Incense, Part 2

In the last episode, the last core episode, we discussed the nature of incense and how it factors into the mix with other fire based technologies, both as an occasional practical measure, but also something linked to sacred rights around the world, either as a kind of direct offering to divine beings or spirits, or is a means of setting aside a sacred space for ritual we've changed the atmosphere of this space with incense and now it is an

appropriate place to do something that is not mundane, that is not part of the vulgar world, that is part of the sacred world. We also discussed some specific examples of dedicated sensors for incense, but we didn't touch on one of the most famous Western examples of incense use, and that's where we're gonna kick off today with this episode, Part Two of Incense, and that's of priests swinging metal sensors around on chains, wafting sacred smoke through holy spaces.

We're gonna be talking about the world of Thuribles. That's right. If you've ever watched, uh, you know, maybe a service on a particular holy day from from one of the sort of the high church denominations, so maybe a Catholic service or an eastern Orthodox service, you may have seen a member of the clergy walking around carrying some kind of cage suspended from chains, and out of that cage is wafting wisps of smoke. Now, I was reading about the history of Thuribles in a book called the history

of the Church in art by Rosa Georgi. Uh, this was a getty art history publication from two thousand eight translated by Brian Phillips, and this is the entry in this book on the Thurrible and the incense boat. And Georgy here describes the Thurible as, quote, a cup shaped container with a lid controlled by four chains. It is used with a smaller container in the shape of an open boat. Both are made of precious metals. So, going back deep into the history of the pre Christian Roman Empire,

it was customary to sprinkle a room with incense. The use of incense was initially controversial in Christian rights, and I'll get into more of the reasoning behind that in another paper I want to talk about in a minute. But this was especially because of its association with Pagan Rituals. But eventually incense was widely adopted for church uses, especially in the fourth and fifth centuries, uh and this would be for uses such as the veneration of the dead

and the demarcation of special days of worship. Georgie writes that the thurible itself has been in use since roughly the seventh century and it usually consists of a cup shaped container, and you carry that hanging from four chains and you swing it around and the Cup has a

lid with holes of some kind in it. The holes are important so that air can get in and so that smoke can get out, kind of like the vents on a grill, and in the middle of the cup there's usually a small container for the burning incense itself. If you look at the earliest examples, thuribles tend to be simply round or hexagonal boxes, but over time the thurible becomes more ornate. Quote in Gothic Times it took on architectural forms to symbolize the Church building itself, and

from the seventeenth century onward it acquired freer forms. Now, I think this point about the the innovations of gothic times is very interesting. If you look at many historical Thuribles, you can often see this architectural Motif, how they might resemble the Dome or the spire that would be found atop the cathedral that you were carrying them around the inside of, all almost like this is a little model of our church and the smoke pouring out of it

and floating up into the air. It's kind of like the prayer and the worship floating up out of this building to reach God. Yeah, that's that's that's interesting. It is. I never thought about it like that before, but it is. It's kind of in many cases that you're looking at kind of like a little model of a church is being swung around inside of a church. Yeah, so there.

So there's the thurible itself, but then there is also an attendant artifact called the NAVICULA, which, confusingly, is also the name of a genus of algae that are said to resemble boats. I think both these names come from the word for boat, uh, and if you look up navicula as algae, they really do look like boats. It's it's one of the better examples of naming an organism after a human made object because it actually does look like the thing, unlike many of those. Yeah, it does.

Now in the church context, the NAVICULA is a little spice tray. It's uh, it's a small boat shaped container and You keep the incense in there and then, when you're running out inside the Thurible, transfer more from the NAVICULA to the throuble with the spoon. And Georgie writes that the boat shape of the NAVICULA became common in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries because it symbolized the church

carrying Christians to salvation as if on a boat. And she also includes some interesting examples of artwork depicting the use of Thuribles in, say, Bible Stories. One is a painting by seventeenth century Italian artist named Filippo Abiati, called Solomon Making a sacrifice to the idols and rob I've included a copy of this painting for you to look at here. A few interesting things to note about it. So this is based on a passage in first kings

in the Hebrew Bible. UH, talking about how you know, despite the fact that Solomon in some senses was very wise and worshiped the god of Israel. It's also kind of disparaging. It's like he ran around with some foreign idols and it says that, quote, he sacrificed and burnt incense at the high places, meaning two idols of of other gods, and the painting shows Solomon placing a thurible

