Myrrh is a resin used as incense: the reddish gum of Commiphora trees, paired with frankincense from the earliest times as an offering and an embalming spice. In the Western scheme it is attributed to the Moon and to matters of mourning, purification and the depths.
Material and correspondence
In the Western system of ritual correspondences it is set under the Moon and the element of Water. 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.
Embalming, anointing and the second gift
The resin comes chiefly from Commiphora myrrha of the Horn of Africa and Arabia, and ancient Egyptian embalmers used it, with natron and other spices, in the preparation of the dead, a use the Gospel of John recalls when Nicodemus brings myrrh and aloes for the burial of Jesus (John 19:39). It is also named among the ingredients of the holy anointing oil given at Exodus 30:23, and, alongside frankincense and gold, one of the three gifts of the Magi at Matthew 2:11, so that the pair of resins now correlated with Sun and Moon in Western correspondence tables were already paired together, for offering and for the dead, well over a thousand years before that correspondence system existed.