Fragrant Clouds of Purity and Protection - 2

Many of the incense ingredients used throughout history and today are healing agents - myrrh, frankincense, cinnamon, clove , hyssop, sage, cedarwood, juniper, cypress and pine, amongst others. No wonder then, that incense, and fragranced ointments and salves which may well have conferred health, should be seen as 'protective' - a beneficent agent of the deity - and this was especially the case when it was thought that physical health was inextricably linked to spiritual health.

The unfortunate Europeans who suffered during the plagues of the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries must have been sure they had in some way transgressed when they read this in the Old Testament: If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, and wilth do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statues, I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians: for I am the Lord that healeth thee.'

The agents for healing at this time, these people's saving grace  came in the form of fragrances and perfumers. Fragrant materials became highly sought after, especially rosemary, cloves, garlic, rue, melissa, rose, lavender and juniper, and were vital protection when gathering with other people, in church for example. Around 1700, Daniel Defoe described one such scene in London: 'the whole church was like a smelling bottle; in one corner it was all perfumes; in another aromatics, balsamics, and in a variety of drugs and herbs; in another salts and spiritus.'

In 1646 France, Arnaud Baric gave a full description of the role played by perfumers who, under the lead of 'the health captain', went through houses fumigating them with perfume burnt on coal fires. At the end of the long day, the perfumers were themselves cleansed by standing in the 'steaming room' - a cloth tent with perfume material boiling away in a pot.

It is a curious thing that so many fragrant plants should be protective to the health.. It is almost as if we are invited by the creative force of the universe to examine them, taste them, put them in our food, enjoy their aroma, and in other ways make use of them. The healing properties of many fragrant plants were of course well known in ancient times, which may account for the wide spread practice of aromatically cleansing strangers or guests before allowing them into the village or house.

A hundred years ago in central Borneo, Blu-u kayans burnt bundles of fragrant plehiding bark when strangers arrived, to drive away any accompanying 'evil spirits'. In Turkey, Afghanistan and Persia visiting guests were first cleansed by burning branches of fragrant  plants or incense, while aboriginal Australians saved their hosts the trouble and came with their own lighted bark or fragrant burning sticks. 

As well as fragrance, fire and loud noise have been widely employed, as J.G. Frazer put it in The Golden Bough, 'for the purpose of disarming the strangers of their magical powers, of counteracting the baneful influence which is believed to emanate from them, or of disinfecting, so to speak, the tainted atmosphere by which they are supposed to be surrounded'.

In the contemporary world, the practice of aromatic cleansing is still ubiquitous in the Middle East, where it is perceived as a hospitable kindness to guests. In tents in the desert, a few smaller pieces of aromatic resin may be put on the brazier, while in towns you are more likely to be greeted with rose water, sprinkled from a long-stemmed  gulabdan.

Guests in Turkish households have lemon-scented cologne sprinkled on their hands, so it can be wiped on the arms and neck. This fragrant nicety is also offered by the conductor to passengers on long-distance buses. Fragrance is also widely used to cleanse buildings, especially those used for spiritual practices.

When Saladin retook the Mosque of Omar in Jerusalem from the Christians in 1187, he had it purified with rose water; and when Mohamet II captured the Church of Santa Sophia in Constantipole in 1453 and made it a mosque, it was likewise first treated with a rose. Sage is the most sacred herb of the Yuwipe Native American Nation, and it is this which covers the floor of the medicine man's house as he goes about the purification process.

Fragrance and spirituality have always been inextricably linked. In Mesopotamia 4,000 years ago, incense was used both to attract the goddesses and gods, and to repel malevolent spirits. In Muslim terminology, jinn are said to be an order of spirits which can assume human and animal form and exercise negative influences over people, and pirs are people brought in deal with them - often incorporating the inhalation of jasmine oil as part of the proceedings.

Reference: The Fragrant Heavens: Valerie Ann Worwood

Fragrant Clouds Of Purity And Protection

Human beings are far more sensitive than can be accounted for by sight, hearing touch, taste and smell. We react in different ways to people and places, 'feeling' them to be beneficial to us or not, although such differences cannot be accounted for by the way they look. A person might walk into a room and appear perfectly normal, in that they are dressed like every one else and behave in much the same way, but we might feel suddenly, unaccountably distressed. Or we might feel suddenly, uncomfortable distressed. or we might walk into a room and feel uncomfortable in it, although it's clean and well-furnished. It may even be our own home that feels, at times, uncomfortable in a way we cannot explain.

