Smells and Bells

 As someone that doesn't really use incense or candles or anything, I feel this blog post will be a little lacking. However, this will not stop me. Scent is important. If you know anything about it, you know that we use it to eat, to love, to identify, to do pretty much all the important things we do. A main component of memory is scent. "... while buried in the hair of one’s wife it might remind a husband of the desire he felt for her on their wedding day." - Green In this blog post, I will be examining my own sensory perception of different scents. As I mentioned, I don't use incense, but my close friend does. When I go to her room, I feel calm, content, maybe a little excited beyond that. I used to not really like the smell of incense; all of it smelled too strong for me, too earthy and smoky. Now, I just think of her. It makes me think of her immediately, filling my senses with the memory of tangled limbs and laughter. Instead of pulling a, perhaps, more...

  Associative Learning;  Smell as a None Instinctual Sense An interesting feature we commonly do not think about when we talking about smell, is the fact that it is a learned sense. When we are growing up, we tend to be taught what scents are good versus bad, as opposed to knowing, instinctually, whether it is good or not. A great example of this, is the fact that we start to associate smells with certain memories, which makes us believe the smells are good. I tend to think of freshly baked cookies as a smell we associate with good memories. For me personally, I remember the smell of cookies as something that always arose in the winter, especially Christmas, so I have those warm and fuzzy Holiday feelings. Author Deborah Green talked a lot about the association between different scents and their cultural influences. “ More intriguing, however, is R. Yohanan ben Zakkai's response, which turns bad odor into a positive” ( The Aroma of Righteousness ) An interesting thing about sc...

 The Power of a Pause Dr. Maria Ulfah & Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. By Ava Barry When I first heard Dr. Maria Ulfah I was spell bound. Sitting in my dorm room, listening to a video that was posted as homework for one of my classes. I was planning on only watching a mere one to two minutes of this 28 minute video, yet I found myself sitting there in awe as the minutes quickly flowed by. This video was of a Quran recitation. The audience in the video was full, yet we [the viewers] didn't hear a sound other than her voice echoing through us.  "Indonesian audiences are not known for silence, even in the context of formal events. In this case, however, although the women enjoyed the snacks provided and some of them whispered to one another, there was relative silence for the duration of the presentation and recitation. At this event and the many others I attended where she was a featured (and paid) reciter, Maria Ulfah commanded an attentive audience." (Rasmussen, 205) For ...

Cooking as Devotion: The Religious Practice of Food Preparation (Religion in the Kitchen) By Calliope Mills  Although I would consider myself agnostic and without the ability to slaughter animals, the themes and experiences covered by Elizabeth Peréz covers in Religion in the Kitchen , I find compelling and on the cusp relatable. This is because this text redefines how we think about religious practice. While traditional views often emphasize formal rituals and sacred spaces, Pérez highlights the kitchen as a powerful site of devotion “The kitchen, therefore, is the great sacred laboratory where know-how, faith, respect and physical beauty meet each other for the enchantment of divinities” (Peréz 94). For practitioners of Afro-Cuban Lucumí religion, cooking is far more than a mundane chore—it is an act of spiritual dedication, community building, and cultural preservation. I think this exploration of redefinition also aligns with using “religion” outside of typical,  connotati...

The Aesthetics of Food Is There a Greater Purpose? by Ava Barry Look at the two images below- which looks yummier to you? Is it the image to the left... or the image to the right? Do you have your answer yet? If you choose based on the meal being prepared, then good for you; however, I'd dare to say that most of us choose the image on the right because it was presented more aesthetically. Maybe it is the array of beautiful colors, the lighting, or maybe its that it isn't merely just one dish, rather it is a spread. Maybe it is because the image on the left is really nailing the yellow-brown tint... However, the fact of the matter is that no one here has eaten either of these meals. Maybe you have had a meal similar, but you have not eaten these in particular. You may have just chosen your imaginary meal based on pure aesthetics rather than taste.  Images found through un splash creative commons license  But, don't be embarrassed, many of us do the same thing! When I prepare...

