot. Don’t burn your fingers! A fireplace lighter will keep your fingers safe.

  Stamps

  This is another option for making incense trails. Rather than drawing in the ash freehand, you can use a stamp to create the trail for you. This has several advantages over drawing in the ash. You can make your own stamps and re-create even complex trails perfectly every time. The depth of the trail will be consistent, which improves its burning characteristics. Stamps can also be purchased. However, finding commercial stamps that are appropriate for magickal incense trails is difficult. The most useful commercial stamp I’ve found is letter stamps.

  I have a set of block stamps of the alphabet that I have used frequently for trails. I will level the surface of the ash and then press in each letter individually. I leave a moderate gap between each letter. Once all of the lettering is complete I will use a skewer to draw single connecting lines between each adjacent letter. Once a letter gets to the end it will light the connecting line, which will burn and then light the next letter.

  Besides actual stamps, there is one other type of commercial product that is very useful for making trails. You may remember that I mentioned earlier in this chapter that there are burners designed for commercial incense powder, and some of them are in attractive designs. Smooth the ash, turn the empty burner upside down, and gently press it into the surface of the ash. Carefully remove the burner from the ash and it will have made a reversed yet perfect image in the ash. Fill the trail with powder and enjoy those clever designs with natural incense powder.

  If you want to make your own stamp, the process can be as simple or complex as you’d like. The key is to mount the stamp on a flat surface and make the design deep enough to leave a clear impression. You can make very deep or very shallow stamps, but they must be deep enough to leave a proper trail. I have a pentagram stamp that I made years ago with rectangular strips of bass wood mounted on a small unfinished wooden plaque. The bass wood is about 1⁄4 inch square and sold in long lengths. I created an image of the design on my computer and used a software program to reverse it. More simply, print your image on thin paper and turn the sheet over to create your design.

  With the printed design taped to my desk, I cut the bass wood into pieces that were the exact size of the arms of the star in my printout. As I cut each, I laid it in place atop the printout to ensure all the pieces fit. Once all the bass wood arms were cut, I glued them together according to my design onto the surface of the wooden plaque. With the addition of a wooden knob on the reverse side of the plaque, the stamp was complete. Once it was dry I was able to press it into the surface of an ash-filled censer. When the stamp was lifted away I had a perfect incense trail that I could re-create as many times as I wanted.

  Homemade stamp.

  The pentagram stamp I made has a fairly complex burning pattern. You can make a far simpler stamp than that. A triangle or circular stamp would be easy to make. Any shape that can be drawn with one continuous line could be a good candidate for a stamp.

  Other Tools

  There are other tools you can experiment with while making trails. I have a small wooden tool for working clay that is fantastic at straightening out joss sticks that I make. It is also a great tool for both drawing in ash and going back over the initial drawing to make certain there is a clean, firm side to the trail.

  Another useful tool for making trails is the common cookie cutter. You can find them in virtually any shape imaginable and you might be surprised at how many can be adapted to use in ash. Begin with a smooth surface just as you would with any other trail. Carefully insert the cookie cutter and push it below the surface of the ash evenly. You want the entire cookie cutter to push the same depth into the ash. Once inserted, gently move the cutter in a circular motion. Don’t move it around very much, of course, but enough to triple the width of the cut from the cookie cutter. You can then remove the cookie cutter and you will have a very “clean” trail to fill with powder. If the trail is going to follow a circular pattern (so that it will not burn in two different directions from the lighting point) you can use a toothpick to push ash to create a break across the trail, forcing the incense to burn only in the chosen direction.

  I often use a homemade ash press. It is just a disk of plastic with a handle. The disc is perforated so you can press it against the open top of a tuna fish can and drain the liquid without spilling any of the fish. I covered the surface with a little aluminum foil (to block the perforations) and made a very functional press for less than $2. I use it to level and sometimes compact the ash before creating a trail. You can find all sorts of incense trail tools around the house or the garage. Even kitchen sifters are excellent for sifting your ash. I like fine-meshed nylon the best
.

  Writing in Ash

  This is one of my favorite things to do with incense. You can write anything for which your censer has space. Although you can use a toothpick as your writing instrument, I recommend something a bit wider than that. A wooden chopstick is a great choice. A wooden pencil also makes a good choice, as does the quill of a large bird feather. The key is for the writing to be clear and the trail to be smooth on the sides. For the best results, you should compact the ash in your censer a bit more firmly than you would otherwise. You want a very flat, even surface.

  Insert your writing implement of choice and move very steadily through the writing. Ideally, you would write in cursive with each letter connected by a single stroke. Of course you can print, draw shapes rather than letters, or anything else you can imagine to create the trails. Then fill the impressions just as you normally would. You can fill different letters or shapes with different incense blends if you choose. This is a particularly good idea if you are using your trail for more than one working. If, for instance, you wanted to perform prosperity and health spells in the same circle, then you could draw one symbol representing the core purpose of each spell (perhaps a dollar sign for prosperity and a smiling face for health). Draw a trail connecting the two symbols. When the first symbol finishes burning and you smell the second scent begin, you will know it is time to move on to the second spell.

  This type of incense use is not at all new and is one more example of what modern incense users can learn from ancient ones. Using multiple incense in trails is a modern application of the incense clock. The changing of scent can also function in other ways. Rather than using it as a time-keeping device, it can be a tool to change your attention. If you were, for example, doing a meditation on the four quarters of the circle, each change of scent could reflect that it was time to move on to the next element.