Eastern Catholic/Orthodox incense

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porthos11

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Hi Easterns,

Question about incense. During my pilgrimage to the Holy Land, I noticed that the Eastern Orthodox churches had a distinctive scent to their incense, which I liked very much. Although I’m fine with the scent we use in my own Latin churches, I was wondering. Short of actually buying stuff from Mount Athos, is there anything we can mix with our basic “Latin” incense that can make it smell more, er, “Byzantine?”

I’m not sure if you know what I’m talking about though, so hoping for the best.
 
People’s personal preferences are always so interesting to me.

I prefer the scent of Latin incense; in most cases it has smelled to more more…substantive?..something like “packed a more powerful punch.” Anyway I do think that there is some sharing between the traditions, and I have heard of some Latin parishes buying their incense from Orthodox makers, so there’s gotta be some crossover.
 
stzosima.com/

My personal favorite. They have a scent called “byzantium”, and it’s fairly inexpensive, especially considering how far one of those little pellets goes!
 
porthos11 said:
Hi Easterns,

Question about incense. During my pilgrimage to the Holy Land, I noticed that the Eastern Orthodox churches had a distinctive scent to their incense, which I liked very much. Although I’m fine with the scent we use in my own Latin churches, I was wondering. Short of actually buying stuff from Mount Athos, is there anything we can mix with our basic “Latin” incense that can make it smell more, er, “Byzantine?”

I’m not sure if you know what I’m talking about though, so hoping for the best.
Click to expand...
In my (perhaps limited) experience, many Orthodox churches prefer “flowery” type scents for their incense (like rose, lilac, lily of the valley, or my favourite: jasmine), while much of the incense I’ve experienced in Western churches strikes me as more “spicy” than “flowery.” This is not to say, as some have pointed out above, that some Orthodox incense is more spicy than floral, but I think a certain generalisation can be made. Another difference between Eastern and Western incense appears to me to be the form it takes. Eastern incense is in pellet form, of varying sizes, while much Western incense I’ve seen is in more of a granular form. The pellets burn longer (and I’d say they smell best when first put on a burning coal.) The granular form makes quite a billow of smoke initially and more quickly dissipates. These characteristics are perhaps appropriate to their respective styles of worship. Censings tend to be more prolonged in Eastern services than Western.

Fr David Straut
 
I think Father is dead on. That’s exactly how I’d describe the general difference in smell between Eastern and Western incense. And I’ve always noticed that Western incense seems to emit more smoke, as Father said.
 
In the Orthodox church I used to attend, the incense was actually very strong and “spicy” to the point where a couple people actually were overcome by the smell and had to leave (or risk coughing out a lung, as my witty seven year old put it!)

In our Byzantine church, i’ve noticed the incense is strong but it has a smell that reminds me very strongly of Ivory Soap–it’s a very clean smell and doesn’t catch the throat at all.
 
Thanks brethren for the (name removed by moderator)ut. If I may ask, since I come from the Philippines, we have very few Eastern churches here, and none where I live. We do, however, have some liturgical apostolate stores that sell the basic “Latin” incense, and some imported, i.e. Italian incense with varying scents.

Is there a mix of scents you can suggest to have a “Byzantine” aroma? Maybe I can obtain samples from your suggestions and mix them up.
 
FrDavidStraut said:
In my (perhaps limited) experience, many Orthodox churches prefer “flowery” type scents for their incense (like rose, lilac, lily of the valley, or my favourite: jasmine), while much of the incense I’ve experienced in Western churches strikes me as more “spicy” than “flowery.” This is not to say, as some have pointed out above, that some Orthodox incense is more spicy than floral, but I think a certain generalisation can be made. Another difference between Eastern and Western incense appears to me to be the form it takes. Eastern incense is in pellet form, of varying sizes, while much Western incense I’ve seen is in more of a granular form. The pellets burn longer (and I’d say they smell best when first put on a burning coal.) The granular form makes quite a billow of smoke initially and more quickly dissipates. These characteristics are perhaps appropriate to their respective styles of worship. Censings tend to be more prolonged in Eastern services than Western.

Fr David Straut
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I am Latin Catholic, but I prefer the Eastern Catholic and Orthodox incense. The stuff we have tends to produce so much smoke that it makes me cough. The smell is not very good either. On the other hand, when I went to Byzantine Catholic Divine Liturgy, the incense was burning for a much longer period of time, but it was not too smoky. It smelled much nicer too.
 
