Gathering ingredients for Samhain incense

My husband is lovely.  Simply lovely.  He truly is the best thing in my life.  And when I asked him yesterday if he would like to go to the cemetery with me to gather some ingredients for incense, he didn’t hesitate.  He was even a bit excited for another one of my cemetery adventures.

Cypress
A gravesite being taken over by a leaning cypress tree

He gave me space to meditate and commune with the trees to ask if I could use some of their materials for my incense, and he held what I had collected while I went on my mad search to find the next thing I needed.  Did I mention that he was sick and felt gnarly the whole time?  He’s lovely.

At any rate, I haven’t decided if I’m going to list my entire ingredient roster here, since I have a dream of one day hawking my incense wares on ETSY or some similar forum.  But I will show what I got on my collecting trip.

Ingredients
This is the stuff I gathered for my Samhain incense and altar

I got some graveyard dirt (and quartz and acorns and a shard of milk glass) to put into a small jar to keep on the altar.  I also got some leaves from a live oak, and cypress needles and bark.  The cypress smells soooooo good!  Those will all go into my incense.

Unrelated to the Samhain incense, I also got some lovely, crispy-dry hop flowers from an unnamed source.  Hops are great for anything having to do with sleep or relaxation.  They may find their way into a dream pillow at some point.

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On Figment a few days ago, there was a contest where you were asked to describe a totem in 33 words.  I seriously thought about it, and while I decided not to enter the contest, I did consider totems in my world, and which character would benefit from something of that nature.  Vine weaves charms into her dreadlocks as she moves along on her journey, and that was what sprang to mind immediately.  However, I began to think about some of the more peripheral characters, and dreamt up a short story for a character that’s dedicated to Cernunnos.  I’m feeling especially drawn to Cernunnos right now, probably due to the time of the year, and it seemed to write itself.  Now to type it out.  🙂

2 Comments

  1. You’re both very lucky to have found one another. My sister and I used to visit cemeteries together. (I think that and our sense of humor are the only two things we really have in common.) Anyways, lovely story. Thanks for sharing.

    1. amieravenson says:

      Thank you hon! Traveling to cemeteries, especially the old and/or historically significant ones, is one of my favorite things to do. I’ve driven for hours to get to a cool cemetery so I could take pics. 🙂

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