Smells and Bells

  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...

 In Chapter 6 of The Aroma of Righteousness by Deborah Green, she talks about how smell can be thought of as being attached to the dead. I have never thought of smell in this way before. If we're talking about smell being linked to death in a literal sense, I'm not sure if it's something I relate to. If death doesn't smell like a rotting corpse or food gone bad, then I associate death with silence, a lack of smell, a lack of a person. Whenever I smell something that reminds me of one of my passed-on loved ones, I don't think to myself, "Oh, that reminds me of my dead loved one." Instead, I think, "Oh, now I miss them. I remember how that's how they smelled when they were still here..." or, "This smell reminds me of this memory we both shared before they were gone." I don't have a very pleasant outlook on death, however. Perhaps if I was a part of a religion that connected death with anointments and fumigation and pleasant smell...

The concept of martyrdom is interesting. Growing with this idea of martyrdom as a straight pathway to heaven, Green brings up an interesting point in " Ephemerality and Fragrance." This is probably a terrible point to bring up, but I don't think I ever thought about the physical sacrifice  aspect of martyrdom. At least in Catholicism, there are so many saints who were burned alive. In my history class, we just read St. Perpetua's account of her own death and that of St. Felicity, where they were sentenced to death by cow (this is important, I will mention this later). Now, Perpetua and Felicity weren't burned at the stake. St. Joan of Arc was, and probably a few others I can't name.  Again, this is a rather gruesome take-away from Green's writings, but I was so morbidly fascinated by this line from page 207: "God can [...] be soothed by the burning flesh of martyrs." That's a weird line. It's a really weird line to hyperfixate on, but it...

 I will admit that I never thought about incense that much. If I was to be asked 'What is incense?' five years ago, I would have answered "I don't know. Those stick things that you burn when people meditate." Upon reading the Deborah Green's The Aroma of Righteousness, I realized that I was only partially right in my guess. I never took the time to learn just how the burning of certain spices, herbs, etc can bring about a sense of religious sacrifice. It has been many years since I had gone to Church or CCD (Confraternity of Christian Doctrine) but upon reflection, I do remember the incense alter and the priest using the incense burner. He would  make the Sign of the Cross with the censer by making two   vertical swings   and a third horizontal swing. The three swings together symbolizing the Holy Trinity (information provided by my mother).  I may have wandered away from the topics in Green's article, but I truly do find her findings interesting. Particul...