on a table in front of a humanoid idol. It looks kind of like a classical Greek statue and I thought this was interesting because the painting is correct in assuming that the use of incense burning uh took place in honoring the gods of many religions going back into ancient times and pre dates Christianity. But it's interesting that it shows him using a thurrible with a design that would have been contemporary and used in Christian churches at

the time of the painting. Be kind of like if you had an illustration of Christ speaking to the masses and he's using a megaphone. Yeah, now, leap frogging off of this, I actually came across a paper that I found totally fascinating, a paper about the role of Aromas in the history of Christian theology, but specifically focusing on a figure named Saint Ephrem the Syrian, and this was

a paper by Susan Ashbrook Harvey. I also want to give a shout out that I came across it by way of reference in a Jay store daily article by Livia Ger Shawn. But this, this paper by Susan Ashbrook Harvey, was published in the Journal of Theological Studies in Nineteen and it's called St from on the scent of salvation. Susan Ashbrook Harvey, the scholar who wrote this, as a professor of history and religion at Brown University. And this is all about this guy known as St Ephrem the Syrian,

or St Ephraim. He lived in the fourth century, from three Oh six to three seventy three, in the eastern part of the Roman Empire, and he was a popular Christian theologian, but especially a prominent as a popular writer of Hymns, a hymnographer. So you may in fact have heard hymns where the lyrics were composed by this guy, by St e Ram interesting, and I have to fillock up which ones we can attribute to him. Generally, I'm just used to saying like John Wesley's name and that

the Western names well I don't know. I don't know how much Ephraim you're going to get in English speaking churches. I think that some of his hymns are still sung in some Orthodox churches. But Anyway, Harvey highlights the fact that in many of his Hymns St Ephraim uses a very interesting phrase, rhea Dehyuta, which could be translated as

the fragrance of life. Now, as a bit of background, smell and fragrance had an important place in the rituals of, according to Harvey, all the major religions of the ancient Mediterranean, not just the various pagan cults, but also in Judaism and eventually in Christianity, though it seems like the very earliest Christianity, the first few centuries of Christianity tended to avoid the use of fragrances and incense, but that changed

over time and would change by Ephraim's time. Uh. Now, across all these different distinct religions, the form of many sacrificial gifts to God or to the Gods was is a burnt offering. You would burn something to make that a gift to the Gods and you would expect the Gods to reward you in turn with with good favor, with blessings of some kind. Uh. This is the classic I scratch your back, you scratch my back, relationship between

between humans and the Gods. And Uh, these burnt offerings could include anything from the burnt flesh of an animal sacrifice to the burning of incense on a God's altar. And it was often, I think this is one of the strangest things, it was often explicitly said that the smell of the offering in particular was pleasing to the gods. And this is not just in Pagan religions. There are loads of examples of this in the Hebrew Bible. In fact, I even alluded to one example I'm going to site

in the last part of the series. Uh So, if you look to the book of Leviticus, Chapter One, the Lord is telling Moses how to perform sacrifices of livestock. It says, quote, then the priest shall turn the whole is referring to a bull. Shall turn the whole into smoke on the altar as a burnt offering, an offering by fire of pleasing odor to the Lord. And this is not the only reference like this. There are tons of references throughout the Bible of smells being pleasing to God.

Just a few verses later, at the beginning of chapter two, we get a specific reference to incense. We learned that if somebody makes a grain offering instead of an animal offering. Quote, when anyone presents a grain offering to the Lord, the offering shall be of choice flower. The worshipers shall pour oil on it and put Frankincense on it and bring it to Aaron's sons the priests, after taking from it a handful of the choice flour and oil, with all

its frankincense. The priests shall turn this token portion into smoke on the altar and offering by fire of pleasing odor to the Lord. So over and over again we learn that it was believed that the aroma of sacrifice itself is what gives the Lord Pleasure. And meanwhile, in Roman Pagan cults it was common practice to make a burnt offering of some kind. Also could be a burnt offering of an animal or an offering of sweet smelling incense.