Unseen energies are a part of life and, although invisible, affect us deeply and even change the course of our actions. people say, 'I just want to get out of here,' and, although we may not have the same feeling, we understand that some unpleasant energy phenomenon has taken place and reply,' OK' let's go. "You often hear people say of a person "They" sap my energy,' and although there's no energy to see, we know exactly what they mean and sympathize. You even hear people occasionally say, I felt a presence in the room,' and, although we don't know exactly what this 'presence' is, we've known similar experiences at some point in our lives and accept what they say. Even though we may have a limited vocabulary to describe these invisible energy experiences, they are there nonetheless.

If invisibility meant non-existence, there would be no such thing as portable radios. TVs and mobile telephones because these are the receiving hardware that interpret bits of invisible information floating through the air. Our bodies are the receivers of other, natural, unseen energies, some of which are not welcome in our lives.

judging by the number of talismans, ceremonies and rituals used by people around the world, from earliest times, dealing with these unseen force has been a very widespread human activity. They have been variously perceived as 'bad luck', 'the evil eye', 'spirits' and in more modern times as 'negative thought forms', 'distressed emotional frequencies' and so forth. Some Christians wear a St Christopher's medal as a pendant to protect them while travelling, or cross of the Crucifixion; while a feng shui expert might rearrange the furniture in a building to redirect the 'wind and water' forces, to bring good energies and fortune. 

In dealing with the invisible forces, and dispite differences in belief, geographical location and time,people have often used fragrance as a protective shield between them and the perceived negativity. This manipulation of fragrance for spiritual ends binds people very distant from each other in belief, space and time, and often they use the same widely dispersed species of plant to facilitate more or less the same thing. Cedarwood, pine, and juniper are among those plants that have been widely adopted in this way.

Native Americans living along the Thompson River burnt juniper to keep 'ghosts' away, and in Tibet juniper is offered daily to good spirits. In several native American cultures, the aroma of burning sweetgrass or sage purifies the enetgies and attracts the 'supernaturals'. In some Arab homes, on Thursdays, frankincense is burnt in a censer and carried through the living rooms and bedrooms - to expel evil spirits and invite the angels in.

In the souk in Cairo, Egypt, and elsewhere, people make a living going from shop to shop, censing each in turn with frankincense burnt in a censer or even a small piece of charcoal in a rusty tin can, to dispel any negative energy customers may have left behind, making the environment more inviting to potential customers.

Such practices have been going on for millennia. The ancient mesopotanians, Egyptians, Greeks and Romans all used fragrance not only to attract beneficial energy, but to keep in auspicious energies 'at bay'. The Greeks fumigated homes with bay leaves, while in the early days of Rome verbena or other fragrant plants were hung above doorways  to deter il malochio, the evil eye. Censers were kept burning by front doors in classical times, even by the poorer households. In medieval Europe, 'witches' were the feared bad spirit, and rituals were carried out at pivotal points in the year with the object of dispelling them from the vicinity.

These often involved walking through the village or town wavering bunches of smouldering fragrant herbs or woods to send the aroma into every nook and cranny. Juniper and rosemary were amongst those widely used. In the feng shui spirit-placating rite, tun fu, incense is used.

Reference: The Fragrant Heavens: Valerie Ann Worwood

Rememberance of Fragrant Past - 4

I remember going to the Max Fac tor Museum in Los Angeles and being struck by an aroma I did not know. When I say 'struck', I mean that inhaling it caused a profound reaction in my solar plexus. This aroma and I have a history which I have yet to discover. It conjured up images of which I have no conscious memory of a time before my birth.

One day I'll return to that museum with my essential-oil kit and attempt to replicate the aroma. Then, with the help of someone to guide me through, I'll hopefully understand what significance it has to me.

If you have found while undergoing body-work that you have memories, or any other experience which is different to normal, and there is an aroma attached to it which corresponds with an essential oil, take a sample of that next time you go.

Inhale the aroma before the session begins and ask the therapist to work on the same place that caused the memory or other reaction last time.

Be very open with the therapist about this - you should not keep anything to yourself. It is important to verbalize and discuss any such experiences. Aside from the fact that you need to bring them into the open so they can be released, if any event involved physical hurt, the energetic emotional reaction can be stored in the body tissue and organs and your therapist will want to know about it.

Reactions to particular aromas are highly individualistic. One person may have no reaction at all, while another may find a far-memory is revealed. Aromas are like pigments and that colour our experiences of life and each painting is unique. There have now been so many books, articles and TV programmes about past-life experiences, they can hardly be denied. The question is, 'What are they?' In some cases, they are undoubtedly an illusion - some-one has read something, overheard something, or seen something which they later adopt as their own experience.

