Medicine Buddha Incense from Bhutan

 

I picked this up from Wicked Dragon in their sale - I believe it is now sold out, though is widely available from a range of other outlets such as BuddhistImages for £4 and OneWorldIsEnough for £7 (who may be the UK importers). Unsure who makes it - but all retailers do say that it is made in Bhutan. 

In appearance and packaging it conforms with other Himalayan incense I've had. It's a rough, dry dhoop, created out of finely ground plants and resins. The scent on the stick is natural - there's no evidence of volatile perfumes. It's a dry woody aromatic scent - slightly spicy like juniper and pine, with the warmer spice of woods like cedar. It's gentle, mildly attractive, a little dusty. It's not an aesthetically appealing scent. There's no balance here - no contrasts. The person making this appears not to have had aroma or perfume notions in mind. The emphasis in Himalayan incense appears to be the healing, medicinal, and spiritual aspects rather than the aesthetic. And I respect that, and am curious about it as an incense hunter. But in our house we mainly burn incense for the pleasure of the scent - even if the scent is being used simply to freshen up a room or activate a sterile space and give it cleansing life, we prefer that the incense smells nice. 

The scent on the burn echoes and enhances what is found on the stick - and I have noticed this with incense made from dried ingredients. Traditional masala incenses are like this. Most masala incense recently has been perfumed to one extent or another. I'm cool with incense being perfumed - but there is something compelling about a proper traditional incense.  This is the way incenses have been made for hundreds of years. Pure natural ingredients, crushed and blended, and then burned. The scent is mild and pleasant and has the woody spices of a pine forest at Christmas. It's a little sombre and has a narrow and rather simple olfactory range, so this is not an incense to delight. But the scent is nice, and it is calming. And it does act as a room cleanser - though you'd have to burn a few to cleanse the whole house. 

Date: Dec 2024    Score: 28 

Himalayan incense
Nepal, Tibet, and Bhutan