bluestarincense.com

Price slash for the New Year

from $3.99 to $3.00 a pack

Hope everyone has a great and Happy New Year!!!

Happy Holidays From Blue Star Incense

Great Stocking stuffers

Free pack of Cinnamon with every order just for the holiday season

Check my website for details

http://www.bluestarincense.com

Testimonials

Hi William,

Thanks for your note. The incense arrived completely intact, by the way. I understand the need for good packing. I really liked the addition of the bead on the wrap. It immediately makes it look special.

I have a friend who is a natural perfumer. He has a good nose and is extremely impressed by your incense and immediately knew what you were using in your product

Regards,

Randal

Hello,

I just wanted to let you know that I have been enjoying using your incense, and I am especially fond of using the benzoin incense for rituals.

Thnx,
Kristen

just a quick note,

i got your incense a week or so ago. It is most delightful! we are so enjoying all of the various scents and I wanted to thank you as well for your samples. I had not used such high quality incense before and it really is an amazing difference. Thank you so much for the work you are doing and for such a pleasant transaction. I look forward to future transactions!

Samara

Hi William

First of all, can I say they are all excellent… great fragrances, very well made (obviously from top-quality ingredients), and nicely packed / presented.

Adrian

I changed my Rose Incense ingredient’s.
I added geranium essential oil as well as lavender essential oil.
It creates a rich floral scent…these ingredient’s help bring out the the rose notes, as rose is a very weak scent.

History

The rose has always been valued for its beauty and has a long history of symbolism. The ancient
Greeks and Romans identified the rose with their goddesses of love referred to as Aphrodite and Venus. In Rome a wild rose would be placed on the door of a room where secret or confidential matters were discussed. The phrase sub rosa, or “under the rose”, means to keep a secret — derived from this ancient Roman practice.
Early Christians identified the five petals of the rose with the five wounds of Christ. Despite this interpretation, their leaders were hesitant to adopt it because of its association with Roman excesses and pagan ritual. The red rose was eventually adopted as a symbol of the blood of the Christian martyrs. Roses also later came to be associated with the Virgin Mary.
Rose culture came into its own in Europe in the 1800s with the introduction of perpetual blooming roses from China. There are currently thousands of varieties of roses developed for bloom shape, size, fragrance and even for lack of prickles.

Early Christians identified the five petals of the rose with the five wounds of Christ. Despite this interpretation, their leaders were hesitant to adopt it because of its association with Roman excesses and pagan ritual. The red rose was eventually adopted as a symbol of the blood of the Christian martyrs. Roses also later came to be associated with the Virgin Mary.

Culture

Roses are ancient symbols of love and beauty. The rose was sacred to a number of goddesses (including Isis and Aphrodite), and is often used as a symbol of the Virgin Mary. Roses are so important that the word means pink or red in a variety of languages (such as Romance languages, Greek, and Polish).

The rose is the national flower of England and the United States, as well as being the symbol of England Rugby, and of the Rugby Football Union. It is also the provincial flower of Yorkshire and Lancashire in England (the white rose and red rose respectively) and of Alberta (the wild rose), and the state flower of four US states: Iowa and North Dakota (R. arkansana), Georgia (R. laevigata), and New York[4] (Rosa generally). Portland, Oregon counts “City of Roses” among its nicknames, and holds an annual Rose Festival.

Roses are occasionally the basis of design for rose windows, such windows comprising five or ten segments (the five petals and five sepals of a rose) or multiples thereof; however most Gothic rose windows are much more elaborate and were probably based originally on the wheel and other symbolism.

A red rose (often held in a hand) is also a symbol of socialism or social democracy; it is also used as a symbol by the British and Irish Labour Parties, as well as by the French, Spanish (Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party), Portuguese, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Brazilian, Dutch (Partij van de Arbeid) and European socialist parties. This originates from the red rose used as a badge by the marchers in the May 1968 street protests in Paris. White Rose was a World War II non-violent resistance group in Germany.

Symbolism

Further information: Rose (symbolism)

According to the Victorian “language of flowers”, different colored roses each have their own symbolic meaning.

* Red: love
* Pink: grace, gentle feelings of love
* Dark Pink: gratitude
* Light Pink: admiration, sympathy
* White: innocence, purity, secrecy, friendship, reverence and humility.
* Yellow: Yellow roses generally mean dying love or platonic love. In German-speaking countries, however, they can mean jealousy and infidelity.
* Yellow with red tips: Friendship, falling in love
* Orange: passion
* Burgundy: beauty
* Blue: mystery

Further information: blue rose

* Green: calm
* Black: slavish devotion (as a true black rose is impossible to produce)
* Purple: protection (paternal/maternal love)

The rose also has various supernatural and literary attributes.

In art

Roses are often portrayed by artists. The French artist Pierre-Joseph Redouté produced some of the most detailed paintings of roses.

Henri Fantin-Latour was also a prolific painter of still life, particularly flowers including roses. The Rose ‘Fantin-Latour’ was named after the artist.

Other impressionists including Claude Monet and Paul Cézanne have paintings of roses among their works.

