Incense is a great spiritual tool used for many different reasons. Incense is great if you need to purify certain things like a room, a shrine, an object, or a person. It can also be used for making offerings to certain deities.

There are many types of incense, some examples are: sandalwood, frankincense, sage and sweetgrass. Incense is generally used in: sticks, cones, coils and raw items.

Two stick incense we will be talking about today are Tibetan Incense and Japanese Incense. 

Tibetan Incense is generally more rough and produces a great aroma, but a good amount of smoke. Japanese incense is made very delicate and thin, it produces almost no smoke but still gives off a great deal of fragrance.

The practice of using incense in Tibet dates back to the 7th Century and encompasses knowledge from ancient Tibetan Kings and great Indian Buddhist scholars. These formulas have been preserved and are still being used today for religious offerings, meditation and for overall mental and physical well being or simply to purify and refresh rooms. 

One of the Tibetan varieties is called Potala Incense. Potala Incense is very fragrant and feels very spiritual. It is used by many Buddhists as a tool for making offerings to deities and shrines as well as a protection against infectious diseases and negative energy.

[Check out this Potala Incense here.]

Potala incense is a pretty economical buy and will get you a good value, but there is also this brand from Men-Tsee-Khang that is even more value for the money.

[Handmade Tibetan Incense By Men- Tsee Khang]

Traditional Japanese incense has been engineered to be created in an almost perfect way. It is very elegant and precise. It definitely enhances your meditation rooms  serenity and tranquility.

There are many types of Japanese Incense and it is hard to say which one to pick but the number one thing you should be using most of the time is Sandalwood. Sandalwood is great for carrying your prayers and purifying the area.

[Check out this: Nippon Kodo – Morning Star – Sandalwood]

Another type of Japanese Incense to enjoy is this blend called Moss Garden.

[Check out this: Shoyeido’s Moss Garden Incense]

It is nice if you can find a decent holder for your incense.

[Check out this Incense Holder here]

Sage is a tool for smudging and dispelling energy. It is very much recommended to use Sage alongside Sweetgrass. Sage is known for clearing out all energy while Sweetgrass is used for bringing in positive energy. 

[There is some Sage here]

Sweetgrass was traditionally used by Native Americans as a great tool for ceremonies as a way to bring in positive energy and in general as a type of smudging. It should not be mistaken for a typical sage smudge as it definitely has different spiritual properties.

[There is some Sweetgrass here.]

Palo Santo and Sage are very similar. Palo Santo is used for smudging and clearing out energy. It is a lot more woody item while Sage is more of a bush.

[Check out this Palo Santo Incense Powder]

If you use powdered incense, you can light two small broken off stick incense and put them underneath the start of your powdered incense and they start the “burn-chain” of your incense line. It is nice if you can put your powdered incense in a straight line with however much you are using.

Just a quick note: Many people complain that Indian incense brands like Hem are too synthetic and irritate their senses.