I really appreciate and eastern catholic, Night Queen Incense Sticks by HEM Incense, Satya Sai Baba Nag Champa Incense are really not harmful for your body…
 
porthos11 said:
Hi Easterns,

Question about incense. During my pilgrimage to the Holy Land, I noticed that the Eastern Orthodox churches had a distinctive scent to their incense, which I liked very much. Although I’m fine with the scent we use in my own Latin churches, I was wondering. Short of actually buying stuff from Mount Athos, is there anything we can mix with our basic “Latin” incense that can make it smell more, er, “Byzantine?”

I’m not sure if you know what I’m talking about though, so hoping for the best.
Click to expand...
A few good sites for Orthodox incense:

www.orthodoxincense.com
www.orthodoxsupply.com (Sinai Premium Incense)
orthodoxgoods.com/gloriaincense.html (Gloria Incense)

The www.orthodoxincense.com site has the widest selection. It even includes incense imported from Mount Athos itself.

Nearly all church incense has a frankincense base. At times, frankincense is burnt by itself. There are many kinds of frankincense, and some, like Oman Frankincense, have a more full-bodied regal aroma to them.

I’ve never had a problem with the more “Western” incense. I remember once we were burning incense at an outside event and our subdeacon said, let’s burn this stuff here; father thinks it’s too Western to burn in church. It just happened to be my favorite blend!
 
Alexios said:
People’s personal preferences are always so interesting to me.

I prefer the scent of Latin incense; in most cases it has smelled to more more…substantive?..something like “packed a more powerful punch.” Anyway I do think that there is some sharing between the traditions, and I have heard of some Latin parishes buying their incense from Orthodox makers, so there’s gotta be some crossover.
Click to expand...
I’ve seen Gloria incense (an Orthodox-produced incense) sold by Catholic sites.
 
The Parish I attend does not use incense. I attended an Antiochian Orthodox Parish for a while before coming to the Catholic Church though, the incense were AWSOME. I miss them, along with the rest of the Orthodox Liturgy.
 
I have a few things to add to this conversation, even though it is 3 years later.

I think that that the differences between eastern and western incenses are difficult for the average person to determine.

Having actually bought some incense and burned it, I can say many of the comments here are generally true.

I think that the more flowery incenses are used on a regular basis my some eastern churches, and I noticed that they are often more slavic churches using this sort of smell, because they are cheaper to make seem to fit in with the your average sunday. Whereas a stronger more intense frankincese/myrrh type of incense is going to be more expensive and make more of an intense smell that works well on solemnities.

So I also think that because most western churches do not use incense every Sunday they therefore frequently tend to only use the most intense smelling incenses and or more expensive ones.

Although there are a few instances where just with the other “modernist” influences in the latin church you also have what I would call “modernist” incense (also modernist censors that have no ornament and look like car factory parts I have seen used sparingly in a suburban parish during a funeral). The modernist type incense, which I dont encounter often but I know is out there, has a sort of “artificial air freshner” type of smell, being far too intense and reaking of a sort of chemical smell. This is not to say it’s harmful but it is an annoying form of incense that encourages the people who are unfamiliar with good incense to say they dislike all incense.

However I do notice that more flowery and herbal types of incense are also used by the latin churches. Rose petals were a very popular ingredient in western incense during the past centuries, including england. Quite a few anglicans and traditional catholics that use incense on sundays after pentecost/epiphany use rose/flower or herbal smelling incense.

The strangest thing of all I’ve noticed is that a few latin churches have used some sort of incense made by native americans and used in pagan rituals. I don’t know that this is done on purpose, is ment to be an ecumenical statement or is meaningless, but it is something that I question whether it is good or bad.

So in summary, today at the present there are certainly general differences we encounter, with much exception and overlap. However my point here is that, as with many things, I believe that the usage and types of incense used in western and eastern orthodox/catholic christianity 500 years ago would have been more similar to each other than they are today, largely because in west incense has declined to be used with as great a frequency as it once was.

These are my general observations as someone who is continueing to learn about this area of the churches traditions, take them with a grain of salt. It is a very interesting thing to study I think, the history and variety of incense throughout the world.
 
Perhaps it had more to do with the quantity than the type of incense, but I’ve noticed that Latin incense never stuck to my clothing the way Byzantine incense does - my formal sweater smells (deliciously!) like incense for weeks on end…🙂
 
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