Resins

Resins and woods are the raw ingredients of incenses. A resin is the dried sap that was "bled" from a tree. It contains sugars and other compounds found in the plant or tree's sap, which is why most have a sweet scent when burned. Other products in this category are chipped or ground up woods, like Sandalwood. These are often used as a base for powdered incenses, and like resins, most smell very good burned on their own. I also include Sage leaf and smudge sticks in this section because they are used in similar ways.

How to burn resins

The charcoals used to burn resins get very hot. Use a burner made for resin incense, with a metal screen or with sand or rocks to insulate from the heat.
We often break the charcoals in half because they burn for nearly an hour. Light the charcoal with a lighter or match, and when it starts to spark, put it in the burner.
lt is best to let the whole charcoal begin to glow before adding any resin. Then sprinkle on the resin as desired, a little bit at a time. lf you add too much or cover the charcoal completely, you might put out the charcoal. Also, most natural resin incenses smell better when burned in small amounts at a time.
Keep away from kids and pets. Let the charcoal burn down completely, and make sure it's all ash before throwing out because it could set trash on fire. Ask us how we know!
We don't clean the burner after every use. When there is a collection of ash in the burner, pour contents into strainer over the sink and rinse with water. Let dry, and put rocks back in burner. (If you use sand you'll just have to dump the whole mess and use fresh sand).
Store unused charcoal in a zip-lock bag or in a jar, because they won't burn well if they collect humidity from the air.
Enjoy!

Copal Negro

Copal Negro is brownish grey in color and is very bright and clean smelling. This is a standard in Mexico, South and Central America for purification. Copal Negro has a deeper, more complex smell than the Copal Blanco, perhaps because it is not such a refined product.

Copal resin comes from a number of trees in the genus Copaifera, and like other resins derived from tree sap the distinctive smells come from the sugars and other components present in the sap of the tree. Copal is a genus of the western hemisphere, and in many ways it is the western equivalent of Frankincense, and is used ritually in very similar ways, for purification, blessing, and to create a spiritual environment that calls out our Higher Powers. Enjoy Copal Negro by itself in its purest form, or blend it with other herbs and resins for your own formulas. Copal Oro works better than Copal Blanco with woodsy and mysterious scents.

The below correspondences are vis Cunningham, Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs in plain text, C.L. Zalewski, Herbs in Magic and Alchemy in brackets, or my own interpretations in parenthesis. Cunningham and Zalewski do not distinguish between the different kinds of Copal, but baed on the correspondences they give, I believe that Cunningham is referring to White Copal, and Zalewski is referring to Black or unrefined Copal.

Gender: (Masculine)

Element: (Fire) [Earth of Earth, Fire of Earth]

Planet: (Sun, Saturn) [Saturn]

Zodiac: (Leo, Capricorn) [Capricorn]

1 oz.

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