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Mesoamerica

In Mesoamerica, incense burners mainly served a religious purpose. Incense would be presented to the divine being. In fact, some people were appointed the position of fire priest. Fire priests dealt with most tasks related to incense burning. Some rituals involved a feast, which would be followed by the fire priest igniting a sacred brazier in the temples. The incenses used included but are not limited to: copal (both white and coarse types), rubber, pine, herbs, and myrrh. It was given to the divine beings and deities as offerings on a daily basis. The practice would end at the sound of a trumpet made from a conch shell. Another function of incense was to heal the sick. Once recuperated, the diseased would present some incense to the appropriate gods to repay them for being cured.

Among the Maya, incense burning was a method to connect with the spirit world. The shape of incense burners in the Maya southern lowlands reflected religious and cultural changes over time. Some censers were used in funerals and funerary rituals, such as those depicting the Underworld Jaguar or the Night Sun God. When a king would die, ‘termination rituals’ were practiced. During these rituals, incensarios would be smashed and older temples were replaced with new ones. However, by the Terminal Classic period, a religious shift was evident. Imagery depicting the Underworld Jaguar God were no longer used. The Underworld Jaguar God incense burner had a base that was cylindrical in shape. Other burners took the form of other shapes, each associated with different aspects of religion. Incense burners with spike patterns on their surface symbolized the divine tree from the Maya creation myth. Similarly, three-headed incense burners were direct references to the hearthstones from the same creation myth. The smaller censers were scaled-down versions of votive incense burners.

China

During the T’ang period in China, incense was used by upper class people for personal hygiene, romantic rendezvous, and deodorizing the interior of edifices. These included places of worship, dwellings, and work-spaces. Dating back to the seventh century AD, the kuan huo (changing of fire) ceremony took place, where people would cleanse their homes with incense. However, in some parts of East Asia, incense burners were used as a way to tell time.

In the Far East, incense was used as a way to tell time because it was a simple mechanism and generally not a fire hazard. Time increments were marked off on each incense stick to show how much time had passed, then placed in a ritual tripod vessel known as a ting. During imperial coronations, incense sticks would be used to tell how long the ceremony was. Other variations of incense is the spiral incense coil. The spiral incense coil was used to measure time for longer durations. One spiral equated to one night. This type of incense was mainly used by the five ‘night watches’ of the community. The length of their shifts and breaks were determined by the time increments marked off on the spirals.