Incense: Energy Portal
to Seeing and Healing
I’m going to invite you to go on a journey with me, deep within yourself. We will travel through time and previously unexplored places, harvesting mind-altering botanicals. Don’t let your mind go there—of course, we aren’t going on a hallucinogenic trip. This trip is about working consciously toward opening the healer’s and seer’s energy portal. Vehicles for that opening up are all from a family of healers called incense trees. To tap into the magickal potential they possess, you need to be receptive. Once in a state of complete openness, the possibilities for vision quests and energy healing are infinite. So dust off a space on the ground beneath the shade of the family of incense trees. Relax, perhaps with a warm drink, and open your mind to visions that will unfold.
Seeing through the Subtle Body
We have a familiar body, related to physical being. There is also a subtle body, felt but unseen. The astral body (a subtle body) and physical body coexist. The best route to unleashing energy needed for visions and healing is opening up the astral body. Incense is a vehicle for unlocking the door. It is an activation code designed for releasing magickal potential trapped inside of you.
Soon, we will review the individual qualities of palo santo, copal, frankincense, and myrrh. For now, visualize any one of them smoldering on a portable fire before you. As it smokes and crackles, feel your senses begin to heighten. Through the foggy haze, you’ll see the subtle body. It is beautiful and luminous. Don’t be surprised if you see it shimmering and sparkling. The subtle body holds thoughts, develops fantasies, dreams, and has visions. It has senses of its own that are connected to divination and intuitive and psychic skills.
Features of the Astral Body
Clairvoyance (sight)
Clairaudience (hearing)
Psychometry (feeling)
Imagination (taste)
Emotional idealism (smell)
These perceptions sound similar to those senses experienced by the physical body, but they are not. These are extrasensory perceptions, unique to the astral body. Through astral body senses, we easily exit mundane existence, traveling into the domain of the spirit. In our daily astral travels, we dream, use imagination, build fantasies, and create. In some instances, we hallucinate and have visions. Through astral travel we can leave our bodies in what is known as an out-of-body experience (OBE), usually in conjunction with injury, stress, or serious illness. They also happen often in conjunction with near-death experiences.
Mainly, astral senses are useful to the objective of this journey—tapping into energy needed to venture into the great beyond. Important to opening the way for vision quests, the astral body leads the way toward healing. It is also home to powerful energy centers called chakras.
Activating Your Circles of Energy
The word chakra is derived from Proto-Indo-European words meaning “circle” or “cycle.” Both words are helpful in gaining greater understanding of chakras. Tibetan Buddhism has a particular reverence for chakras, connecting them to all the lives we’ve lived and will live. Chakras are involved with birth, death, and the continuous circle of life.
Chakras are visualized as an ascending, aligned column going from the base of the spine to the top of the head. We all have these energy centers within our astral body. Engaging them ushers balance into the physical, spiritual, and metaphysical aspects of life. This is because they connect to deities, colors, emotions, and specific body parts (including glands), as well as the planets, plants, and animals. Each of the chakras is activated uniquely. We will dwell on the sixth chakra because it is stimulated into action by incense.
The All-Seeing Ajna
Without question, the eyes in our physical body are helpful. To be an effective energy healer, though, you must see deeper than physical eyes permit. Ajna, also called the third eye, is the sixth chakra and is the seat of wisdom and conciousness. The sixth chakra is sensitive to incense and shows how to see; through sight comes understanding. Associations include the pituitary gland, endocrine gland, eye, base of the skull, and brow. In the astral body it relates to intuition, imagination, psychological function, and sensitivity. Stimulation of it is provided by incense, particularly of the incense trees. These special trees that bring all the elements together yield palo santo, copal, frankincense, and myrrh.
Here is what that opening and cultivating the sixth chakra provides:
Balanced brain function: creativity and logic/analysis
Clairvoyance, which enables divination and prophecy
Dream quests, the pathway to unknown worlds
Dream interpretation, memory, and clarity of sight
The Sacred Nature of Incense
Incense has a venerable history. It has been used in ritual, ceremony, spells, incantations, invocation, blessing, consecration and as a tool for opening the way. Understanding the complex array of aspects involved with incense as medicine, positions you well to dream work and energy healing. This family of trees of our focus is the Burseraceae.
Palo santo, copal, frankincense, and myrrh are so closely aligned with magick that it’s hard to decide with which one to start. In terms of their metaphysical abilities, each exists in a parallel universe. We have to begin our incense studies somewhere—no better place than holy tree, also called palo santo.
Palo Santo
Many people in need of energy healing have fallen under the influence of misfortune. Incense from the mystical palo santo (Bursera graveolens) is useful for those individuals. Traced back to the Inca, it encourages deep relaxation. An energy healer whose ajna is opened and then stimulated by the ancient, woodsy smell of palo santo can cure those who suffer.