  Sacrifice, not necessarily bloody after all? (The Aroma of Righteousness) Calliope Mills  Personally, the associations I have with incense are related to late nights in rooms where the amount of tapestries on the walls is a fire hazard two times over, and the smokey, spicy, and multifaceted aroma of thinly coated burning wood is working overtime to mask the smell of freshly blazed “mary jane”.   It is also connected to small corner stores that sell gold-plated trinkets and scrolls covered with Tibetan prayers. I also have memories of it in my home, where my mother would light a stick while she was reading in the late evenings, on nights when my dad was off on his own adventure, as his deeply asthmatic lungs cannot cope with the light haze it cast over the downstairs area.  Before encountering the words of Deborah Green or taking part in this class, I would not have put such peaceful and slow images in the same frame as the word “sacrifice”.  This word for me h...

Perfuming As Obedience By Ava Barry ... The word obedience often has a negative connotation to it, but what if something was telling you to act obediently every day? Every second? What if I told you that almost all people are obedient to standards set by society and/or religious doctrines. In Deborah Green's book, The Aroma of Righteousness, she speaks about the importance that scent has in both rabbinic life and scripture. Green shows the reader different interpretations of scent from different midrashim. Therefore, women putting perfume on shows that it inherently is a form of obedience. “‘And why does a woman need to perfume herself, but a man does not need to perfume himself?’ He said to them, ‘Adam was created from the earth, and the earth never decomposes. But Eve was created from bone. For example, if you leave meat three days and it is not salted, it becomes putrid.’” (Gen. Rab. 17:8) Green, 137 This quote emphasizes how this midrash speaks of women perfuming themselves n...

Deborah Green’s writings explore the role of smell in religious rituals, texts, and culture, focusing on Jewish religious traditions. Green argues that scholarship has generally overlooked the sense of smell in religious texts for many reasons. Mainly, smell is a more subtle and less overtly intellectual sense compared to sight or hearing, which have been prioritized in religious studies. The sense of smell is associated with physicality and bodily experience, which may be dismissed by scholars who focus on the more spiritual, abstract, or intellectual aspects of religion. Additionally, the focus in religious texts often centers on sight, witnessing miracles, and hearing the voice of God. At the same time, the bodily senses, including smell, were often underexplored in academic religious study. In the bible, scent plays a vital role in sacrificial rites. Incense and fragrant offerings were part of worship and had a symbolic association with pleasing God. Incense had both a practical an...

  Hyperfixation; How Focusing on One Sense Can Calm the Others      As human's it seems both completely reasonable and normal to crave a calm mind state, or rather a neutral one. We strive to calm our senses, and remain "ration". At least, that's how I see it. To me being calm, or at least at ease, is what I strive for as a base emotion on a day to day experience. As a person with anxiety it's not necessarily an easily achievable thing, but with the help of both personal strategies and outsiders, I tend to be able to control my worries most of the time. When I don't I find it best to resort as what is commonly know as a state of hyperfixation. For me, that looks like sitting in a plain environment, closing my eyes and listening to music but it can look many ways for many people.        States of ease can be achieved in many ways. Ackerman sites the idea of scent as something both calming and accessible, " Hanging from my bathtub’s shower att...

Smell -  I liked when Ackerman wrote that  “we each have our own aromatic memories.” Being from a family that cooks almost every night I love when I can smell all the different foods being made from all the way down the hallway in my room. One of my favourite's being my mom's Cassava Pie. Like Ackerman said, it is hard to describe a smell to someone who hasn't smelt it before so I don't think I could even try. When I come back to the states, I bring Cassava Pie with me so that I can eat it while I'm away from home. When I heat it up and smell that memory filled aroma, all of sudden I am sitting in the living room watching a movie with my family while we wait for the pie to bake.   Touch - “Touch allows us to find our way in the world in the darkness or in other circumstances where we can’t fully use our other senses. " This quote is found in the section, The Skin Has Eyes. This quote reminds me of all the hurricanes that would pass Bermuda, knocking our power o...

  Touch Quote and Question from the Chapter 1 of Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman ; Quote: “It imprisons us, but it also gives us individual shape protects us from invaders,” Question: how do senses both limit and free us Other Notes: Massaged babies gain weight as much as 50 percent faster than unmassaged babies. They’re more active, alert, and responsive, more aware of their surroundings, better able to tolerate noise, and they orient themselves faster and are emotionally more in control. “At the University of Colorado School of Medicine, researchers conducted a separation experiment with monkeys, in which they removed the mother. The infant showed signs of helplessness, confusion, and depression, and only the return of its mother and continuous holding for a few days would help it return to normal.” WHY would you do this experiment to monkeys?? “Any first-time touch, or change in touch (from gentle to stinging, say), sends the brain into a flurry of activity. Any ...