Smoke

One of my fondest memories from my mid-40s is a scent memory: a blend of cold air and snow, wood smoke, hot coffee, freshly-sharpened pencil cedar, and burning copal resin. I’m at an old hunting lodge in the country, arrived for a full day of astrology studies. This is what it smells like.

I enter the warm lodge, remove my boots and replace them with slippers, and set a plate of food to share on the table. A fire is burning in the wood stove. There is fresh coffee and cream. I’m greeted with hugs from the people milling around, who themselves smell like herbs and wool, fresh air and essential oils—geranium, vetiver, cedar. In the big room, a censer billows incense smoke. I wrap myself in a shawl, take my notebook and pencils and mug, and find a place to sit before we begin. For about eight hours, six weekends a year, for three years, this is my spiritual home. This is the place where, through study, ritual, and play, I become an astrologer—which is to say, I learn to read the poetic language of the stars.

I love the romance of smoke.

A friend, highly eccentric and wise, told me that in her memory, her grandmothers, who kept up active communication with the spirit world, are always seen in a haze of smoke. They were not smokers, but their men were. A cigarette smoker herself, who can see the dead, my friend speculates that something about consort with the Otherworld, at least in these times, invites a protective veil, a space between worlds. My astrology teacher, too, rings herself in smoke from tobacco and incense and fire.

I am not a smoker, and never have been. I don’t mean to encourage cigarette smoking, which is lethal. Prone to compulsion, I can only imagine how difficult it would be to quit. The histories of both tobacco production and cigarette marketing are filled with horrible human exploitation for the purpose of creating wealth for a few. Smoking is bad, kids.

But smoke? It can be beautiful.

I have a box of incense I found when we were cleaning out my mom’s house after she died. It contains small cones of fir tree resin. When I light a cone, smoke wreaths luxuriously, and it smells like I’m burning pine logs in a fire. In the mornings now, in winter, I light a cone of incense and the beeswax candles on my altar. I make coffee, and then I sit with my dog, Blue, and we pray.

The smoke on my altar moves upward in a sinuous dance, curling back on itself, growing thin and dissipating. The candles flicker. This is how I begin my work day and my transition to writing; it grounds me and gently nudges awake my imagination. (I’m an owl, and I roll out of bed just in time to make my son breakfast and pack his lunch before sending him on his way to school. Then I begin my work day.)

Other ways I savor smoke without smoking: burning dried herbs from my garden, drinking lapsang souchon tea, watching “Mad Men” and Humphrey Bogart movies, anointing myself with a gorgeous rose body oil that Rebecca Altman made several years ago with rose petals that had infused with smoke from forest fires near her home, wearing smoky perfumes, listening to k.d. lang’s “Drag,” and, of course, sitting around a campfire or bonfire.

Today and tomorrow are Imbolc, or Candlemas, for those who observe the wheel of the year. Astrological Imbolc, when the sun reaches 15 Aquarius, is in the early hours of February 4. And lunar Imbolc, the new moon in Aquarius, comes on February 9 this year. Light some candles, read a poem aloud, eat some delicious cheese (if you’re able), and enjoy some creative endeavor in honor of this holy tide.