Olibanum Somalia Premium Resin Incense — Pure Frankincense

Pure olibanum resin from Somalia — the biblical frankincense in its most natural and unblended form, offered as a single-origin premium grade.

Olibanum is harvested from trees of the Boswellia family, whose character changes with the species, region, and harvest. The Somalia variety, drawn from the highlands of northeast Africa, is the lighter and more aromatic of the East African origins and sits alongside two sister grades in the catalog: Olibanum Sudan and Olibanum Lacrima Christi, the prized tear-drop selection from the Arabian Peninsula. Burned alone on charcoal, it gives the clean, citric-balsamic smoke that has defined Catholic and Eastern liturgy for two millennia.

Frankincense is the oldest continuously used liturgical incense in the Christian tradition. Carried out of southern Arabia and the Horn of Africa along the ancient incense road, it appears in the Book of Exodus among the ingredients of the sacred temple incense, and in the Gospel of Matthew it is one of the three gifts of the Magi to the Christ Child — alongside gold and myrrh. The Roman Missal still prescribes pure olibanum for the most solemn moments of the liturgy.

• Intensity: Medium-high
• Scent notes: Pure olibanum (citric, balsamic, resinous)
• Type: Italian-style resin incense

"Aurum, thus et myrrham" (Gold, frankincense, and myrrh) — the gifts of the Magi in the Latin liturgy.