Long before pine resin was anyone's incense, it was a shipbuilder's raw material, and the industrial history behind the scent explains why pine reads as fresh and cleansing rather than as sacred in the way frankincense or myrrh do.
Heated and refined into pitch and tar, pine resin waterproofed the hulls, seams and rigging of ancient and medieval ships, an industrial demand substantial enough to shape Mediterranean forestry policy for centuries; naval powers guarded access to good pine forest the way later empires guarded rarer resins. The same trade gave English the phrase "naval stores," a category that once meant pine products specifically.
Household use grew up beside that industry rather than descending from any temple rite. European folk practice burned pine boughs and needles as an ordinary, unglamorous cleansing smoke, valued for being cheap, local and antiseptic-smelling rather than for any myth attached to it, which is part of why pine's correspondence in Western magical tables reads as generic strength and renewal instead of a specific story.
Retsina, the resinated wine of Greece, keeps the industrial and the ritual close together in a single drink: pine resin was originally added to seal amphorae during transport, a practical preservative measure, and the flavour it left behind became a taste worth keeping on its own account long after better sealing methods existed.