In fact, I think incense was often considered sort of the baseline sacrifice you could make to the Roman gods. It was like, you know, you didn't have an whole animal, you could at least get a little chunk of incense

and burn that. I love the wording in this uh, this this quote you read about turning the token portion into smoke, and it kind of gets to this, UH, something we've touched on with with fire technology before, about the the transformation of one thing into the other, the sort of alchemical power of of cooking or flame or in this case burnt offering. Right. I think that very transformation was something that that a lot of ancient theologians found kind of transfixing in a way, like they did

write about it. I think we may get to a bit about that in in just a minute here. But another thing is it doesn't stop just with the smell of burnt offerings, whether that's, you know, the kind of barbecue smell of of an animal, or whether that is the scent of incense on the altar. Also, in religions of the ancient Mediterranean, fragrant holy oils were used to anoint new initiates or people specially blessed in some circumstance,

or maybe the sick or the dying. So the point is smells were a deeply rooted part of religious life and the experience of the divine for multiple religions with otherwise very different beliefs. Now, coming back to St Ephraim, specifically of the fourth century and his idea of the fragrance of life, harvey notes that. One thing I think is worth pointing out. We often when we say the

word fragrance, that has a positive connotation to it. You know, the fragrance of life is necessarily a good smell and, as Efraim used it, it does seem to often have positive connotations. But actually the word he's using here, Rehau, does not mean only pleasant smells. It could mean the smell of anything from a chunk of murder to a bookcave flowers to a big old tub of spoiled sour cream. It would cover it all. So it might be better to think of it as smell, even though it's usually

translated into English as fragrance. It's tough when you're talking about English because I I feel, and and this has been pointed out, I've seen this pointed out by researchers before, that English language, especially it's popular usage today, is not great at describing smells and odors like it. Yeah, it's one of the reasons whereas so often times you'll hear kids talking about food stinking like or smelling like, I

don't know. They's just that sometimes the vocabulary is lacking there, and certainly our usage of the vocabulary to properly describe smells as more than just, you know, extremely pleasant or or extremely alarming. Yeah, a lot of smell words have too much front connotation, loading like they're already even if you say the words smell, which is supposed to be neutral, I think more often that's going to have a negative connotation, I guess. Yeah, fragrance makes you think of flowers or something,

or perfume. Aroma, I think, often makes me think of, I don't know, onions and garlic, like cooking aromatic cooking ingredients. Yeah, I'm I'm always annoyed when there's talk of, quote, Stinky Cheeses, like, come on, wait, we have other words that we can use. So we can say that these these cheeses are pungent, perhaps, but but are they stinky? I think you're it's just it's just a loaded description. It's pre judging. Yeah, but okay. So what's the deal? What? What is the fragrance of life?

According to St Efrem. Well, Harvey writes about it like this. Harvey writes, quote, for from knowledge of God is something not only cognitive in origin but also sensory, hence the arresting quality of his old factory imagery. Bypassing the mind body dichotomy and leaving aside the question of rationality, is the basis for establishing truth from finds in sensory experience a knowledge about God which cannot be gained any other way.

So Harvey argues that for Efraim the fragrance of life is part of an idea that knowledge can be, quote, non cognitive yet genuinely revelatory of divine being, truth and action. Now that might be like, I don't know. At first I was like, what is she talking about? What does this mean? But I eventually got through it. She's saying that for Fraim, and not just him. There were other ancient theologians who thought this way. But for Efraim, like you can know God is there because you can sense

him with your senses. And according to Harvey, this belief has interesting relationships to the religious context of asceticism in early Syrian Christianity, which was fram's context. So there's a section kind of on what you might call the natural theology of e Ram. You know sometimes, uh, you'll hear various versions of this where people look, will express their

religious beliefs in terms of viewing the natural world. It's like, you know, observe the way the regularity of nature, look at the way the tides work, look at the way plants grow, look at the way the sun comes up and comes down. That just proves that my religious beliefs

are true. Yeah, sometimes this is very clunkily carried out as well, like you'll see a billboard by the highway and it's like proof of God and it's a picture of a baby, and I'm like, okay, well, it's cute and all, but I don't know if that's proof of anything other than like two people had a baby. Well, yeah, I mean I think it's it's making like it's like

cutting out a step in the middle. So you look at all these things and they are indeed amazing and they can fill you with wonder and they can be inspiring and make you feel like wow, there's you know, there's so much more to life and to existence than I often realize when I'm just going about my tedious little everyday tasks. And that's all true. And then there's a second leap where the person says and therefore the fact that there is more means whatever I in particular

happened to believe is what the more is. And I think that's the part that they're kind of skipping over. Truth of God confirmed. But but I think one thing I find very interesting about about the the the invocation of smell, he had the invocation of voters, is that, you know, as we've discussed on the show before, like there's an immediacy to the way we register smell that does often feel like it comes outside of reason and it comes outside of memory, and I think that's that's

