Storax is a gum used as incense: the fragrant balsam of the sweetgum and related trees, an ingredient of ancient temple compounds and of the holy incense of several traditions; it is attributed in Western practice to Mercury.
Material and correspondence
In the Western system of ritual correspondences it is set under Mercury and the element of Air. 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 name with a tangled botany
The historical resin, harvested chiefly from Liquidambar orientalis of Anatolia, was known to Greek and Roman writers, including Dioscorides and Pliny the Elder, who both describe its medicinal uses; the unrelated flowering shrub genus later named Styrax, which gave the resin its common English name, has caused persistent confusion between the two ever since, and modern commercial "storax" is more often benzoin or a Liquidambar product than a true Styrax gum. Several biblical scholars identify storax with "stacte," one of the four spices specified for the Temple's holy incense at Exodus 30:34, though the identification of several of those biblical spice names remains debated rather than certain.