INCENSE
CREATE YOUR PERSONAL BLENDS OF INCENSE TO ENRICH AND DISCOVER YOUR SACRED INNER SPACES
JENNIE HARDING
Incense is an increasingly popular tool for restoring calm, cleansing atmospheres and enhancing spiritual practices such as meditation. This book is a simple-to-follow introduction packed with lots of ideas to try at home. It is written both for complete beginners and for those with some notion about using incense but who want to know much more. A senior aromatherapist and lifelong student of fragrances, Jennie Harding is ideally qualified to write this unique book.
Jennie introduces twenty-five key ingredients in the preparation of incense and describes how to use them. There are many ways of burning incense: from the great iron burners of eastern temples to smaller charcoal burners and joss sticks. Jennie describes how to make a simple burner of your own to use at home and explains which incense to burn to purify, for calm, while meditating, to celebrate, to create an atmosphere or simply to give pleasure.
This book includes archaeological evidence for how incense has been used in the past and takes us on an exotic aromatic trip through the great civilisations.
Jennie Harding is the author of CREATIVITY AND THE SIX SENSES, due shortly from Polair Publishing, SECRETS OF AROMATHERAPY (Dorling Kindersley), AROMATHERAPY MASSAGE FOR YOU (Duncan Baird) and several other books about fragrance and massage. She lives in London.
Autumn 2005
64 pages, line illustrations
178 x 144 mm landscape, paperback
ISBN 978-0-9545389-7-2
UK£6.99 - US$12.95
Reviews:
Covering the range of plant substances and other materials that we can burn for effect and pleasure. The book also includes instructions about making our own blends and their different purposes. There is information about the history and development of incense throughout the world and ideas for its use on our spiritual journeys.
YOGA SCOTLAND
Jennie has written an absorbing book on a subject which might have been difficult to make interesting. Reading it, however, makes you eager to get started, and to fill your favourite room with fragrance. If incense appeals to you in any way, then you will find this educational, but for any of us who are interested in the way different aromas affect us, and the power of incense in particular, this is truly engrossing. I picked up the book to skim through and found I was going back to read it properly, and didn't put it down until I'd finished. One of the reasons for this, I'm sure, is that Jennie writes so well-making it a pleasure simply to read her prose.
Jennie's book deals with the qualities of incense, both material and spiritual; the many different ways of using it; about scent and ceremony, and describes ten individual incense-based meditative explorations. By the time I'd finished reading my head was filled with aroma!
A.H., in 'Stella Polaris' (White Eagle magazine)
Written by an experienced aromatherapist, the book offers a detailed overview of the use of incense in many traditions all over the world, particularly the east. It also gives full descriptions of how incense is made, its uses and properties. An excellent introduction.
Yoga and Health, June 2006
...The series from Polair also includes Incense by Jennie Harding, a guide that focuses on the history, the ingredients and the important role that this aromatic tool continues to play in different countries.
Conscious Choice