On incense... smudging... and everything in between.
I love to study.
There are books for everything, studies for every level, Google and even a chatGPT now...🤯
There are also independent studies... learning from experience. necessity. desire. urge. I would like to believe that this is how they used to learn, before the information age. Man had a need and with the tools and materials at his disposal he was able to produce or understand and improve and over time, become an expert and pass on the knowledge...
So when I started my studies to make incense, I read books and everything related to the subject, to understand how I could improve what I was already able to create. There was an evolutionary technical process that took 6 years from the day I made my first mixture until I was able to roll a stick that looked like the sticks in the pictures...
I read about history and different uses. There were many experts who knew "everything" and not all of them said the same things.
One of the things that was repeated, that stuck with me, was that in every ancient culture they used smoke - they smudged local aromatic substances in the sacred space to that culture - for purification. There were many ways to smudge. They all worked. There were many plant based materials - all of them still work.
At that stage we did not talk about the properties of each plant. The goal was to clean the air of bad odors of carcasses and sewage and give a smell that characterized that sacred space.
In the beginning, they placed the raw aromatic materials on coals - and over time other forms were developed and at some point they reached an incense stick. I believe that every form of smudging has its place. Sometimes I use my Copalera with coals but mostly I use sticks. In my process, at the stage that what i had made was still just for me, one of the goals was to make the ritual something more daily while still using the same natural, high-quality aromatics.
Actually, I saw for myself that sometimes the ritual with the coals was too cumbersome, while the sticks that contained the same intentions and the same materials were more accessible. Not every stick is a ritual, okay? But there are many that are. morning ritual, gratitude ceremony, Release ceremony. Purification ceremony. Full moon ritual... the sky's the limit. So here is the difference between smudging and incense... Perhaps, if you sum it up in one sentence - incense is the physical manifestation of smudging.
Which means smudging can be a lot of things. depends on your intentions. On your prayers. On the tradition you want to follow or preserve. That's why I don't teach about smudging. I can recommend you to go with your intuition and feel what and when works for you and what you connect with. Listen to yourself first. Always.
In the digital workshop (on the website, but still just in hebrew atm) and in the physical workshops (there are several planned in February and they will be the last for the coming months) I teach how to make incense. the craft of preparing and handling the materials to create incense sticks.
You get a basic recipe from which you can develop countless recipes according to your need, taste and desire and make incense.
We will learn how to solve problems that can arise during preparation. We will go through all the steps in the preparation and at the end, (the frontal workshop) everyone will prepare two types of incense according to their taste, from the selection of materials I will bring.
Dirty and smelly hands = smiles.
