The Symbols of Labdanum

My fools for senses,

Our adventure of this week will dwell upon yet another enigmatic raw material. Following last week’s Review of Paredolia, we wish to talk about labdanum. One can only admit how little is understood between the amber and cistus and labdanum; ‘twixt absolutes and essential oils, ‘tween resinoids and accords.

Thus is why we decided to look for the hidden and true meaning, for the savour –as Rabelais would have said it- of this raw material from which all incenses and perfumes were born. Undeniably one of the most important ingredient in all Middle-Eastern bakhoors, taking a much-earned place amongst recipes for love philtres; either confused with ambergris or myrrh or the solomonic onycha, labdanum never ceases to raise questions and never seems to bring about answers.

Together, my fools, let us discover the roots of this material and listen to what secrets it has kept. To the most remote Graecian islands to Egyptian temples, let us be carried upon the sweet-scented breeze of the most beautiful resins in the history of perfumery and learn about the Symbols of Labdanum.

Our investigation sprang from a very simple realisation: that labdanum was at the core of all of our favourites perfumes. This resin had been leading our nose for years and even had us meet someone whom would later become our very best friend. Such intrinsic power raised our curiosity and, after many of you had asked for it, we decided to rise up to the challenge a few months ago and to try to find some answers to unanswered questions.

History of labdanum brings us to ancient Greece however it will be useful to state its nature. Labdanum is a resin seeping from a tree named cistus, which grows in many places around the Mediterranean Sea although the earliest mentions of its harvest come from Crete. Herodotus spoke of it highly in his Histories, going as far as to mention how shepherds would harvest it. Indeed, they would comb it from their goats’ hair, as they loved rubbing themselves against cistus bushes. Herodotus even said: “It is gathered from the beards of goats, where it is found sticking like gum.”

If we are here given with the earliest mention of labdanum, it is not the earliest of cistus and we need to travel back in time some three centuries earlier, in the 8th century BC. In such time, Hesiod was writing his Theogony and he taled of the now-famous myth of the Gorgon Medusa. In his version, she lived in the legendary island of Cisthene where she lied with Poseidon in a cistus –kisthos- grove which is how the isle got its name. Cisthene was also the island where sprang the nine mouths of the Oceanus river, which circled the world, separating the living from the dead or, as Quintus Smyrneaus said it: “where night in the far west meets the setting sun”.

This story is far from being anecdotal for by doing so, by lying in bed with Medusa, Poseidon laid the foundations of what labdanum would symbolically become throughout centuries and cultures. Although, was he really the first one to do something with labdanum?

Through this union accursed –by Athena whom would transform Medusa into the dreadful creature we all know- Poseidon stated his love of labdanum and linked it forever with sexuality since before turning into the Homeric God of Seas we all know, Poseidon was the God of Fecundity. His name might even mean “husband of the Earth” to read against that of his wife Demeter the “Earth-mother” and Goddess of Fertility. Throughout centuries and until our days, labdanum will be closely associated with water and sexuality, thus rising to become the material of Scorpios.

 Poseidon however was not the first God to link labdanum and sexuality although, to learn more about it, we must yet again go back in time, fifteen centuries before and cross the Mediterranean Sea to speak of a very peculiar divinity: Min.

A protodynastic Egyptian God, Min is an ithyphallic figure ruling over deserts and fertility. If the link between his turgescent phallus and the Homeric Poseidon is unclear, it is only because it is highly symbolic and has been incorporated into another which has startled countless aegyptologists: the flail. For indeed, Min is portrayed holding what seems to be a flail, the very same one appearing in the hands of pharaohs.

Or is it? Some researchers have hypothesised that the flail might in fact be…a ladanisterion, the traditional tool used to gather labdanum. This flail will also be that of Osiris, the most important God in Egyptian mythology who will have absorbed some aspects of Min’s aspects and especially his link to fertility.

One might ask why Osiris, Min and the pharaoh would hold a ladanisterion.

Well two main theories sound plausible. The first would make the flail-ladanisterion a symbol of the pharaoh’s generosity, fecundity, towards his people and his ability to lead Egypt to prosperity whilst the second theory says that it would in fact be a symbol of his capacity to protect and herd his people by separating the grain from the chaff, the good from the evil. If the first theory meets the Hellinistic one, it is worth noting the second’s novelty.

This separation of grain and chaff can be seen as a metaphor of separating good deeds from evil ones as labdanum not only was linked to Osiris and Pharaohs’ flails but was also the main component of their false beards which served no other purpose than signify their divinity. We then understand that labdanum was more than the mere symbol of human fertility and became the olfactory expression of a fruit-bearing union between men and Gods.

Let us not forget that Osiris was not only the God of Fertility but also a Soul-Keeper. He is the “Lord of the Living” in the “night bark” according the Book of the Dead; he is the “Khenti-Amentiu”, the Foremost of the Westerners that is to say the keeper of the afterlife. This Western world, could it be the same which saw the mythic Cisthene “in the far west”?

It was also Osiris who ruled over the last judgement and weighed good and evil deeds; to him were pharaohs identified during their lifetime so they would be resurrected like him once they died. It was also Osiris who circled the Duat, the netherworld where the souls of the deads would wait until their resurrection.

Which brings us back to Poseidon, God of the Seas and Fertility and of more.

The first mention of his name, Posedao, goes back to the Mycenean civilisation where he was a prominent and chthonian deity then he appears in the Orphic Hymns as the “Mover of the Earth”, the source of all earthquakes. Like Osiris, Poseidon reigned over a strange strip of Universe a Middle-Sky between Heaven and Earth. Because he had power over Oceanus, the river circling the Earth, Poseidon held it in his hands and ruled over the skies surrounding it, where worthy souls kindly waited for their reincarnation.

Poseidon is the master of earthquakes in that Platonists thought of the sea as a place of instability and constant changes. He was the demiurge presiding over the plane of the soul whereas Zeus presided over the intellect. We thus find this link between Heaven and Earth or rather between Heaven and Sea, which we explored whilst studying ambergris and Kabbalah with the only difference being that labdanum is not the “return in ourself” but rather the place of such return, of such metanoia.

Under the guidance of Poseidon, labdanum becomes the place of a passing and under Osiris it becomes the passover from humanity to divinity; it is the action separating the good grain from the chaff, forsaking evil deeds for good ones to sprout. It perfumes the soul with a spiritual fragrance and prepares it, by planting in it the seeds of virtue, to passing over to the worthy afterlife.

 Labdanum, far from being the symbol of a mundane and purely sexual fertility is rather that of spiritual fecundity. It calls upon a change in behaviour, to transform the barren sea into a fruitful one and to follow the song of our souls and let die beneath us the whimpering of devilish sirens, creatures from the Hades where lie all souls in pain.

With Osiris and Poseidon, labdanum transforms the Ocean, making it the place of instability no longer but of transmutation; transmuting the petrified gaze of Medusa’s head into the vigilant eye of he who watches over his soul, thus become key to a personal, intimate Passover from humanity to Divinity…

Soul’s amber and

Perfume of the Water-God -

I birth again.