Aromatherapy:   Making Good Scents
Yesterday and Today

How wonderful the possibilities!

"Consciously or unconsciously we all strive to make the kind of a world we like."
Oliver Wendell Holmes

As depicted on wall paintings, solid ointments of spikenard and other aromatics, called bitcones, were placed on the heads of Egyptian dancers and musicians, where they were allowed to gradually and dramatically melt down over their hair and body. They would gradually melt and cover them in fragrance. Egyptian men used fragrance as readily as the women.

The most famous Egyptian fragrance, kyphi (the name means "welcome to the gods"), was said to induce hypnotic states. The City of the Sun, Heliopolis, burned resins in the morning, myrrh at noon, and kyphi at sunset to the sun god Ra. Kyphi had more than religious uses, however. It could lull one to sleep, alleviate anxieties, increase dreaming, eliminate sorrow, treat asthma and act as a general antidote for toxins.

European nuns and monks closely guarded the formulas for "Carmelite water," which contained melissa, angelica, and other herbs, and for aqua mirabilis ("miracle water"), used to improve memory and vision, and to reduce rheumatic pain, fever, melancholy, and congestion.

At Delphi in Greece, the oracle priestesses sat over smoldering fumes of bay leaves to inspire an enthralling trance; holes in the ground allowed the smoke to "magically" surround them. (Greeks prized scents highly because they thought they were a direct gift from the gods. Their afterworld was Elysium and the air was eternally sweet with the smell of perfumed rivers.)

Throughout the African continent people coated their skin with fragrant oils to protect themselves from the hot, dry sun. This practice extended to the Mediterranean, where athletes were anointed with scented unguents before competing.

Aromatic waters were popular for centuries and even used by the Bible's Susannah of Babylon, who bathed in orange floral water. (There are 188 references to essential oils in the Bible. Oils such as frankincense, myrrh, rosemary, hyssop, and spikenward were used for anointing and healing the sick.)

Throughout North America, Native American Indians were using aromatic oils and producing their own herbal remedies which were discovered when settlers began to arrive at the plains of the New World. The Americas held fragrant treasures such as balsam of Peru and Tolu, juniper, American cedar, sassafras, and tropical flowers like vanilla. Like other indigenous peoples around the world, the Native Americans had a long history of burning incense and using fragrant ointments. Throughout the Americas, massage with aromatic oils was a common form of therapy

The Aztecs were as extravagant with incense as the Egyptians, and they too created ornate vessels in which to burn it. Injured Aztecs were massaged with fragrant salves in the sweat lodges. The Incas made massage ointments of valerian and other herbs thickened with seaweed. In Central America, the Mayans steamed their patients one at a time in cramped clay structures.

Throughout the continent, North Americans smudged sick people with tight bundles of fragrant herbs or braided "sweet grass" which smelled like vanilla. Congestion, rheumatism, headaches, fainting, and other ills were treated with smoke from burning plants or with a potent herb infusion thrown over heated rocks to produce fragrant steam. The people of the Great Plains used echinacea as a smoke treatment for headaches; many tribes used pungent plants such as goldenrod and fleabane for therapeutic purposes.

Participants in Tantric ceremonies were anointed with oils-the men with sandalwood, the women with a bouquet of jasmine on the hands, patchouli on the neck and cheeks, amber on the breasts, spikenard in the hair, musk on the abdomen, sandalwood on the thighs, and saffron on the feet. In other rituals, women called dainyals held cloths over their heads to capture Tibetan cedar smoke that would send them into prophetic chanting. Special finger rings held small compartments filled with musk or amber.

During the plague (the Black Death) of the 14th century, over eighty million people across Europe died within the space of a few years. Herbal preparations were used extensively to help fight this terrible killer. Aromatics such as frankincense and pine-scented candles and garlands of aromatic herbs were also burned in European streets and homes to cover the stench of death and help disinfect the air. Later during the sixteenth century Bubonic Plague, doctors walked the streets wearing huge hats with large 'beaks' attached. Aromatic herbs were placed in the 'beaks' to purify the air for breathing and long open-ended canes also filled with herbs were carried. They waved the canes in front of them as they walked for extra security. Aroma and health were tightly linked as perfumed air was deemed not only pleasurable, but antiseptic. It is believed that some perfumers may have avoided the plague by their constant contact with the natural aromatics.