very fascinating to think about in this context. Like I would say, picture of a baby doesn't really tell you anything, but the smell of a baby, I don't know. I don't know. That might that might be prooved of God confirmed. That's more uh, it's at least more convincing to the brain. Like the emotional impact is more powerful than the billboard. Yeah, Um, but so what's the deal with Ephraim's natural theology? I mean, I think this is the less interesting part of what

he's trying to say. He's saying like you can sense God with nature because like every element of nature is in some sense stamped with his seal. An example given in the paper that I thought was funny. Harvey talks about how Efrem said, you know, birds have to extend their wings in order to fly and when they extend their wings they make the shape of the cross. There you go. There is a lot of Christian theology from

the early centuries that reads kind of like this. To me it's like you're kind of reaching, but I admire the effort. Thank thank but anyway. So Efraim believes that baptism kind of changes the body, allowing it to acquire new senses that can literally directly sense God and the divine through sites and sounds and tastes and smells. Uh So, to read from Harvey here quote in Efraim's hymns, eating and smelling are closely related experiences. So too are the

concepts bread of life and fragrance of life. Bread of life is a is a phrase directly from the Gospels in the New Testament, where Jesus says I am the bread of life, and this is taken in mass to refer to, like the sharing of communion, the eating of bread at communion. But anyway, Harvey goes on. When eaten as the bread of life, Christ pervades the whole of the believer's being. When inhaled, as the fragrance of life,

Christ again penetrates throughout the believer. EFREM titles Christ, quote the Glorious Lily, quote the treasure of perfumes around whom the faithful gather, quote that they might inhale and be sated and that the power of Christ's deeds might permeate their senses. And then harvey goes on with her own writing. Here, through the act of breathing the life force itself, Christ's presence saturates the believer. Interestingly, it is fragrance rather than

breath that efrem highlights again and again. His old factory imagery is about encounter, not animation. The breath of life that Adam received at creation animated his lifeless body. The fragrance of Christ inhaled by the believer indicates by its smell the action of human slash divine encounter through sensory experience.

So this probably seems very weird to most people today, even to most Christians today, I would guess, the idea that you could literally sense the resurrection of Christ directly by smelling him. But as weird as that might seem to us today, Harvey again emphasizes that Special Aromas were a very important part of the rituals of basically every religion in the ancient Mediterranean and in ancient literature, divinity

is often described as having a sweet smell. Harvey writs, quote, the Association was not capricious, immaterial, invisible yet tangibly experienced. Scent provided a fitting metaphor for divinity that exceeded physicality or comprehension. Scent conveyed s rather than substance. It could not be contained or circumscribed. Circumscribed it had the powered across boundaries. The experience of it could not be voluntarily controlled, since was affective yet ineffable. Wow, that's that's neat that.

This reminds me of the bit we're discussing the last episode about the presence of the the imperial Chinese court and in the presence of the emperor, who again has divine connotations. And you can compare that to various traditions of divine kings and cultures around the world, but the idea that this, this would be a presence that had its own unique olfactory reality and that by by smelling that,

you're smelling the divine as well. Yeah, exactly. And and she goes on to include many examples of the way from Uh reimagined like existing pre existing Bible stories, as essentially being about smell, like when St Ephraim describes the story of the first pentecost in the book of acts. This is a story where, after the death of Jesus, the apostles are said to be they're said to suddenly be filled with the Holy Spirit and they begin to speak in tongues to the multitudes. Ef Him writing about

this in him writes again in translation quote. When the blessed apostles were gathered together, the place shook and the scent of Paradise, having recognized its home, poured forth its perfumes. So the infilling of the Holy Spirit is like the pouring of a perfume. You can literally smell it. So Harvey summarizes at the end of this section. Quote. For Efraim, Olfactory Experience Mirror sacramental reality. To Smell God is to know God as a transcendent yet transforming experience, a presence

actively known through bodily experience. Okay, so so that's section one of this paper, the one that I think actually I found the most interesting. This is about how Efraim believes smell can literally directly reveal the presence of God. God has a smell, you can smell him and that's how you know he's there. But it also sort of goes the other way. Harvey after this as a section on how Efraim believed humans can use smells to commune with God. And yet again, this is not uh, this

is not unique to Ephraim. I mean this is widespread. We talked about all the examples of humans using various smells to give something to God, to give a sacrifice or a gift to God or to communicate with God. And here's where there's a little bit of interesting uh tension in the Christian history of the use of smells. So, uh, Ephraim was living in the fourth century, in the three hundreds, and this comes at a turning point for the use

