Original Incense Resin 180gr. from Mount Athos

Description

In the history of human civilization , there are not many elements being so close to the human sacrifice and offer to the God as the natural frankincense or the incense and the chrism , as a representation of the human prayer. Especially for the Greek Orthodox people, despite of the obvious role of the incense in the functional life of church , it had also been very important for the people’s habits because the frankincense and the lighting of the vigil were the main two denominators of their everyday life.
From ancient times, incense was known for its significant curative properties.That made it particularly precious and as a result it was much expensive. The word ¨incense¨ in Greek, is the corruption of the Arabian word ¨luban¨ which literally means ¨ milk¨, because the knots of the frankincense in the tree look like the fig’s milk.
The collection of these knots (or tears) is made the same way we collect mastic in Chios, by making incisions in the tree’s bark. These incisions are made in a particular period of time and after they take the frankincense they let it recover from five to seven years. The trees from which we take this aromatic resin belong to the family of ¨ Boswellia¨ which is planted in sandy areas in the South of the Arabian peninsula, Somalia and Ethiopia and in the East of India as well. The best quality of all is produced in the East of Oman (Dofar) and in Yemen. The natural frankincense – incense as it is known nowadays , is quite a recent development (about 40 years ago)and it comes from the mix of natural ground frankincense with aromas of specific proportions.
The scientific research of the curative properties the frankincense has, started after a Dutch tourist had seen sick gazelles biting the frankincense trees. Today, scientific researches have proved that there are definitely curative properties in the frankincense. So, burning natural frankincense is not only a need to the Orthodox people’s worship but it is also useful for our everyday hygiene.