Benzoin in Incense Traditions: Church, Bakhoor, Japan and Beyond

Benzoin has been an incense ingredient for as long as it has been traded, and almost never alone. Its job in every tradition is the same: to bring sweetness to a blend and to hold the other materials together. Where it differs is what it is asked to sweeten.

Southeast Asia: the source

In the Batak highlands of Sumatra, kemenyan is burned in household and ancestral rituals, in healing, and at funerals, and its smoke has been part of village life for centuries. Across the Malay world and in Laos and Thailand benzoin is burned in temples, in spirit offerings, and to fumigate houses. It is one of the resins that gave Southeast Asian incense its character before Chinese and Indian traditions arrived.

China

Benzoin, anxixiang, entered Chinese incense culture through maritime trade by the Tang dynasty. It appears in classical incense recipes as a sweetening and fixing agent in blends built on agarwood, sandalwood, cloves and musk, and in medicine as a warming, resuscitating drug. The name, sometimes explained as “incense from Parthia” (Anxi) and sometimes as “incense of peace”, carried over into Japanese.

Japan: ansokukō

Japanese blended incense (nerikō, kneaded incense; shōkō, powdered incense; and stick incense) uses a canonical set of ingredients: agarwood, sandalwood, cloves, cinnamon, camphor, spikenard, and ansokukō, benzoin. In the classical kōdō repertoire benzoin is a supporting material, sweetening and binding rather than leading. It is common in temple incense and in the incense used at Buddhist altars, where its softness suits the setting.

The Islamic world and bakhoor

Arab traders named benzoin and burned it. In the Gulf and the wider Arab world bakhoor is a blended incense of oud wood chips or powder, sandalwood, resins (frankincense, myrrh, benzoin, sometimes amber and labdanum), musk and perfume oils, formed into chips, tablets or a paste and heated on charcoal or an electric mabkhara. Benzoin’s role is sweetness and body. It is also burned in homes, scenting clothes and hair, and in mosques on feast days.

Christian churches

Church incense in the Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican traditions is frankincense-based, and in most blends benzoin is the second ingredient by weight. Myrrh adds depth; storax, cloves, cinnamon, rose or other oils are added in individual recipes. Monasteries and church-supply houses guard their blends. Orthodox incense is often made by kneading frankincense powder with fragrant oils and resins into small cakes, in which benzoin is a frequent binder. What most people recognize as “the smell of church” is frankincense sweetened by benzoin.

Europe: fumigation and Papier d’Arménie

From the sixteenth century European pharmacies sold benzoin as a fumigant for sickrooms, plague times and bad air. That tradition ended in a very specific product: Papier d’Arménie, the French booklets of benzoin-impregnated paper sold since 1885 as a room deodorizer and still made in Montrouge. See Papier d’Arménie.

Esoteric and folk traditions

Western magical traditions from the Renaissance grimoires onward assign benzoin to purification, prosperity and the planet Venus or the Sun, depending on the source, and use it in “planetary” incense recipes. Hoodoo and related folk practices burn benzoin for luck and cleansing. Its sweetness and its old reputation as a purifier are the through-line.

The common thread

In every tradition benzoin is the sweetener and the binder, rarely the star. Frankincense, agarwood or oud carries the identity; benzoin rounds it, holds it together and makes the smoke pleasant. Learn to notice it in a blend and you will find it in most of the world’s incense. See How to burn resin incense.

• incense
• traditions
• church
• bakhoor
• japan