Quotes

* In the driest whitest stretch of pain’s infinite desert, I lost my sanity and found this rose. — Rumi
* What’s in a name? That which we call a rose/By any other name would smell as sweet. — William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet act II, sc. ii
* O, my love’s like a red, red rose/That’s newly sprung in June — Robert Burns, A Red, Red Rose
* The red rose whispers of passion,

And the white rose breathes of love;
O, the red rose is a falcon,
And the white rose is a dove.
But I send you a cream-white rosebud
With a flush on its petal tips;
For the love that is purest and sweetest
Has a kiss of desire on the lips - John Boyle O’Reilly, A White Rose

* Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses. — James Oppenheim, “Bread and Roses”
* Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose — Gertrude Stein, Sacred Emily (1913), a poem included in Geography and Plays.
* Arise, arise, arouse, a rose! — Eh, a rosy nose? — Jeremy Hilary Boob, Ph.D. (more commonly referred to as the ‘Nowhere Man’), Yellow Submarine (film)
* A name is a rose, and it only smells as sweet as you are. - The Tick
* Every rose has its thorn / Just like every night has its dawn / Just like every cowboy sings his sad, sad song / Every rose has its thorn. - Poison_(band)

Perfume

Main article: Rose oil

Rose perfumes are made from attar of roses or rose oil, which is a mixture of volatile essential oils obtained by steam-distilling the crushed petals of roses. The technique originated in Persia (the word Rose itself is from Persian) then spread through Arabia and India, but nowadays about 70% to 80% of production is in the Rose Valley near Kazanluk in Bulgaria, with some production in Qamsar in Iran and Germany.[citation needed] The Kaaba in Mecca is annually washed by the Iranian rose water from Qamsar. In Bulgaria, Iran and Germany, damask roses (Rosa damascena ‘Trigintipetala’) are used. In the French rose oil industry Rosa centifolia is used. The oil, pale yellow or yellow-grey in color, is sometimes called ‘Rose Absolute’ oil to distinguish it from diluted versions. The weight of oil extracted is about one three-thousandth to one six-thousandth of the weight of the flowers; for example, about 2,000 flowers are required to produce one gram of oil.

The main constituents of attar of roses are the fragrant alcohols geraniol, which has the empirical formula C10H18O and the structural formula CH3.C[CH3]:CH.CH2.CH2.C[CH3]:CH.CH2OH and l-citronellol; and rose camphor, an odourless paraffin.There is also a balm consisting of crushed raspberries, strawberries, blackberries, and rose petals which make your skin softer that is commonly used in the United States and in Mexico. Read the rest of this entry »

I made changes to my patchouli recipe a bit…

awhile back I started to roll my lavender incense in pure lavender flower powder. So I thought I would try to do the same with my patchouli recipe.

It turned out wonderfully…

Here’s some pics of me making patchouli incense

As soon as the incense is extruded out and still wet I roll the incense in Patchouli leaf powder.
That way the Patchouli leaf powder sticks to the incense as it dries.

Here’s some very interesting facts about Patchouli

Patchouli (also patchouly or pachouli) is both a plant and an essential oil (patchouli oil) obtained from the leaves of a plant of the same name. The scent of patchouli is heavy and strong. It has been used for centuries in perfumes, and is grown in the East and West Indies. The word derives from the Tamil patchai பச்சை (green), ellai இலை (leaf).

During the Vietnam war, American soldiers used patchouli to mask the smell of the graves of enemy soldiers killed in combat. War protesters of the time used patchouli on themselves, to demonstrate that “we are all one race, we are the same as the enemy soldiers.” Also, the Hare Krishna movement may have been partly responsible for this surge, as the god Krishna is said to “inhabit” patchouli. In addition, it can be used as a hair conditioner for dreadlocks.

Despite its common association with an alternative lifestyle, patchouli has found widespread use in modern industry. It is a component in about a third of modern, high-end perfumes, including more than half of perfumes for men. Patchouli is also an important ingredient in East Asian incense. It is also used as a scent in products like paper towels, laundry detergents, and air fresheners. The essential oil is obtained by steam distillation of the dried leaves of the plant – a process which provides a relatively high yield of the oil. An important component of the essential oil is patchoulol.

Patchouli oil and incense underwent a surge in popularity in the 1960s and 1970s, mostly among devotees of the free love and hippie lifestyles, due in part to the fact that the pungent smell of patchouli is known to cover the smell of burnt cannabis.During the 18th and 19th century silk traders from China travelling to the Middle East packed their silk cloth with dried patchouli leaves to prevent moths from laying their eggs on the cloth. Many historians speculate that this association with opulent eastern goods is why patchouli was considered by Europeans of that era to be a luxurious scent. This trend has continued to the present day in modern perfumery.

The plant and oil have a number of claimed health benefits in herbal folk-lore, and its scent is used with the aim of inducing relaxation.

The patchouli plant is a bushy herb reaching two or three feet in height. The plant grows well in southern climates. It enjoys hot weather but not direct sunlight. If the plant withers due to lack of watering it will recover well and quickly once it has been watered. The seed-bearing flowers are very fragrant and bloom in late fall. The tiny seeds may be harvested for planting, but they are very delicate and easily crushed. Cuttings from the mother plant can also be rooted in water to produce further plants.

Patchouli is a tropical member of the mint family, grown in the East and West Indies. Leaves are harvested several times a year, dried, and exported for distillation of the oil, although the highest quality oil is usually produced from fresh leaves, distilled close to the plantation.^[1]

Because of its pungent odor and its use in the 1960’s in lieu of bathing, patchouli has a somewhat negative connotation in the US, often being associated in popular culture with hippies.

Popstar Madonna pressed the sheets of her Like a Prayer booklet with patchouli oil, and now nearly 20 years afterward the booklets still smell of it.

taken from

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patchouli

Peace&Love

William J. Noel

Check out my myspace page….maybe we can chat sometime.
http://www.myspace.com/bluestarincense

http://blog.myspace.com/bluestarincense

Peace

William