It’s been a while since I wrote anything about scent. The perfume landscape has been bleak and tiresome over the past year, especially in contrast to my splendid new life. Here, perfume exists as a scrim — a filter that other, more compelling things stand before or shine through. I’ve forgotten to wear perfume, sometimes many days in a row. This would have been unthinkable a few years ago, but I am supremely content now, beautiful things surround me and emanate from me. There is no need to add anything. I have become unfussy.

On occasion I have felt a pull, ordered an assortment of samples, and found all of them lacking. Perfume was ennui at best, and frequently an annoyance. I was beginning to think that nothing could excite me when Chris Rusak announced a new project. It wasn’t perfume, it was a zine.

I knew from Chris’s previous Studio Series that his writing is always enjoyable, so I pre-ordered the zine without a second thought. I also found myself daydreaming… maybe this will be the announcement of a new perfume? Do I need a new perfume? It was a delightful surprise to find out that the subject of the zine wasn’t perfume at all — it was incense. Incense is one of those things that we all “know,” but do we? When people say “liturgical incense” it’s one of those I-know-it-when-I-see-it phenomena. I smell something, it reminds me of church, that’s liturgical incense. That’s the furthest my thoughts had ever taken me.

The Conflict of Embracing “a Churchy Thing”

In an uncanny twist, the death of Sinéad O’Connor was announced at the same time my box of liturgical incense arrived. In high school I had worn out more than one The Lion and the Cobra cassette tape. A few years later Sinéad became a light in the darkness of abuse, someone who I gravitated to again and again as a survivor over the course of twenty years. Suddenly a lot of feelings resurfaced, and my thoughts about incense shifted from excitement to trepidation. I hadn’t really expected this, but here it was.

I sat in my backyard and wondered, did I want to smell liturgical incense? Looking at the photos of incense cedar trees on the cover of the zine I decided, hell yes I do. Incense comes from nature, a church has no more right to it than I do. Ritual and beauty are my birthright; I will claim them and I will have them. Religion has taken enough from me, I will not cede another inch. For those who have fond memories of church, this experience can reinforce them. For those of us who have unpleasant memories it is a chance to make new associations, to defang and reclaim spiritual experiences, in the safety of our homes. What a marvelous gift.

As it turns out, there was no need to worry. In the zine, Chris Rusak does acknowledge that church has harmed people, and continues to harm people. People like me, and people like him. He is very cognizant and respectful of the fact that people will have varied, and maybe even unexpected, responses to the smell of incense. He also gently reminds us that, aside from our own associations, most of what makes incense “liturgical” is just branding and marketing. Incense can have other uses and significance; how we approach and interact with it is entirely up to us.

And then he leads us through the experience, step by step. Reading his personal accounts of using each incense, along with knowing that many other people were also embarking on this journey, I felt comfortable and supported. It has been an intensely rewarding activity for me.

What’s Included in the Kit

The primary draw of this project is the zine. It’s substantial — thirty-four 6×10-ish pages on quality paper, professionally printed and neatly fastened. It has a thick, durable cover and contains color photos of all the incense blends. Within it is an introductory essay about the history of liturgical incense and its intersection with current events, a professional perfumer’s expert description and assessment of fourteen incense blends from eight different brands, and a thoughtful conclusion which addresses the many meanings and uses for incense that are possible for each of us as individuals, according to our own values and desires.

I purchased the zine before I knew about the availability of the incense kits, and it would be a wonderful purchase on its own. The curated selection and skillful evaluation of a variety of liturgical incenses is an excellent stand-alone learning tool that will teach you to select better incense for personal use. As someone who has bought a fair amount of incense in the past, I can appreciate that the knowledge I gained just from reading will inform my future purchases, save me money, and increase my enjoyment of incense.

The add-on kit was a bonus, announced later, and is an excellent value. It contains thirty charcoal disks and 9-10 grams of each of the fourteen incense blends, individually packaged and labeled. I am working my way through the kit in order, reading along in the zine. I have used only one type per day, continuing to add more incense for the entire 45-60 minutes that one charcoal disc burns. This hour of fragrance uses less than half the amount of incense provided.

The Incense Selections

I don’t want to give away the specific brands and blends of incense that are described in the zine and included in the kit. I think it’s definitely worth buying the zine (only $10) to read about the history, the ritual, the way that these items were selected, and Chris Rusak’s superb analysis of each of them. It’s a valuable guide and sturdy enough to keep as a reference.

I will say that there is a range of quality and uniqueness — which is good! All of the incense included is pleasant, and a better quality than what most of us have been buying in head shops and at farmer’s markets for much of our lives. But the presentation of a range allows you to really appreciate what makes some brands more special, more expensive, and possibly more enjoyable to you. I’ve been pleased with all of them, but as I’ve worked my way through the kit I can definitely say that some are more mundane and others are standouts. Experiencing some “everyday” incense helps to highlight what is unique and extraordinary about the more “special occasion” blends.

