Dragon's Blood as Ritual Incense

Dragon's Blood is a resin used as incense: a deep red resin drawn chiefly from Dracaena and Daemonorops, long valued as a dye and varnish and, in Western magical practice, burned for protection and for the strengthening of a working; it is attributed to Mars.

Material and correspondence

In the Western system of ritual correspondences it is set under Mars 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.

Several plants, one traded name

The trade name covers resin from more than one unrelated plant: the tree Dracaena cinnabari of the island of Socotra, and the fruit resin of several Daemonorops rattan palms of Southeast Asia, historically the more commonly traded source in Europe from the medieval period onward. Confusion between the sources is old and was never fully resolved by pre-modern trade, since merchants sold whichever red resin was available under the same evocative name. Beyond incense the resin has a long secondary life as a varnish and dye, including a persistent, largely unproven folk claim that it was used in historic violin varnishes, and in modern folk-magic practice it is commonly added in small amounts to other incenses specifically to intensify their effect rather than burned alone.