Incense

The word incense comes from the Latin ‘ incendere’ meaning “to burn”. Incense has been found in every culture and civilization. Most of incense burning is done for religious purposes, but was also used for medicinal purposes, perfuming an area, time keeping, an aphrodisiac, aesthetic purposes or just any ceremonial purposes. Why is incense so widely used around the world? What is the true purpose of incense? To get the answers we must go to Ancient Egypt.

What peaks my interest about incense is every patriarch religion uses it. It was even given to the biblical family at the birth of Jesus. If you are familiar with my work, you know that the biblical family was a matriarch(see His Royal Jesus). That is what is so witty about the bible, they took a matriarch family to create a patriarch religion. As far as I can tell in these ancient texts, incense and perfume are closely related. They used the same ingredients for both, it was just a matter of whether they burned the ingredients or applied them to their skin. Other than mummification or burial rituals, incense was something for the Goddess. As you will see shortly, these two will tie together nicely with the use of incense. The use of incense has lost it’s true meaning and it is time to bring it back.

Just to show you how well-known it was that incense went with the Goddess, lets look to the Old Testament. The prophet Jeremiah goes on a rant about how his immature god will bring disaster with sword and feminine to the people because they gave incense to an idol. Let’s see who that idol was with the response to this rant.

“We will not listen to you. But we will do everything we have vowed , burn incense to the Queen of Heaven and pour out libations to her, as we did, both we and our fathers, our kings princes, in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem; for then we had plenty of food and prospered and saw no evil.”

They story goes on to say that since they left Egypt and quit venerating the Queen of Heaven, only bad things have happened. I agree! That is why the world is in the shape it is in. We have completely kicked the Goddess off the planet.

Here is a text taken straight out of Egypt about the feminine and Goddess with incense.

Priestesses richly adorned,
Anointed with myrrh, perfumed with lotus,
Their heads garlanded with wreaths,
All together drunk with wine,
Fragrant with plants of Punt,
They danced in beauty doing my hearts wish,
Their rewards were on their limbs.

-Tomb of Wennefer

In ancient Egyptian, the words Khavah, Nefer, and Kiya all meant ‘breath of life’. What is very interesting is Khavah in Hebrew is Eve.  The one in the Bible. We are told Nefertiti means ‘beautiful woman comes’, but it means ‘beautiful breath of life comes’. But this was not any breath of life, this was the Egyptian Ka. The ancient Egyptians knew the woman was the giver of life or the giver of Ka. Ka is your life force.

Incense was burned for Queens, Kings, Gods and Goddesses. There are ingredients in these ancient texts that were used to make incense for every God and Goddess. As I have shown before, the Gods and Goddess of Egypt are aspects of yourself and the cosmos. In Ancient Egypt, Incense represented the ‘Breath of Life”. It represented a person’s Ka. Incense was burned at funerals and mummifications as an offering to Osiris. The offerings could be made to any God or Goddess, depending on who the deceased favorite was, but most were to Osiris. The reason for this was because of Isis. What the religions of the world don’t want you to know is that Osiris represents you in this underworld. I have always said spirit is feminine, and Isis is your spirit or the sacred feminine spirit that gives you life. It usually takes chaos to find the sacred feminine and once you find her she pulls your life back together.

Each day the Egyptians would offer incense to the sun. Resin at sunrise, myrrh at midday, and cyphi at sunset. They knew the sun was the reason for life on this planet. The sun and the female were the givers of life. Patriarch scribes, knowing that incense symbolized the Ka, chose the word ‘rachaf’ to describe the ‘breath of life’. Rachaf means ‘hover’ or ‘flutter’. This is where the confusion with Holy Spirit and Holy Ghost comes in. Later scribes thought they were describing a ghost. When in actuality they were describing the smoke of the incense and how it hovers and flutters in the room. The people in the know are rolling over laughing listening to theologians argue about Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost.

Incense was burned in order to create a scented and aromatic smoke that was pleasing to both humans and spirits. The smoke of the incense symbolizes the soul or spirit. The transition from matter to spirit. The release of the spirit from the physical form. It ascends or dissipates back into the invisible spirit realm from whence it originally came. The realm the spirit existed in prior to its imprisonment in matter. Therefore it represents the immortal soul leaving the mortal body.
Incense for the Goddess was used in rituals that honored the sacred feminine and acknowledged the spirit that resides in each and every one of us. It does not matter if you are a man or woman. Just like all humans are in the masculine mindset, all spirits or souls are feminine. Getting in touch with your spirit or the great spirit is getting in touch with the sacred feminine.

The Ancient Chinese would light incense before a friendly spar of martial arts. Most think this was to keep time for the match. In truth, they burned the incense to remind the competitors of modesty. Modesty, as the ancients knew it, was avoiding extremes of behavior; to be well-conducted, temperate not harsh or domineering. Modesty to the ancients was the same as not being polarized. They used incense to remind them to be close to the sacred feminine or their very own spirit.  This is also why incense is used in Magic.