of incense in Christian worship. Before this period, Christians mostly avoided the use of incense. UH, setting themselves apart from basically every other religion in the empire, and the Early Avoidance of Incense May in fact have been a kind of intentional segregating maneuver. It's saying like no, we're different from all these other religions because we don't do that

kind of thing. Another problem for the of Incense and Christianity, especially in the third century, arose because the burnt offering of incense was a was a standard ritual of worship of the Roman gods, who the Christians considered the pagan gods, and especially of emperor reverence, the reverence for the Roman Emperor. So we've talked about this on the show before. There's there's a bit of a misperception that it was like consistently illegal to be a Christian in the Roman Empire

before Constantine, and that's not true at all. Like, for the most part, Roman authorities really did not care what religion you were what God you worshiped. But there were brutal persecutions of Christians in periodic outbreaks in the Roman Empire, not for their positive belief in Christianity but for their refusal to participate in the imperial cult. So this could take the form of a kind of loyalty test. This was especially bad under the emperor deseus at the beginning

of the third century. So a Roman Authority might like grab some Christians and, you know, bring them in and say, okay, we hear you're you're not showing proper fealty to the Roman gods and to the emperor. All we need you to do is do a little burnt offering, burn some incense for the emperor, for the Roman Gods, and then you're you'll be fine. Sometimes they would do it, which Christians saw when, you know, when some of them did that,

they saw that as a big betrayal. Some of them wouldn't do it, and then they might be they might face really harsh penalties, including being put to death. It's worth noting that Roman Pagans viewed the UH. Their refusal sometimes to do the offering incance of incence is really confusing, like why not just do it? What's the problem? Yeah, like it's it might seem a strange hill too, in

some cases literally die on. But you can certainly see how if Christians in the third century are encountering these situations where, like they you know, the burning of Incense, of an incense offering is what the Romans are trying to force you to do or you die, and it is the thing that some of you did in order to avoid death, but in a way that now makes you, uh, shamed and excluded from the Christian community. You can understand

why they might not think burning in since was cool. Yeah, and I mean and certainly you can get into various histories of different like fringe groups and uh and belief systems that that have set themselves outside of the rest of a given culture, and you often enforce those barriers by having prohibitions like this in place. Like that, we are not going to do the thing that everyone else is doing because we are set apart. However, it seems

like all this changed in the fourth century. So in the fourth century, for one thing, you get the Emperor Constantine, the first Christian emperor, and this is a period of big transition, roughly when Christianity goes from a a sort of reviled, large minority religion to suddenly a culturally and

politically dominant and in vogue religion. And this is concurrent with what Harvey Calls A, quote, broader embellishment of Christian ceremonial I think this means a sort of in meshing of Christian belief with the more mainstream esthetic elements of just religion generally as understood in the Roman Empire. So this is where you get the kind of mixing of the superficial trappings of Roman religion with the core theological

beliefs of Christianity. And by the fifth century the change seems to have been complete and the use of incense was just normative for pretty much all Christian worship. So e from is writing in the Fourth Century when incense usage in Christianity is becoming more popular, and he uses incense imagery a lot. UH, from is careful to distinguish between incense used in what he calls True Religion, which of course for him was Christianity and Judaism, and false religion,

which for him was everything else. He refers to the instance offerings of Pagan's interestingly, as quote, foul, gloomy in their vapor and loathsome in their odor. And yet uh, and yet, he says, of course, in sence burning is great in what he thought were the true religions. And when incense has a sweet smell, this is because, according to Ephrom, Christ intervenes to make it smell good. That

that raises questions. But and he repeatedly uses the image of a sensor or Thurible, like we were talking about before, as a metaphor for the worship of Christians. To quote one of his hymns, he says, come, let us make our love a great common sensor. Let us offer up our songs and prayers like incense to the one who made his cross a sensor to the divinity and offered his blood on behalf of us all. So the sensor is doing a lot of work in this kind of imagery.

