Where There’s Smoke There’s Fire

The smell of pine and juniper hangs in the air and my hands are covered in a fine dust of sacred powder.  The resins I collected from the balsam fir trees last spring have dried for a year and so I grind them to powder in my trusty olive-colored Oster blender.  Each different powder goes into its own container this year.  This is the year I will attempt to make my process repeatable and measurable. 

Science, art, and spirituality are all coming together in my life again.  This time it is incense making.  For some years I’ve been making my own blends of herbs to burn. I am incredibly sensitive to scents, and too often commercial incense is too much for my poor nose.  It’s no good to give myself a headache while meditating.  I’ve used Japanese incense for some years, but I kept wondering if there was a way that I could use local materials to create incense. I discovered that I could make a powder of the plant materials and simply make a little pile on a stone and light it.  As long as it was properly flammable it created a lovely natural smoke.    

Slowly over the years I’ve learned when and where to collect the pine resin, how long it takes to dry, the plants that smell good when burned, and the plants that the spirits want. (which are not always the same)  I collect the oak leaves before midsummer, the mugwort is cut before it blooms, the mullein leaves are picked when they are big and fuzzy.  Sometimes I rub them on the kid’s cheeks.  Everything from last year’s harvest has waited patiently for me to find the time to process it all.

A friend of mine came by later to pick up her son from our house.  We often have extra kids.  One friend’s boy calls our house “Day Camp”.  This particular friend is an herbalist and spiritual seeker.  When I told her about how I had come to make my own incense and burn it on a stone she said that she had been shown something very similar in Anishinaabe traditional ceremonies she had been part of.  I found it fascinating that I had created a similar method in the same place by trying to make an incense that was created out of local ingredients.  Certainly I have any number of river stones that I have collected over the years. Living in Michigan, beautiful river stones are a common thing to find.  Somehow, my experiments in finding the sacred in my place had yielded similar results as the Native Americans that had been here far longer.  It was a nice feeling to know that.

So here I am, with a process and a product and the thought that I could share the products of my labor.  In years past I simply tossed what I liked together, suiting myself and the spirits.  There were no measurements or record keeping.  For the first time last year I even bothered to write down the ingredients, but not the proportions.  Now I intend to come at my spiritual practice from a more measured perspective, recording methods and amounts, hoping to share my recipes and offer people the chance to use my knowledge and work while getting paid for my trouble. Just as I was working toward this, my friend (who also sells her wares) gave me insight into a connection I didn’t even know was there. In a way, the synchronicity was reassuring.

Logical thinking doesn’t need to be excluded from spiritwork.  It needs desperately to be included. I look forward to finishing my incense blends and offering them to the folk and the gods.  It’s all another small step toward living in balance. I still struggle with the idea of making money from my spiritwork.  But if I want to continue my work I need to be able to have the time to do that work. A "day job" would greatly impact that ability and flexibility of schedule. I wouldn't be able to do my job nearly as well.  I don’t see an end to my struggle with this process.  Money is the metaphor we have to work with and though I have been incredibly lucky to be a stay at home mom, which has afforded me time to support my grove and my community, I want to be able to hold my own.  I want to know if my work can stand up against the cold winds of commerce and capitalism.   Gentle reader, is walking in balance important enough to make it?

I’m gonna find out.