Pine is a resin used as incense: the resin and needles of pine trees, burned for a fresh, cleansing smoke associated with strength and renewal; in Western practice it is frequently attributed to Mars.
Material and correspondence
In the Western system of ritual correspondences it is set under Mars and the element of Earth. 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.
From the shipyard to the temple
Pine resin's oldest large-scale use had nothing to do with ritual: heated and refined into pitch and tar, it waterproofed the hulls and rigging of ancient and medieval ships, an industrial demand that shaped Mediterranean forestry for centuries. In classical Greece the resin also flavors retsina wine and connects the tree to Dionysian and pastoral religion, the pine being associated with Pan and, through the myth of Pitys, with a nymph transformed into the tree; that older association sits alongside the plainer, more modern Western reading of pine as a purely cleansing, energizing incense, closer to household purification than to any specific deity.