So are he's saying our love of the divine is a sensor that you know, and that kind of fits with the church imagery right like that. The you might carry a sensor that looks like the church you're in, and of course the church is often a metonym for the church community. So it's like the church in a sense is a sensor and the smoke coming out of it as the prayers and the faith and all that. But then he also says that Jesus made his cross

a sensor. Uh, I think I've lost track of what the image is doing there, but clearly he's really into the idea of of like of faith and love as smells. Yeah, so we're needed at least and symbolic religious technology at this point. Right now there's all this stuff about theological tension, about like whether the burning of incense should be thought of, as you know, honoring of God or not, because some Christian theologians would say, wait a minute now, uh, we're

not supposed to be sacrificing to God anymore. Christ was the sacrifice, so that's not part of our religion anymore. But I guess they were just overruled because like it, it became part of what most of the Church did. And then, finally, the last thing in Harvey's paper here is this whole idea of Ephraim and these other theologians talking about smells as having come some kind of saving or animating power, like creating stories in which the the

salvation of Christ, is itself an animating smell. So like when the when a Christian dies, according to these theologians, uh, you know, the body dies, but then upon the second coming of Christ, quote, the wondrous odor of that treasury of life flies into the body. So the idea of the resurrection is that life returns because animating smells are are are sort of injected into the dead body by Christ or or by the Holy Spirit. Uh. And this

goes along with all kinds of stuff. Ef Firm writes about how like when you go to heaven, you don't actually need to eat bread in heaven, you know you're not gonna be hungry because instead of bread there is the very fragrance of paradise. You will live on smells alone. I mean it's enough to make you wonder if he was a super smeller, if he yeah, it had just like heightened sense of smell compared to average people. And that, I mean that alone wouldn't account for all of this,

but perhaps that's sort of uh, played into this. Just just hyper obsession with sacred smells. I was wondering about that very thing. One this is the very last thing I want to mention from this paper, but I thought this was interesting too. Uh. So, Harvey described Syriac Christian traditions. That's and this is related to from two that said that when Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden, you know the Garden of Eden story, they eat the fruit. No, they weren't supposed to do that.

They get kicked out. In these Syrian Christian traditions, they say it was because the serpent had breathed on Adam and Adam became mortal. And quote, Eden could not tolerate the stench of mortality. So He after the serpent breathed on him, he stunk, he stunk of death, so the garden had to vomit him out, and then it was the fragrance of life supplied by Christ that reversed this curse and frightened away death itself. So it's a parallel

to the garden. Uh, it said that the grave could not tolerate the smell of life, and thus it's spit Christ out and he was resurrected. Oh Wow. You know, I can't help but wonder. You know, Terry Jones of Monty Python was a pretty bright fell lane and very

well read, especially when it came to medieval topics. I wonder if that any of this played into the bog of eternal stench and labyrinth, because this is, you know, this idea that if Jareth, the ruler of the realm or to cast you out, you would be cast into the bog of eternal stench. And of course, if anything in the in the bog there touches you, you will smell bad for the rest of your life. Uh So, I don't know. I wonder if there's any connection there.

Maybe not, maybe it's that, but I wouldn't put it past Terry Jones. But that's interesting. I didn't make that connection, but it is interesting how it's reimagining these theological beliefs in terms of, you know, just understanding our basic physiology that, like smell, is clearly a sense that is very crucial to our discussed reaction and that, like bad smells, can easily cause the like the emitic function, you know, the desire to vomit and, uh, I don't know where I'm

going with that, but it makes sense to me. I also was wondering. I mean obviously different types of sensory hallucinations exist and olfactory hallucinations also exist. Um, but I feel like most of the time when I've read about olfactory hallucinations, they tend to be negative as opposed to positive. They tend to be bad smells, they tend to be situations where, instead of smelling flowers, you smell, you know, rot as opposed to the reverse or something, or smelling.

I said it may be the case that exists, but I don't think I've read anything about hallucinated pleasant smells. But if such a thing did exist, I guess it wouldn't be beyond the realm of possibility you could have positive olfactory hallucinations induced by religious experience. Than this kind of ties into the next thing I wanted to mention, which is a scientific study about the connection between a commonly used smell in religious rituals, specifically Frankincense, and pharmacological

effects in the brain. So this is a study that was published in the F A S Eb Journal in two thousand eight by Aria Musiaf at all, and it's called Incensial Acetate, an incense component ellicit psychoactivity by activating trpv three channels in the brain. Okay, so we know Frankincense and other incense, you know aromatic smells have been

used in religious rituals going way back. But this is an interesting finding that the smoke of Buzzwellia Resin again frankincense may not only affect us by habit or by learned cognitive association, there may actually be a armacological mechanistic effect on the brain as well. Uh, so the authors begin by observing you know that people have been burning Boswellia resin going back to ancient times for ceremonies of all different sorts, and that the smell is often said

to help people feel spiritual exaltation. This study was designed to investigate the neurological and behavioral effects of an organic compound called Incenseil Acetate, which is found in some types of Frankincense. INSENSEIL ACETATE has had already been shown at the time of this study to have some anti inflammatory effects, and the authors here we're looking at the effects on

the central nervous system. One key discovery seems to be that Incenseil Acetate is a potent agonist or activator for something called the transient receptor potential Valenoid, or TRP v three ion channel. Now, the TRP v channels are typically used by the skin and other tissues to detect temperature changes and warmth, as well as chemical changes that simulate warmth.

