Zeremonien mit Räuchern: Südamerika

The second excursion in this small Journal series on the incense ceremonies of five continents leads to South America — and within it, first, to palo santo, the ‘holy wood’.

Palo santo comes from the tree Bursera graveolens, which grows along the dry Pacific coast of Ecuador and Peru, in the same forests that also shape the Galápagos Islands. What is peculiar about this wood: freshly cut, it barely smells at all. Only once a branch has died and lain on the forest floor for several years do the essential oils concentrate in the wood — limonene, menthofuran, a trace of turpentine and pine — into the sweetish, resinous, almost citrus scent known today. Sustainably harvested palo santo therefore comes, by definition, from wood that has already died and fallen, never from felled trees.

In the Andean regions of Peru and Ecuador, palo santo has for generations been part of limpiezas — cleansing rituals often tied to ayahuasca ceremonies, to the work of curanderos, or simply to the start and close of a day. The smoke is held to clear a room, a person, or an object of ‘heavy’ energy; it is often guided with a feather or the bare hand around the body or the space. The photograph accompanying this post shows exactly such a ritual, just before an earth ceremony at Centro Takiwasi in Peru — a place that combines traditional plant medicine with Western addiction therapy.

Copal, the resin of various Bursera and Protium species, accompanies palo santo in many Mesoamerican and Andean traditions as a second central incense material — among the Maya and Aztec, copal was so closely bound to the divine that its smoke was literally understood as food for the gods. Both resins, palo santo and copal, now face demand pressure from their popularity on the global wellness market that is not always met sustainably in their regions of origin — a tension that sets South American incense practice apart from many others: it is at once ancient and, in its present worldwide form, remarkably young.

Beyond the resins, blown tobacco smoke also plays a central ceremonial role across much of the Andes, usually in the form of mapacho, a particularly nicotine-rich wild tobacco. Healers blow the smoke deliberately over the body, objects, or a space — an act that resembles Western smoking far less than a directed, almost medicinal application, often accompanied by icaros, the traditional healing songs of the Amazon region, which during a ceremony are understood to guide the smoke itself.

In the street markets of Lima, Quito, or Mexico City, meanwhile, one encounters a much more everyday form of South American incense practice: the sahumerio, ready-made herb bundles of rue, rosemary, basil, and other locally available plants, burned far outside any shamanic context to protect the home from ‘bad energy’ — a folk, often Catholic-inflected continuation of the same basic idea that lives on in more concentrated, spiritually charged form in the Andean ceremonies.