I’m in ‘Trolley Square’, an upscale shopping court converted from trolley barns in my city back in the 1970s, by the father of a pal of mine in high school. It was hip when it appeared, a kind of homage to the 19th century; now it’s hip as an homage to the 1970s. It’s got snooty shops, glossy brickwork, lots of cast iron, and plenty of expensive iced coffee. The stores are crusted right now with Christmas decorations, so the place smells lovely.
That lovely smell is why I’m here. I like it.
That smell is also what I want to write about today. It’s Christmassy inside everybody’s nose at the moment, and I'm going to make a point about that very thing.
The point is that we use smells to set aside sacred space.
For Christmas in particular, we like to use cinnamon, and evergreens, and oranges, and cloves. These choices are for historical reasons. Their origins are in the generally English and generally German way we’ve done our Yuletide sentimentality since the nineteenth century. And in the way they code for holiday feelings we’re very well rehearsed.
Here’s the thing. I do not believe that the Christmas cosplay in the business space around me today is simple sentimentality. I do not think we’re that cynical as human beings. I think in this heavy-handed mercantilism, which can look pretty fatuous, I admit, there is actually a deep element of something we want to call Sacred.
By ‘sacred’ I mean set aside for God. (‘Holy’, by distinction, refers to that which is itself of God.)
Recognition of holiness, in whatever way we define that, requires a setting-aside of space that is reserved, protected, and honored. And we know to do this so deeply that we do it even in our shopping malls.
And here and elsewhere, smells play a big part.
Look, after all, at what we do in more consciously spiritual practice. In churches, we burn incense. Priests carry it along and ‘cense’ the worship space (yes, that’s the verb). It’s a carefully made potion, manufactured to formula, from frankincense, a dried form of Boswellia sap. We’re aware that using this was ancient practice in the middle east. We know that frankincense was expensive then, and was sometimes also valuable as topical medicine. We know, from words like ‘uueiruh’ in Old High German (literally, ‘holy smoke’) that the medievals used it too. We use it still. We even use it in aromatherapy, we like it so much, and on some level revere it.
Outside churches, we use it in other forms of spiritual practices too. A common one? Smudging, for ghosts. In paranormal culture, this is common. People get a haunting in their house, and they go around burning sage. Culturally speaking, it’s a reflex at the moment. And we’re fussy about how it’s done. The fashion lately is to use white sage, and (I’ve been admonished) to source it ethically, from a native American.
It’s an instinct of ours to sacre space this way (and yes, that’s a real verb too) outside of formal religious settings, in other words.
Let’s think about the unspoken religious underpinnings in this for a minute. Think about what smudging in your house means.
It means, for one thing, that with this practice you set aside with smoke — a special kind of smoke — a safe area, a claimed area, a good area, for things that are beyond human reach.
You also establish or effect a change in your relationship with spiritual entities by doing this. The entities are understood to recognize and honor what you’re doing.
It also matters that if you use the wrong kind of sage, or if you approach its use with a wrong mindset, it doesn't work as well.
There’s even language that goes with sage-burning for ghosts. You talk to the spirits. You encourage the good ones (‘good’ being an abstract proxy for holy) to move to places of light and freedom from earthly entrapment. You’re discussing an afterlife, obliquely, when you do this. And you banish bad spirits from this now sacred space. I myself have heard people take care to do this. Sometimes we even invoke the name or the idea of some form of deity. I’ve heard it articulated as ‘Spirit’, or ‘Guardian’, or ‘Goddess’. There are others. Sometimes we invoke the assistance of spirit guides, too, or of angels. There is something beyond us, is the point, that we acknowledge as the origin, destination, and arbiter of traffic in spirits.
Smoke is complicated. Evocative smells really matter to us. How we manage space with them, formally or informally, is one of the subtleties of how we instinctively respond to the approach of the holy.
I think it's very beautiful.