My Experience with the Zine and Incense

I am choosing to use the incense poolside in my backyard. I love being out there anyway, relaxing in the night breeze and looking at the gorgeous moon in the inky LA sky. Adding incense-burning to this experience has been absolutely sublime. I have no doubt that if I used the incense indoors I could continue to enjoy the scent for many hours after it’s extinguished. However, even just using it outside, it’s a bargain compared other ways that I typically use atmospheric scents. Each session is about an hour of active incense burning. I estimate that I’ll get about 40 one-hour uses out of the incense that came in the kit, with just the addition of a few dollars worth of incense charcoal when I’ve used up what was included. I paid $60 plus shipping for this 40-hour at-home, guided experience of fragrant bliss.

In addition to enjoying the incense that comes in the kit, through reading and experience, I am learning how to better evaluate incense and getting a better idea of what I personally enjoy. Creating this kind of experience on your own would have been a huge investment of time and money, with variable results, and you would still be missing the expert guidance. In the past when I’ve bought loose incense, I’ve had spotty success in obtaining the kind of quality and types of scents that I prefer. I am thrilled to have had this opportunity to increase my own knowledge and buying savvy, and to discover the joy of doing this intentional ritual as a way to interact with scent.

I was already a casual buyer of loose incense and bakhoor. I have a few charcoal-burning vessels as well as an electric burner and a subtism heater. I have mica plates and fancy tools. And yet, when I bought incense for myself, I was often overwhelmed by the choices. After too many substandard and unsatisfying purchases, I began to limit myself to only frankincense tears and myrrh chunks, but even then the quality was highly variable. I started saying that incense is like fish — often things are labeled and sold as something better than what’s actually in the package. I wasn’t confident enough to buy any sort of quantity because I never knew if I was buying something good.

What this project does is make incense more accessible for everyone. You don’t have to have any special knowledge or experience to start. You don’t really even have to have the kit, although it’s fun to follow along and smell the exact products that are being described. But the full instructions for using loose incense are there, along with lots of advice that will be invaluable in selecting and enjoying specific types. I haven’t looked into re-purchasing any of the products for myself (the kits are a one-time offering which won’t be restocked), but even if you had no intention of buying these specific blends, the information included in the zine is very useful. I learned what makes incense “liturgical,” and that the mystique is a man-behind-the-curtain phenomenon. When you use incense in your own space, you can ascribe your own meaning and purpose; you do not need a blessing or an intercessor.

I have enjoyed this so much that I felt like sharing it. It’s moments like these when I wish I led the kind of life where I could take a whole day to write about something, then come back and edit it. This is the kind of cool thing that deserves that type of attention. But I have limited free-time and other commitments, including other writing, and today I felt quite sure that if I don’t just do this now, it will be sold out by the time I get to it next weekend. So you get my superfluous, unedited thoughts. But if you manage to slog through them early you’ll have a chance to order a zine, perhaps even one of the kits before they’re gone.

Find the zine & incense kits at https://shop.chrisrusak.com/

Companion Incense Perfumes

When I started burning incense at home at night, I found myself wanting more of it during the daytime. It became a sort of craving; I would think about incense so much I would start to smell it even when it wasn’t there.

So over the past week, I’ve remembered to wear perfume. I chose incense scents and they’re delightful in the heat wave we’re currently experiencing. I own things like Avignon and Eau Sacrée, but those are a little too on-the-nose. These are some of my favorite incense perfumes.

Clockwise from top left:

• Io, Chris Rusak Perfume – Chris’s first incense perfume, a dry, smoky, earthy landscape that perfectly captures the rugged beauty of Southern California, an exceptional incense perfume

• Rêve d’Ossian, Oriza L. Legrand – fizzy enchanted forest resins, liturgical incense for a fairy church

• Resonance, Chris Rusak Perfume – kaleidoscopic green forest incense, delightfully sour, the feeling of sun filtering through the canopy to warm your face, unique, hypernatural, and full of life

• Relief, Chris Rusak Perfume – not a “traditional” incense perfume but the best myrrh perfume of any type, exquisite Somali myrrh wafting through a tobacco barn

• Parfum Sacre, Caron – spicy, powdery myrrh and rose

• Teatro Alla Scala, Krizia – opulent beeswax geranium suffused with incense – described in detail in the zine by Chris Rusak

• L’Eau Trois, Diptyque – herbal frankincense, smells medicinal which is why I adore it

In retrospect, it is not surprising that Chris Rusak embarked on a study of liturgical incense and shared it with perfume fans. In the essays he gives his own personal reasons, which are endearing and enlightening. But it’s been obvious all along that Chris knows and loves incense. His first incense perfume, Io, was a revelation. So intense, evocative, and unusual. Smelling it for the first time took me back to wearing Norma Kamali Incense. Among incense perfumes, it’s a statement piece. Initially I wondered if I could wear something so striking and I was thrilled to find that I can. It’s an all-time great and I feel so fortunate to have found it early enough to stock up on multiple bottles.

Since Io, Chris has given us two more exceptional incense perfumes. We never quite know what he’s up to, but hearing that he’s been intently studying incense seems like a very good sign that something great could be in the works. For now I’m very content with my new incense hobby.