Benzoin

Benzoin's first article follows the resin from Sumatra into the European pharmacy as Friar's Balsam. Two ritual uses sit outside that route entirely, and neither passed through the Golden Dawn's correspondence tables to reach the atlas.

Across the Javanese and Malay archipelago, benzoin is kemenyan, burned at the opening of ceremonies and folded into offerings that mark the start of a rite rather than accompanying its whole length, a threshold incense rather than a background one. The word itself is close kin to the Arabic phrase for Javan frankincense that later gave English "benzoin," so the ritual name and the trade name never really separated.

Eastern Orthodox practice took the same resin in an unrelated direction. Benzoin is a principal component of the compounded incense sold specifically as Orthodox church incense, blended with other resins into a formula distinct from the Catholic thurible's frankincense-heavy mixture, so that two branches of the same liturgical tradition burn recognisably different smoke for structurally similar rites.

Both uses predate and sit apart from the Sun-and-Air attribution given to benzoin in Western ceremonial magic. Kemenyan marks a beginning in island Southeast Asia; the Orthodox censer marks continuity with an older Byzantine liturgical recipe; neither is doing what the correspondence tables describe benzoin as being for.

Benzoin is a resin used as incense: the balsamic gum of Styrax trees of Southeast Asia, a sweet fixative used in temple incense and in perfumery. In the Western scheme it is linked with the Sun and with purification and cheer.

Material and correspondence

In the Western system of ritual correspondences it is set under the Sun and the element of Air. Such planetary and elemental attributions belong to the Western esoteric tradition of correspondences, drawn from writers such as Agrippa and codified in the modern period by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn; the material's use as incense is far older and cuts across many cultures. It is described here within that documented tradition of ritual perfume.

From gum benjamin to Friar's Balsam

Tapped chiefly from Styrax benzoin and related trees of Sumatra, Java and the wider Indonesian archipelago, the resin reached medieval Europe through Arab trade under a name later corrupted into English as "benzoin," itself descended from an Arabic phrase for Javan frankincense; the modern chemical term "benzene" derives, at some remove, from the same word. Beyond incense and perfumery, tincture of benzoin became a standard European medicinal preparation, most familiar as an ingredient of compound tincture of benzoin, popularly called Friar's Balsam, used for generations as an inhalant and skin preparation, a secular pharmacy use that developed alongside, and independently of, its long-standing ritual and correspondence role.