Copal is a resin used as incense: a fresh, bright resin of trees of the genus Bursera and others, burned above all in the ritual of Mesoamerica, where it was and remains a central offering. Modern Western practice ranks it with the solar resins.
Material and correspondence
In the Western system of ritual correspondences it is set under the Sun and the element of Fire. Such planetary and elemental attributions belong to the Western esoteric tradition of correspondences, drawn from writers such as Agrippa and codified in the modern period by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn; the material's use as incense is far older and cuts across many cultures. It is described here within that documented tradition of ritual perfume.
An Aztec word for a living practice
The name comes from the Nahuatl copalli, "incense" or "resin," and the resin, most often from Bursera bipinnata and related species, was burned by the Aztec and Maya in temple offering, in tribute payment and in domestic ritual recorded by early colonial-era chroniclers such as Bernardino de Sahagun. Unlike several other resins in this correspondence system, copal never became a purely historical curiosity absorbed into Western ceremonial magic: it remains in active, everyday use across Mexico and Central America today, burned at household altars, in curanderismo healing practice and above all around the Day of the Dead, a continuity of practice considerably older and more unbroken than its comparatively recent adoption into Golden Dawn-derived planetary correspondence tables.