One example is that this is a different one, but spicy foods are known to work, at least in part, by stimulating the TRP V one channel, which is naturally used to detect burning sensations and pain via heat via real heat. But you eat some spicy food, the CAPSAS and in the spite in the hot peppers will activate those trpv one channels and create the the false sensation

of burning or heat in the mouth. Meanwhile, the authors of this study point out that the TRPV three channel specifically appears specialized to detect temperatures with a threshold in the range of thirty one to thirty nine degrees Celsius, which is about eighty eight to one oh two degrees Fahrenheit,

or roughly the range of human body temperature. And so generally, when this ion channel is activated, it is Experien Riens by the brain as the feeling of warmth on the skin or in the mouth, wherever the wherever it's activated. So these trpv three channels are expressed in places like the skin, in the mouth, the mouth cavity, of course, but strangely they are also expressed in the brain tissue itself.

And since the body is supposed to always keep the brain at a relatively constant temperature, it doesn't really make sense for the brain tissue to be sensitive to temperature changes. So what is the TRPV three channel doing in there? What's it? Why is it in the brain tissue? At the time of this study the answer to the question was unknown and I don't know whether there's been much development on that since then, but this study itself might help provide at least one small clue, and it goes

like this. So you've got this compound, instance all Acetate, found in frank instance, and it is shown in this study to be an agonist or activator for the TRP v Three Channel. It's activating these receptors that trigger are a feeling of warmth, as well as perhaps having other unknown effects within the brain. Could we look at behavior of animals that are stimulated with this compound in order to see what those effects might be? Well, what do you know? They did that and yes, there are some

effects in wild type mice. They found that Incenseil Acetate was shown to reduce anxiety and depression. Quote, at fifty milligrams per kilogram, I exerted a potent anxiolytic like effect, meeting anxiety quelling causing mice to spend significantly more time in the aversive open arms of an elevated plus maze. Uh. Now, rob we've talked about the elevated plus maze test on

the show before. That's a test commonly used to try to investigate Um anxiety, or the lack thereof in animals, where they're placed in a condition where they, you know, they can explore different parts of of of a simple cross shaped maze. Some parts of that maze are are covered, they're sheltered, so they create a feeling of safety or shelter for the animal. Other parts are uncovered and so generally when an animal spends more time exploring the uncovered parts,

they are showing less anxiety. You know, they're less worried about what's going to happen to them and they're more willing to engage in full exploratory behaviors without the without worries about harm. Uh, and this is used to test various kinds of anxiety drugs that are designed to reduce anxiety. But it appears that Frankinsense also will call, at least at this dose, will cause mice to have less anxiety

about these uncovered, exposed spaces. And they also showed in some different tests that the compound had antidepressant effects on swimming tests and mice. And they double checked this mechanism by trying to reproduce these results on mice that had been genetically altered to have their trpv three receptors knocked out, and the frankinstance compound had no effect on those. So

it looks like it is indeed working via trpv three. Now, the study was in mice and the same thing might not hold true for humans, or it might not hold true at the doses one would be likely to receive just from being in a room that is, you know, lightly smoked with Frankinsense. But it does at least raise

this interesting question. Is Frankinsense in particular selected for religious rituals not only because of tradition and the pleasant smell, but because of some kind of possible downstream pharmacological effects associated with activation of the TRPV three channel? And these these again, could include sensations of warmth as well as regulation of emotional states, particularly anxiety and depression. This is fascinating. So yeah, I mean, on one level, potentially good news

for the church mice in general. Yeah, with nothing else, but but yeah, like trying to imagine, like how this could feed into ideas and rituals revolving around frankinsense. I mean again, obviously church members at large or not huffing Frankincense uh in in in their worship. And also we're talking about we're often talking about rather large spaces with

just kind of wafting about. But if at some point somebody in a position of sort of spiritual, theolotological power, uh had been in a more confined space with this and had experienced some of these Um sensations whilst uh, you know, breathing in some frankincense saturated air, you could see how that might lead into uh emphasises that are

