Incense occupies a significant, if rarely foregrounded, position in the depth-psychology corpus, appearing most consistently at the intersection of sacrifice, purification, and the metaphysics of vital substance. Onians provides the most theoretically sustained treatment, demonstrating that in Egyptian and Roman practice incense was understood as a divine exudate — the crystallised sweat or sap of a god's body — whose fumigation restored moisture to desiccated divine or mortal remains, thus functioning as a vehicle of revivification rather than merely of veneration. This biological-theological logic connects incense directly to the wider archaic symbolism of life-fluid, tree-sap, and sacrificial offering. Burkert and Benveniste approach incense etymologically and ritually, locating it within the Greek and Indo-European semantic field of smoke-production (the root *dheuH-) and noting its paired appearance with wine in Roman supplicatio. Von Franz reads incense through a fairy-tale lens, identifying its smell as a marker of ritual propriety and demonic contamination. Jaynes situates incense-smoke among the expanding repertoire of divination media that proliferate as bicameral authority fractures. Campbell invokes it as an element of paradisiacal abundance. The Daoist material in Kohn grounds incense firmly within liturgical and communal ritual structures. Across these registers, incense functions as a medium of communication between registers of being — human and divine, living and dead, pure and polluted.
Incense was burned to the gods with a like meaning. It is 'the incense of the god which has issued from him and the odour of the fluid which has issued from his flesh, the sweat of the god'
Onians argues that Egyptian incense ritual rests on the belief that incense is the crystallised divine exudate, and its burning restores vital moisture to the shrivelled body of a god or the dead.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988thesis
there was a preliminary offering of incense (i. e. the exudations, sap of trees) and wine. Incense had apparently replaced native grain or aromatic leaves
Onians traces the Roman preliminary offering of incense to its archaic substitution for grain and aromatic leaves, interpreting it as tree-exudate offered to strengthen the deity.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988thesis
myrrh, incense (tus), and other exudations, 'tears' or 'sweat' as the Greeks and Romans termed them, from trees were used, sap to compensate for the 'sap' the dead had lost.
Onians demonstrates that myrrh and incense, understood as arboreal tears or sweat, were offered to the dead to replenish the life-fluid their corpses had lost.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988supporting
That is not your business; it is the affair of the gods to judge the smell of the incense. Bad smells are usually attributed to the devil and evil. That's why incense is used to purify a church from the influence of evil demons.
Von Franz interprets incense in fairy-tale and folk-religious context as a purifying counter-force to demonic pollution, its fragrance opposed to sulphurous evil.
, Archetypal Patterns in Fairy Tales, 1997supporting
'Incense is the only thing totally consumed by fire in the course of Babylonian offerings' (Lambert, W. G. 1993, 194).
Seaford cites the scholarly finding that incense held a unique status in Babylonian cult as the sole offering entirely consumed by fire, distinguishing it from food offerings shared between deity and worshippers.
, Money and the Early Greek Mind: Homer, Philosophy, Tragedy, 2004supporting
the methods and techniques of the baru break out into an astonishing diversity of metaphiers for the gods' intentions: Not only oil but the movements of smoke rising from a censer of incense held in the lap of the diviner
Jaynes situates incense-smoke among the proliferating divination media of the first millennium BCE, reading its adoption as evidence of the breakdown of direct bicameral god-communication.
, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, 1976supporting
thúō goes back to a present tense dhu-yō the root of which properly means 'to produce smoke,' and it is directly related to the Latin suf-fiō 'to expose to smoke, to fumigate'.
Benveniste establishes that the Greek word for sacrifice etymologically means smoke-production, linking the act of burning incense to the deepest semantic layer of Indo-European sacrificial vocabulary.
, Indo European Language and Society, 1973supporting
incense, attendant of, 327; in art, 713-14; in ritual, 314, 333; in zhai, 332. incense burner, lighting of, 667, 672, 677, 796; master of, 659; in ritual, 659, 664, 672
Kohn documents incense and the incense burner as structurally central elements of Daoist liturgical practice, appearing across ritual genres, art, and communal ceremonies.
, Daoism Handbook, 2000supporting
Josiah also pulled down the large effigy of Asherah and destroyed the apartments of the Temple prostitutes… he tore down the altars of incense standing on them, he smashed the sacred poles
Armstrong recounts Josiah's iconoclastic reforms in which incense altars are destroyed as symbols of polytheistic apostasy, marking incense as a charged theological battleground in Israelite religion.
, A History of God, 1993supporting
One hundred thousand vases made of every kind of jewel should be there, filled with various sweet perfumes and emitting incense pluming skyward.
Campbell cites incense as an element of Pure Land paradisiacal imagery, where its skyward plume marks the sensory abundance and sanctity of the Buddha-land.
, The Mythic Image, 1974aside
they have forsaken me and have burned incense to other gods, that they might provoke me to anger with all the work of their hands
Campbell quotes the prophetic condemnation of incense burned to foreign gods as the theological crime precipitating Yahweh's wrath, illustrating incense as a marker of religious loyalty and transgression.
, Occidental Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume III, 1964aside
eUlllUllu, also from the prefixed verbs, 'incense' (lA); emeUlllUTp0<.; 'fumigator' (Ephesus), eUlllaTpOV 'vessel for fumigation'
Beekes documents the Greek etymological family of words for fumigation and incense, tracing them to the root *dheuH- meaning smoke, confirming incense's deep connection to the Greek sacrificial vocabulary.
, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2010aside