In most cases these are innocent mistakes, caused by being half asleep, in a daydream, or some mental state in which reality and fantasy become mixed up. Children may be particularly prone to this. If everything we ever see, smell and hear is retained in our vast memory vault, who can say that a bay didn't watch a TV programme in say, 1960, and recalled it as a 'past life' in 2000? Some 'past lives are 'simply' genetic memory, an invisible in heritance we carry deep within.

However, in many cases, there is absolutely no possibility of this because the ancestors and the date and location of the recalled event don't match up. This is especially so, when the whereabouts of ancestors can be easily confirmed. Those who work in this field are familiar with the options, and are also familiar with the profound release that can come from experiencing key moments in past or far-lives - and in the present life - and see that major changes in behaviour and life-direction can result.

When a person  is free from encumbering emotions of past lives or of other lives encountered along the spirit's journey - they soar like a bird into a happier future. This release can be physical, and chronic pains and ailments are sometimes said to lessen; it can be behavioural, and old ways of relating change for the better, and it can be spiritual, as people find their own true selves. In a sense it doesn't matter whether the techniques used access the personal subconscious, the superconscious or the universal consciousness.

What is clear is that which we seek consciously or unconsciously, and need to evolve. In this, aroma can play a transformational role.

Reference: The Fragrant Heavens: Valerie Ann Worwood.

Rememberance of Fragrance past - 3

I've heard hundreds of similar stories during Aroma-genera sessions, and am led to believe that it is the emotions around a particular situation that get trapped within the electromagnetic field, or etheric field, bio-plasmic field, or orgone or other variously termed field of person. It is not so much the dying, or the people or circumstances of a particular memory, its magnitude or triviality, but the emotion - the core feeling - that carries forward and interferes with the flow of life.

What is so clear from past-life or earlier present-life recall is that events in the past can rest in the energy, causing it to flow in the wrong direction. The past emotion sits like a rock in the river of life, sending us off course. These rocks of distortion send us into directions that relate to the past, not to the future we should enjoy unencumbered b y the past. We become, as the saying goes, ' bent out of shape'. We are hindered by emotions such as anger, anxiety and shame that bear no relation to the life we are living right now.

The Aroma-Genera experience is very gentle and releasing. No hypnotic techniques are involved. At all times the person is fully aware of the present, and also of the sensation that they are involved in, enabling them to discuss each step of their experience as a detached observer. Indeed, the aroma seems to allow us to straddle two time -place existences. Take for example, the case of Martin, who recalled being an innkeeper at a place some distance from London during the great fire of 1666. He described standing with his wife watching the dramatic scene on the horizon as London burned, sending the aroma of burning wood far and wide.

At one point his voice lowered and he appeared to be talking to someone - he was giving highly detailed instructions  to his wife to prepare more beds  and food, as they would surely be busy tonight. He was having two conversations with two people in our one time. The present-day Martin, objectively viewing his old self, was amused that he had been more interested in the monetary fortune to be gained from London burning than in the fate of the people directly involved in the fire. interestingly, in this lifetime, Martin works as a healer with people suffering post-traumatic stress, and he hypothesized that he was now making up for his past selfish behaviour, and perhaps assuaging the subsequent guilt he may have felt.

Aroma-genera is not regression therapy. It involves working with personality types which may be imposed upon us, or adopted by us to get us through the present-day life. However, through Aroma-Genera, personalities from somewhere else do emerge. There is always a key moment, a pivotal point which keeps coming up until its message is understood and resolved.

This is not a process that can be undergone alone, and the blends cannot be put together in an arbitrary way. Using aroma as a regression tool  is a precise science. There is absolutely not need for standard regression techniques - where a person is led back in time - the aroma does that instead. Nor is there any need of hypnotism. The state induced by aroma is not like being repressed, or hypnotized, and neither is it like dreaming. Aroma takes us down another route entirely.

Aroma-Genera is a system that uses aroma like a searchlight, seeking within that which waits to be found. \But there is another approach when a particular aroma haunts a person, either in a positive or negative way. For example, a person might find a particular aroma abhorrent for no apparent reason and this may b e indicative of a hidden story that could be released by that aroma. In these cases a sample of the aroma could be taken to a psychotherapist, counsellor, Aroma-genera practitioner, or someone else professionally trained  to understand the psychological process that goes on in memory recall.

They can support the individual on the journey and, when the relevant memory source is reached, help him or her understand the connection between that past experience and their present life and behaviour patterns. Also, their may be a particular aroma that draws a person enigmatically to it, and there may be a story in that.

Reference: The Fragrant Heavens: Valerie Ann Worwood….READ MORE