placed on on Frankincense moving forward. This absolutely got me wondering about formative experience in which I wonder if one St Ephraim maybe got into a little hot box room, got very, you know, a confined space, and went hard on the Frankincense and that did something to him. Yeah, he emerges believing that he can not only metaphorically but literally smell the presence of God. Yeah, this is this

is fascinating. I guess I'd love to hear from frankinsince enthusiasts out there, UM, and also, I guess in general, it would be interesting to hear from people whose religious practices do have a a dedicated incense or specific odor like like. Certainly I can think of like Asheram type environments. I've been in uh you know where there is there's incense burned and I don't even know what specific incense

would be, but it does contribute to that space. But I think back on growing up in a like a Protestant church environment and I don't I would be hard pressed to say what the smell, but the odor of the sacred spaces was. You know, it was just like what vacuumed carpet, freshly vacuum carpet maybe something like that, something very neutral and almost invisible, air conditioning perhaps, or Um, I guess, kind of the wood of the pews, that

sort of thing. But nothing. It's like that is like literally piped in or literally burnt and created in the space. I feel like I've been in some Protestant churches that almost had new car smell. I don't know how to explain what that is. New Car smell is interesting to think of in terms of like religious experience, at least within the uh the sort of pseudo religious experience in the secular capitalist world of consumerist worship of the automobile.

I guess sometimes there is that new church smell sometimes that you do encounter that right where it's just like the new construction smell, new paint, that sort of thing. Yeah, now one one last thing I wanted to touch on here. UH, would be remiss if we were talking about Thuribles and we did not mention the UH, the the Botea fumeriou. This is the largest of all thuribles. It is found in Spain's Santiago de Compostela Cathedral, and this is literally translated.

It is the smoke expeller. It is a rate. Uh. Is a huge eight M or hundred and seventy six pound thurible. That's stay. If it's it's standing upright on the ground. It would stand one point uh, six meters, or five ft two in height. So it's like the size of a person. Is this the height of a person? And Uh, and therefore it's too large for one individual

to swing. No, instead it swings from a pulley system on the ceiling like a great pendulum through the space here, and you can look up videos of it and it's it's pretty intimidating. It's this silver finished, brass, bronze comet burning its way back and forth through the church. You can imagine like if someone were to walk in front of this and they would just be completely walloped. Um,

it's UH, yeah, it's it's pretty amazing. It's I think the current one only goes back a hundred, seventy one years, but the use of the pulley system and the use of a large thurible in this church goes back centuries, to I think the fourteen hundreds, and there have been some notable accidents over the years. Every now and then you know something's gonna go awry. I think in six two and it allegedly flew out of a window, but

nobody was hurt. Um, this is I mean, I love this thing, but also I just got sad thinking about how I'm positive that Dan Brown has written a novel in which someone is murdered with this object. It just has to be. Yeah, it seems like that would be an irresistible scene for for a novel like that. Like maybe that's how you you do in your villain, or maybe that's the sort of James Bond esque scheme that your villain has to take out, uh, your your hero.

What would be the plot to be like? Oh, no, the Dalai Lama has been crushed to death by a giant Thurible and it's up to our symbologist, who only as twenty four hours, to catch the killer before the volcano erupts. That I don't know. I guess it would also be irresistible because I think in Bertaccos fucos pendle Um somebody ends up hanging from the pendulum or something. It's been a very long tent since I read that one.

So it would make sense give, you know, all this Dan Brown stuff, since the sort of sense to sort of come in the wake of Umberto Eco. It would make sense that that it would go in that direction. Now I actually was researching another angle on sensors for incense, and it turned out to be a pretty exciting area of religious technology bleeding into the history of technology in general. So I'm gonna set that aside. We'll come back to that. So if you haven't had enough incense yet, don't worry.

There's going to essentially be more incense content coming out, but instead of it being incense part three, it's going to be a separate discussion. That just involved since, since now we didn't touch on anywhere near all the various

incense traditions from cultures around the world. They're marvelous examples that I know I was running across from parts of Africa, Mezzo in South America, the Middle East and much more are so please you're right in if there's a specific example you'd like to highlight, something that's part of your practice or culture, because we'd love to hear from you all.

In the meantime, if you would like to check out other episodes of stuff to blow your mind, our core episodes published on Tuesdays and Thursdays and the stuff to blow your mind podcast feed, you can find that wherever you get your podcast episodes. On Monday's we do listen mail. On Wednesdays we do an artifact or monster fact, and this week's, by the way, in case you missed it, is incense themed, so go back and listen to that one if you missed it. And on Fridays we do

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