By -


Religion & the Senses

Religious Properties of Smell

By Genesis Lantigua


Introduction:

    Candles, incense and essential oils have become our best friends when cleaning and perfuming our homes. Most of us also do not step outside our homes without first taking a shower and layering ourselves with lotions, deodorants and perfumes. Where does this obsession with scent come from and why is this a conversion in religious studies? Let's sniff into history and find out.

    Diane Ackerman has composed a beautiful and easily captivating text, A Natural History of the Senses, where she clearly illustrates the historical component of each of the senses. For this posts' sake, we will analyze Ackerman's first chapter on smell.

The History of Aromas

    According to Ackerman, perfumed scents were first used in Mesopotamia as incense offering to “sweeten the smell of animal flesh burned as offerings” (Ackerman, 56). Perfumes were eventually considered to contain mystical and sacred characteristics. The ancient uses of perfumes are many. Some used them to signal their royal status. Sometimes they were used to heal wounds. Some used them to conduct exorcisms. And others, as Ackerman informs Cleopatra and Marc Antony did, used them for couple intimacy. According to Ackerman, Egypt was the first region to use perfumes for everyday self indulgence rather than for sacred rituals.

Aromas and Religions

    In terms of religions, perfumed scents have always been very important. Ackerman brings up the following religions and their relationships to scents: when one who practices the Islamic religion picks up a rose (one of the most central components of ingredients in perfumes) this person must sigh "Allah, Allah", the first catholic rosaries were made of dry roses, the Anglican crusaders were attracted to the New World mainly because of aromatic spices and the Bible has several mentions of scents used for religious rituals. In the New Testament, we find Mary Magdalene and the other women seeking to anoint Jesus' body in aromatic spices. Ackerman also brings up king Solomon and his poem Song of Songs. In this poem, two lovers describe one another as pleasing aromas such as frankincense, myrrh, saffron, camphire (commonly known as henna), pomegranates, aloes, cinnamon, calamus, and other 'treasures'.

    The Aroma of Righteosness: Scent and Seduction in Rabbinic Life and Literature by Deborah Green, professor of Hebrew language and Judaic studies, goes further into the usage of incense and aromas in Biblical and Rabbinic context. Green states that it is believed Balsam, also known as the chief of spices, was given to Solomon as a gift from the queen of Sheba, along with other spices. Balsam is considered the best scent and to have been exclusively gifted to the land of Judea. Green also states that Biblically speaking, to be anointed and to be perfumed are equivalent and that in ancient Hebrew times, a perfumer, or an apothecary, and a spice seller were either close business partners or were one and the same. This supports Ackerman's argument that perfumes were considered mystical and sacred.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The most primitive sense

By -
Image
Smell the Flowers by Kirsten Star Smell, to me, is the most primitive sense. When most mammals are born, they immediately can recognize their mother’s smell and form an attachment to that smell. Mammals like puppies are almost entirely limited to only the sense of smell until they develop more of their other senses. The sense of smell also becomes the most primitive when considering humans and the phenomenon of perfume. For years, humans hunted certain animals for the purpose of obtaining the musk produced in the anal gland. This musk in small doses can act as an aphrodisiac when put into a perfume even though it has incredibly primitive origins. Though most of Western culture has an aversion to smells considered gross or undesirable, the wealthiest of women are still willing to pay heavy prices to spray a smell once obtained from the anal glands of other animals. The sense of smell is not something that humans can control and adjust but rather it is only changed by evolution over
Read more

Cannibalism and Symbolism

By -
Symbolism plays an important role in religious ceremonies because people cannot have the divine being where they want him all the time. So they start creating ways to be in touch with God. Such as in Christianity, eating bread is symbolized to be eating God-made flesh. There are similar rituals in Judaism where they eat the food of God. A big difference between taste and the other senses is that the object that is being sensed is internalized, whereas all the other senses use an external sensation. Taste cannot extend anywhere like the other senses can. This allows the humans to have no barrier between the divine (symbolized as food) and themselves. This is the closest they can get to God, but internalizing Him.  This thought of getting the closest they can to someone by ingesting and gaining power from it led my mind to wander to the thought of serial killers that also happen to be cannibals. I know that it might be a stretch, but there are some similarities. I als
Read more

Wrap-Up Post

By -
Image
Alright, let’s tie this up in a nice little bow. I genuinely did not know what to expect coming into this class. The extent of my knowledge of the senses comes from elementary school when we had to make it a little song to get the information through our tiny heads. Beyond that, everything seemed pretty cut and dry. We have five senses. We need to use all of them to survive. It’s as simple as that. I did not know how there was enough to talk about the senses to fill an entire college course, especially one specifically regarding the relationship between the senses and religion. But the fact that we were barely able to fit all the content in before the semester ended proves just how wrong I was. Let’s talk about why that is and what some of the things I learned were. First off, even the most basic assumption about the senses, that there are five of them, was questioned immediately. The sixth sense may not have been as clearly defined as the other senses, but there was certainly a lot to
Read more