Maroma Incense of Auroville Frankincense

I like frankincense, so I ordered a pack of these sticks while browsing on Sound Travels for some Himalayan Rope Incense. It's £2.50 for a pack of ten perfume dipped sticks.

I became quite interested in the companies involved in the making and distribution of this incense as I opened the packet, as there is evidence of care for the environment in the packaging, and I was becoming intrigued as I surfed the net for information on Auroville and Maroma. Sadly, the incense was not living up to my expectations  - the aroma is more about the base organic material than about the frankincense - indeed, I wonder where the frankincense actually is as it is so faint and dominated so much by other aromas.  The main aromas are of  the burning of wood powder, coal dust, dried cow dung, paint, and solvent. There's a bit of heat in the aroma as well, though not enough to sting.  The packet is a plain stiff naturally made paper, yellow coloured with slightly blurry orange text with a simple flower design. The simplicity of it is quite attractive, The text is translated into five languages, so this incense goes round the world. The packet has a black print stamp at the bottom saying it is distributed in the UK by First Natural Brands, and gives a himalaya-uk web address which appears to have been taken over by a Japanese Viagra company! The Himalaya-UK company got taken over  in 2012 by  First Natural Brands, who are reviewed by Natural Products Online here.

Maroma is part of the fascinating sounding Auroville project - a town in South India intended to bring together in harmony people from all nationalities.  All Maroma incense is fair trade, and the company is run in a socially conscious way.

I love the sound of the project, and would be interested to discover more about the Maroma product line (the name comes from Mother and Aroma and back to Mother), though I am slightly put off by the aroma on this one. Chrissie just walked past and said "It smells like a church in here", which is her standard comment when I burn frankincense,  so perhaps I need to stand back from this incense a little, and allow it to do its work less directly.  Ooh, it's burning a little distance behind me now, and I am picking up little whiffs of cannabis resin. Interesting.

Date: March 2017   Score: 20


Burned some more of this today. We were sorting out some vinyl records in the front room, and casually burning incense from my already reviewed incense box. Everything was going along pleasantly until I lit up two of these. We had to stop them, and open the front door to remove the smoke. Gee, smoky, harsh, and unpleasant. Perhaps it was because I was burning two of them. Anyway - I'm moving the remainder from my everyday incense box to the toilet cleaner box in the hall. I'll see how one does at just covering up bad odours.

Date: June 2017    Score: 3

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Frankincense

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