Strange Contours: In Praise of Incense

Visualizing prayer

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I was never an incense guy. But, as you could guess by the title of this article, I have become an incense guy. If you are someone who judges incense lovers, let me encourage you: it’s weird, but it’s a good kind of weird.

If you’ve been around The Enthusiast for a while, you will remember an excellent article by my brother-in-law Matt about morning fires; if you’re a newcomer, go check out said article in our archives. It’s great. One thing Matt touches on in his essay is the ritual nature of fire. It’s something humans can’t escape–we make fires, and not just to keep warm. Fire bears ritual importance; it is sometimes a necessary ingredient for our imagination. It’s part of our bone-knowledge, one of those primal gestures that credits the humanity in ourselves.

British storyteller Martin Shaw gives a great reason for our indelible love of fire in his book, Smokehole: “It’s the smokehole that brings in the timeless, the essential, the vital…” I take him to mean here that our lit fires, and their smoke ascending to the heavens, is an essential connecting point between us and the divine, between humanity and the transcendent. Smoke is as essential a part of a fire as the light and warmth of the flame. The flames draw us inward; the smoke draws us upward.