“….bedewing the air with rose and balsam."

 

Beautiful cakes of the finest incense ingredients …. Inspired by the Greco-Roman Mysteries of Isis, roses were filled with divine meaning and offered to the Goddess.

I have always been fond of Apuleius's “Metamorphoses” and his descriptions of the Epiphany of Isis and her rites of initiation. -I imagine an incense-like “Rose of Isis” smoldering on those ancient altars. It has been a wonderful meditation creating these fragrant cakes of Resin, Sandalwood, and Rose.

 

 Contains:

 

Rose Damascena Concrete

Rose de Mai 

Mysore Sandalwood

Yemeni  Myrrh

Sultan's select Ivory Frankincense

Benzoin

Labdanum Resin

Dusted with shimmering Sandalwood powder

 

Roses have a sort of hidden power.  In fact, even as far back as Ancient Egypt, the rose was a powerful symbol of love and beauty.

The rose became incredibly important to the Egyptians as they believed it had both powerful healing and aphrodisiac properties.   

The Egyptians believed that roses had “magic” properties that could transcend death. Fragments of roses have frequently been discovered in burial tombs and even within the wrappings of mummified bodies. They symbolized a physical link between this life and the afterlife, flourishing in the sun and being reborn each spring.

Perhaps the rose’s most important role in ancient Egypt was its close association with the Egyptian Goddess Isis. The rose was her symbol and was often depicted alongside her in Ancient Egyptian art, most predominantly in her temples at Thebes.

 

These special cakes are about 1” dia, hand-formed. They come in a rose gold tin and are nested rose petals from our garden and Royal White Frankincense. This price is for .5 oz (about 9 cakes)

 

From Lucius Apuleius “Metamorphoses” (c.155 CE)

 

“When I had ended this prayer and made known my needs to the Goddess, I fell asleep, and by and by appeared unto me a divine and venerable face, worshipped even by the Gods themselves. Then by little and little, I seemed to see the whole figure of her body, mounting out of the sea and standing before me, and so I shall describe her divine appearance if the poverty of my human speech will allow me or her divine power give me eloquence to do so.

First, she had a great abundance of hair, dispersed and scattered about her neck, on the crown of her head she wore many garlands interlaced with Roses, just above her brow was a disk in the form of a mirror, or resembling the light of the Moon, in one of her hands she bore serpents, in the other, blades of corn, her robe was of fine silk shimmering in divers colors, sometimes yellow, sometimes rose, sometimes flame-like.

…..Thus the divine shape breathing out the pleasant spice of fertile Arabia, spoke….”