I'm looking for a good book on making my own incense because winter is coming and I don't want the plants in my herb garden to go to waste. I've heard of and flipped through a copy of Cunningham's Incense, Oils, and Brews but have heard that he leaves out a lot of safety measures or calls for the use of expensive or hard to find ingredients. Does anyone have anysuggestions?
I'm not sure that i know any spells or anything, but you could cover your herb garden with a transparent bag or other type of transparent container. This will allow the sun to get to the plants and keep the weather on the outside. It will also keep the plants from frosting. If you have really bad winters then if your garden is small enough, I would consider tranplanting them into containers and bringing them into the house. Hope this helps.
I would like to say that YouTube and many articles on here are great for this question.
I believe that Akashawolfe is an amazing teacher on YouTube and shows you all kinds of things, also along with tiptoechick. These are amazing people who teach you everything.
@ Tolanpanda9 - I'd be hard pressed to do any of that since I'm in a pretty small apartment and my cat tends to eat any plants I bring in unless they get brushed with hot sauce. There's a couple of things I know that I'm going to try doing that with, namely the sage and lavender, but the rest is just too big. Thank you though.
For tips info see www.incensemaking.com/ and see also
www.scents-of-earth. Amazon has some books on making incense but not all are about making magickal incenses. Standard incense recipes can be adapted for magickal use just refer to the correspondences for the used herbs, spices, resins, woods.
The basics/supplies for making your own incenses can be bought at online shops www.mountainroseherbs.com/ , www.azuregreen.com/ and www.baldwins.co.uk/
The oriental/asian grocery shops sell also spices like star anise sometimes packages are quite big so you might split/share with someone else who also makes incense.
Some older herbs get dry woody stems like mugwort or older lavender and rosemary bushes these you can also use for incense
Rodale's Illustrated Encyclopedia of Herbs - Kowalchik & Hylton has info on safety of herbs. When burning incense always ventilate your room and use proper safe charcoal for specific indoor use. You can also use a potpourri burner and simmer your incense in some water for the scent and a fumes-free scented room.
For people buying commercial incense the Japanese incenses give less smoke I find and are milder in scent more aromatic.
@ Nerys - Thanks for all of the information. It should be really helpful. I tried making a batch of incense not to long ago, but they molded instead of drying right. I'm thinking that next time I need to use less water and do an active dry on them instead of putting them in the oven to just sit.
