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Decoding Obscure Notes Part IX-B: Religious Uses and Cultural Significance of Agarwood

The top consumers globally for agarwood products are the United Arab Emirates, Saudia Arabia, Japan and Taiwan. Singapore and Hong-Kong are the largest re-exporters of agarwood from its countries of origin (i.e.: Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, etc.).

Agarwood uses are mainly in incense, for both religious and cultural purposes; and to a lesser extent (because of its dear cost) in medicine and perfumery. The list of commercial perfumes using agarwood is rather short, because agarwood is very expensive and cannot be replicated very well with synthetics. Besides, the scent of agarwood is an acquired taste that has only recently become more trendy in the Western world.

Religious and Cultural Significance
Agarwood is used in religious rituals and ceremonies of Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam. Agarwood culture have reached its height in popularity and sophistication in both Arabia and Japan – even though it is not native to either of these regions, and in both cultures it has become significant for both religious purposes and for pleasure, thus becoming a rich component of these two cultures. Because of its enormously high price, only select few people can enjoy agarwood, and even fewer can enjoy the highest grades of agarwood.
Agarwood is mentioned in the bible only in later books of Psalms and Canticles. Although both books are very holy to the Jews, the context in which agarwood is mentnioned in both books seems to be for lucury and personal use, rather than religious purposes (it is not mentioned in the holy incense or anointing oils of the tabernacle).

References and sources for entire agarwood series:
CITES: The Use and Trade of Agarwood in Japan
CITES: Agarwood Use and Trade & CITES Implementation for A. Malaccensis
The Cropwatch Files 1
The Cropwatch Files 2
Wikipedia
Royal Oudh
Balashon
Bo Jensen

Decoding Obscure Notes Part IX-C: Oud in Arabia & Perfumery


Agarwood has made its way from Southern Asia to Arabia by way of the spice caravans, and is known as “oud” in the region, which is also the name for wood, and for an Arabic musical instrument resembling the lute. The nomadic cultures of the Arabs and Bedouins have grown fond of oud’s fine and intense aroma and use it for both religious purposes and for pleasure. Oud has become an inseparable part from Arabic culture.

Oud chips and incense are burnt in an incense burner called mabakhir during the holy month of Ramadan, after breaking the daily fasting with a meal and showering, and before the evening prayers at the mosque. It is also incorporated into the Hadj ceremonies and is burnt during Eid.

Burning oud is considered a great honour, and is part of the customs of guest welcoming (when the host can afford it!). Hospitality is a custom that is held in much regard, and is considered a virtue in Arabia and in the Middle East. The hosts share their best commodities with their guests, no matter how rich or poor they are. What began out of necessity for survival in the desert by offering clean water and a feast to break the wonderer’s hunger has evolved into entertaining with more precious commodities such as coffee, sweets and burning the finest and most precious incense the host possesses.

Oud is also used to scent clothing by saturating the garments in agarwood smoke, a custom that interestingly enough is common to both Arabia and Japan.

Grading: Agarwood manufacturers classify agarwood into four distinct grades:
Grade 1 Black/True Agar: mainly exported to Arabia as incense Grade 2 Bantang: mainly exported to Arabia as incense Grade 3 Bhuta or Phuta: sometimes extracted for a superior oil Grade 4 Dhum: used for oil (Source: Cropwatch)

Perfumery:
The Arabs are particularly fond of oud oil, dehn al-oud, which they use as a personal fragrance. Because alcohol is forbidden in Islam, Arabian perfumes are traditionally either essential oils that are worn neat on the skin, or based in an oil carrier.
Agarwood is the most expensive natural essence known in perfumery, and therefore mostly been used by the royalty or nobelty, or wealthy merchants. Agarwood is more often than never used as a single note from a specific country and grade. And less often it is blended with other notes such as rose, sandalwood, musk, ambergris, etc. And as mentioned in the 1st part of the series, it is not uncommon for the oil to be adulterated with lodh oil and several synthetics.

