Mastic

Mastic is the one incense on this list whose primary historical use was never burning at all. Chewing came first, and the word for the act gave a European language one of its ordinary verbs.

The practice, attested since antiquity, gave Greek its verb mastichan, to gnash or grind the teeth, the root that passed through Latin into English "masticate" itself, a word most English speakers use with no idea it descends from a specific Aegean shrub resin. Commercial mastic still comes almost entirely from Pistacia lentiscus grown on the southern half of Chios, cultivation concentrated there for centuries and now protected as a designated origin product, the way Champagne or Parmesan are protected regions for a food product.

Control of that supply was worth fighting over. The Genoese held Chios and its mastic trade as a valuable monopoly through the medieval period, and the Ottoman Empire, after taking the island, kept the arrangement largely intact rather than dismantling a profitable system, taxing the harvest instead of replacing it.

Beyond chewing and burning, the resin has a long secondary life as a digestive remedy and, more recently, as a flavouring in Greek and Turkish confectionery and drinks, uses that developed on the strength of the resin's own taste and had nothing to do with the Mercury-and-Air correspondence later assigned to it in Western ceremonial magic.

Mastic is a resin used as incense: the pale tears of the mastic shrub of the Mediterranean, chewed as a gum and burned as a light, clear incense; in Western practice it is attributed 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.

An island monopoly and a word for chewing

Commercial mastic comes almost entirely from Pistacia lentiscus var. chia grown on the southern half of the Greek island of Chios, where cultivation of the "tears" has been concentrated for centuries and is now protected as a designated origin product; the practice of chewing the resin, attested since antiquity, gave Greek its verb mastichan, to gnash or grind the teeth, the root that passed through Latin into the English word "masticate" itself. Beyond incense, the resin has a long secondary history as a digestive remedy and, more recently, as a flavoring in Greek and Turkish confectionery and drinks, uses that developed independently of its Mercury-and-Air correspondence in the Western esoteric tables.