Back in 2016, PCR campers gathered for a workshop on make incense cones, getting their hands into herbs, woods, resins, and binders and discovering that making incense is equal parts craft, experimentation, and a little bit of magic.
A decade later, we’re apparently still at it.
PCR volunteer and committee member Clover recently went digging into the art of homemade incense and pulled together notes on the fundamentals of making combustible incense. That sent us rummaging through the PCR archives, where we found evidence that crafty witches have been making weird little cones of plant matter together for quite some time.
A lot of things change. Crafty witches remain.
So, in honor of a little PCR history, let’s revisit the basics of making your own incense cones and give you a recipe to try at home.
<- Incense cones from a PCR workshop in 2016. Look at those chunky little beauties.
The Four Parts of Making Incense Cones
A basic incense cone needs four things: a base, aromatics, a binder, and liquid.
Understanding what each one does makes it much easier to follow a recipe and, eventually, experiment with combinations of your own.
1. The Base
The base helps your incense burn and affects how quickly and intensely it does so.
Powdered woods such as cedar, sandalwood, or pine can serve as bases. Some recipes may also incorporate ingredients such as clove or resins.
Think of the base as the engine of your incense. The aromatic ingredients may be the stars of the show, but something has to keep the whole thing burning.
2. The Aromatics
Here comes the fun part.
Aromatics provide the scent and character of your incense. Depending on what you are making, these might include herbs, spices, flowers, fragrant woods, or resins.
The base and aromatic ingredients have to work together. An ingredient that smells wonderful doesn’t necessarily burn wonderfully by itself, which is one reason incense making involves a little experimentation.
For magical or ritual incense, this is also where personal practice can come into play. Herbs and resins can be selected for their scent, their associations, or both.
3. The Binder
Your beautiful pile of powdered plants still has one significant problem: it’s a pile.
A binder gives the mixture enough structure to be formed into cones and hold its shape as it dries.
Clover’s research identified two broad types of binders.
Gum binders, such as gum tragacanth, guar gum, or xanthan gum, are quite strong, so only a small amount is needed. Too much can interfere with the incense’s ability to burn.
Wood binders, such as joss powder or tabu no ki, are less powerful as binders and therefore may be used in greater amounts while still allowing the incense to burn.
This is one of the places where following a tested recipe is particularly helpful when you’re beginning.
4. The Liquid
Finally, you need enough liquid to turn all those powdered ingredients into something resembling dough.
Plain water works, but it isn’t the only possibility. Tea, herbal tea, coffee, fruit juice, and other mostly-water liquids can become part of the recipe and offer another opportunity for experimentation.
The trick is not adding too much too quickly.
Start with roughly two-thirds of the liquid called for in your recipe and work upward from there. You can always add another drop or two. Removing it is considerably more difficult.
Before You Begin: Grind Everything Fine
All of your dry ingredients should be completely dry before they’re powdered.
A coffee or spice grinder can make quick work of many ingredients, while a mortar and pestle offers the delightfully witchy experience of doing it by hand.
Once ground, sift the ingredients before measuring and blending them. A consistently fine powder will make it easier to create a smooth incense dough and a cone that burns evenly.
Then thoroughly combine your dry ingredients, including the binder, until the mixture is uniform in color.
A Beginner Incense Cone Recipe
Here is the sample recipe Clover found through incense maker Carl Neal, The Incense Dragon, whose educational materials she used while researching the process:
- 5½ teaspoons cedar wood base
- ½ teaspoon basil
- ¼ teaspoon styrax resin
- ⅛ teaspoon gum tragacanth
- 3–3½ teaspoons peppermint herbal tea
Use a deep glass or ceramic bowl for mixing. A light-colored bowl makes it easier to see whether everything has been thoroughly combined.
Making Your Incense Dough
Measure and combine all four dry ingredients first. Stir until the mixture has a consistent color throughout.
Add 3 teaspoons of the peppermint tea to begin. Don’t automatically add the full amount.
Mix with a craft stick or wooden spoon. At first, the mixture may seem strangely resistant to becoming dough. Keep working it until small, pea-sized clumps begin to form.
Then it’s time to get your hands involved.
Press and knead the mixture so the moisture is distributed throughout. Wetter areas will appear darker than dry ones, which gives you a useful visual clue about where more mixing is needed.
Eventually, you want the mixture to come together into a single ball.
If it breaks apart, it probably needs a little more liquid.
If it’s sticky and won’t hold its shape, you’ve probably gone too far in the other direction.
This is the part where incense making becomes less like following a formula and more like learning the feel of a craft.
What About Essential Oils?
Essential oils can be added while hand-mixing the incense dough, but use them sparingly.
A few drops can go a long way, and gloves are a good idea when handling concentrated essential oils. Remember that “natural” doesn’t automatically mean harmless to skin, pets, or lungs.
You also don’t need essential oils to make beautiful incense. Herbs, woods, spices, and resins bring plenty of fragrance of their own.
Shaping Your Incense Cones
Once the dough holds together, take about ¼ teaspoon at a time and shape it into a cone.
Here’s another place where you can experiment.
A shorter, wider cone produces more smoke over a shorter period.
A taller, thinner cone generally produces a thinner stream of smoke and burns longer.
Whichever shape you choose, try to keep your cones reasonably consistent with one another. That makes it much easier to compare how they burn and adjust your next batch.
Allow your finished cones to dry completely before burning them.
And then comes the best part: testing your creation.
Incense Making Is an Experiment
Your first batch doesn’t need to be your perfect incense.
In fact, that’s part of the fun.
Maybe you’d like more cedar next time. Maybe the basil disappears behind the styrax. Maybe you want to explore mugwort, rosemary, frankincense, rose, cinnamon, or whatever else has caught your attention.
Keep notes.
Write down exactly what you used, how much you used, how easily the mixture formed, how well the finished cone burned, and what you thought of the scent.
That’s how a recipe slowly becomes your recipe.
And for those of us whose spiritual practice involves incense, there’s something especially appropriate about that process. You’re not simply choosing a fragrance. You’re learning the materials, working with them by hand, and creating something that can eventually become part of ritual, meditation, celebration, or sacred space.
Sometimes the making is part of the practice.
From the PCR Archives
Making things together has always been part of the fun of gathering in pagan community. Sometimes it’s deeply spiritual. Sometimes it’s educational. Sometimes everybody is sitting around trying to figure out why their incense dough won’t stick together.
Apparently, we’ve been doing that last one for at least a decade.
If you make a batch of your own, we’d love to see what you create. And if you have photos or memories of old PCR workshops, rituals, crafts, or adventures tucked away somewhere, send those our way too.
You never know what might turn up in the archives next.
Want to Learn More?
Clover based much of her research on the work of incense maker and author Carl Neal, The Incense Dragon, whose educational materials go much deeper into natural incense making.