This incense is typically used in South America, growing readily on the coasts and in forests of Peru. Healers use it in a practice called sahumerio (fumigation). Sahumerio goes back to the rites and ceremonies of the Inca. Containing age-old wisdom from thousands of years ago, palo santo’s fumes and smoke capture and ground negative energy. It is returned to the universe, transformed into healing light. Even unlit, as a sacred object placed where you chose, aromatic palo santo activates the astral body. Its scent opens ajna and crown chakras. With these portals open, gifts of prosperity and good fortune flood in; healing energy takes hold.
Using Your Palo Santo Incense
Akin to the Native American smudge stick, palo santo incense is used primarily for cleansing and clearing. By working on all the physical and astral components of the body, this incense balances chakra energy, enabling peace and luck to prevail.
You’ll burn it like a Native American smudge stick, smoldering but not burning. Hold it at a 40-degree angle away from your body. Light it, then let the fire die out. Smoke released from its smoldering releases healing magick for all who encounter it.
Copal
This incense is not for the faint of heart. The aroma released from smoldering copal will quickly put anyone into a trance. Due to its facility with bringing us into other worlds efficiently, it is beloved by visionaries, shamans, and energy healers.
Cultures such as the Zapotec, Lacandon, Maya, Aztec, and Zoque consider copal to be food of the gods. They work (or worked) with it in conjunction with representations of maize. As with palo santo, it has a large role in ceremonial rites.
Copal can be taken from living trees or fossils as resin; exactly which type of tree is a matter of debate. It is yielded by the family Bursereae or genus Pinus (family Pinaceae). Today in the Maya region of Southern Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize, copal as resin is utilized from Bursera bipinnata. Whatever your source, you’ll be delighted by the ability of copal to open the way.
Using Copal
Once lit, copal produces copious amounts of smoke. Through that smoke you can travel at will. It’s suggested, however, that you ride the billowing smoke outdoors. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by copal. Completely losing your sense won’t enable the best use of your visions.
Break the copal down into smaller nuggets. Put it on a lit charcoal that is already white-hot. Once the curious formations reveal themselves in the twists and turns of smoke, sit back, relax, and use your heightened senses to interpret what comes forth.
Milk of the Arabs: Frankincense
Frankincense, which comes from Boswellia sacra and Boswellia carterii, can also be known as beyo or olibanum, depending on type and origin. Attesting to its activation and energetic potential, the words “frank” and “incense” can be interpreted as “free” and “lightning.” The combined words make sense: this healing medicine frees objects, spaces, and peoples from evil spirits. Its gift is purging and purification.
Frankincense is the incense for getting things started. In fact, it is even used as a fire starter. In energy healing and vision quest, you most definitely want to employ this incense. With its rich history, traced back to ancient Egyptians, frankincense facilitates the astral body’s communications with divine orders you need for assistance. Those in your scope include angelic spirits, deities, and ascended masters. Burning it is a mind-altering experience which broadens your visions.
Investing in high quality frankincense is money well spent. In every occupation, you should equip yourself with the best tools for the job. Quality frankincense readily acts as a conduit for spiritual growth from released potential.
Maydi is the highest grade of medicinal frankincense and usually comes in smaller pieces. Mushaad is second and it is nearly transparent. Mujaarwal is third, also close to transparent; it and mushaad come in large, unbroken pieces so that you can clearly tell they are pure resin.
Myrrh: The Spiritually Uplifting,
Highly Charged Incense
Like other incenses derived from the incense tree family, myrrh (Commiphora myrrha and C. habessinica) is used to open the way. Used in ancient Egypt in prayer, praise, and invocation of gods and goddesses such as Isis and Ra, this incense has always enjoyed a lofty position spiritually. Myrrh is often paired with frankincense because the two possess similar ualities and their effects are aligned. Their individual strengths are also heightened when combined.
Everyone has heard of this dynamic duo. Blessings, clearing, meditation, invocation, cleansing, healing, prayer, and even exorcisms are aided by frankincense and myrrh. When the complementary, related incenses are burned together, they invoke the powerful gods Anubis, Osiris, and Ra. Depend on frankincense and myrrh being at your side while traversing energetic planes of spirit.
Using Frankincense and Myrrh
Pound these incenses using mortar and pestle to get them down to a manageable size for your fire. Small chunks are preferred for dream quests and energy healing because they release more smoke. Work on interpreting patterns and symbols revealed by the smoke. If you’re fortunate, deities and spirits might appear from the smoke. It also releases powerful medicines, opening your astral body and addressing the sixth chakra. This enables your best work to shine. Burn ground chunks of mixed incense on white-hot charcoal, making sure there are two parts frankincense to one part myrrh.
Doing the Work
As appealing as it sounds to use incense for opening the portal to vision quests, dreaming, and energy healing, it still requires work, dedication, and some skill. After understanding the various facets needing activation for opening the way, the first step in your mystical journey into the unknown is cultivating understanding through practice.