Frankincense as Ritual Incense

Frankincense is a resin used as incense: the hardened gum of Boswellia trees of Arabia and the Horn of Africa. Burned since antiquity in Egyptian, Jewish, Christian and other rites, it is among the most widely used ritual incenses, and in Western planetary correspondence is given to the Sun.

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.

A resin and its trade route

The resin is tapped from several related Boswellia species, chiefly Boswellia sacra of Oman and Yemen and Boswellia papyrifera and B. frereana of the Horn of Africa, and for over a thousand years before the common era it moved north along the overland Incense Route through southern Arabia to the Mediterranean, a trade substantial enough to help fund the rise of caravan cities such as Petra. It is named among the gifts brought to the infant Jesus at Matthew 2:11, and remains in continuous liturgical use today in the thurible of Catholic and Orthodox Christian worship, a use unbroken since antiquity rather than a modern revival.