Oud is also used in a lesser extent in Indian perfumery. I have with me a sample of “musk oud attar”, which is a very dark, musky, animalic oud distilled with other secret plant materials into sandalwood oil. It has great tenacity and longevity.

Agarwood is an unusual woody note that is rarely used in perfumery, because of it prohibitive cost. There is an increased interest in agarwood in the past decade, perhaps triggered by the release of M7 by YSL in 2002, which was the first Western commercial perfume to use agarwood as a distinct note. Until than, agarwood oil was mostly used by Arabian perfume companies (i.e.: Ajmal, Arabian Oud, Madini, Rasasi) and the odd niche perfume house (i.e.: Montale’s oud line).

Agarwood is used in luxurious Oriental and woody compositions. It creates a sensual, resinous-animalic or clean-woody warmth and blends well with resins, balsams, spices and precious florals to make outstanding perfumes. A little touch of agarwood can turn an otherwise simple and ordinary scent into a magical phenomenon.

Examples for contemporary perfumes with agarwood:
M7

Oud Abu Dabi

Oud Wood

Arabian Aud (Ayala Moriel) - one of a kind

Click here for more perfumes I've created containing agarwood.

P.s. We will come back later with more insights on oud in perfumery.

Arabian Aud


Arabian Agarwoods, originally uploaded by Ayala Moriel.

It seems like eons since I’ve shared anything here about anything creative going on in the studio. Not that I share everything that I do in my little tiny lab; but honestly, there was nothing to share. I have been avoiding my organ since the summer, except for when replenishing batches of perfumes that sold out. Which was fun, of course, but not interesting enough to write about here.

To be perfectly honest, I’ve been going through what could seem from the outside a “dry spell”. But really was a result of me being over worked and over stressed and intentionally avoiding creativity in my life. I had so much to process and take in, and I had to keep everything in the business as smooth as possible during the busiest season in the year (I literally had no time off for 6 weeks at certain point – unless you count a few hours here and there).

Creating new scents requires a certain degree of tranquility, not to mention concentration and focus. I really find it best to avoid creating anything new. It may seem strange, because in other art forms (music, dance, painting…) the act of creating art is calming and centering on its own. And I usually find that is the case with perfumery as well (to demonstrate this: I can’t even count how many times I had a headache and it disappeared only few minutes after I started working with the oils).

But this time it was different, and I really prefer to create with a clear mind. When traumatic and painful stuff happens in life, associating it with a fragrance will make it forever engrained in one’s olfactory memory. And frankly, I think I can do without that extra reinforcement of memory right now. Some things are best forgotten, or at least left to chance for imprinting their memories on our soulds. At times like that, I think it’s best to stick to fragrances that are comforting and familiar. And that’s pretty much what I was doing.

So back to my lab I am and with gradually increasing thrill, excitement and curiosity. And interestingly enough, my first material to delve deeper into is aquilaria agalocha, aka agarwood, eaglewood, audh, oud, oudh or for simplicity’s sake, in this post I’m going to call it aud.

Aud has such a profound impact on the mind when it’s burned as an incense. It really brings something otherworldly into the room where it is burned. Perhaps there was a reason why I was drawn to it at this point in time. It has an intensity and grace like no other oil.

In this perfume I created just a few days ago, and am wearing on my wrists today, I tried to go all the way with aud, to its most aggressive extremes. As noble as the scent may be, it develops in the wood only after it has been infected with a parasitic fungus. Agarwood collections look like scattered ancestral bones. The wood has hardly any scent on its own in room temperature, but once burned becomes something completely different. A similar effect is created by steam distillation or CO2 extraction. Which goes to show that great things can come out of morbid death and decay…

So, to take agarwood into the extreme, in this first experiment I decided to make it more animalic, a little smoky and as heavy and smoldering as I could possibly can. Agarwood CO2 is the most animalic one I have at the moment, very dark, resinous, almost yeasty, and at the same time a little berry-sweet underneath it all. It’s a sweet wood, instead of a dry wood (cedarwood, for example, takes it all when it comes to dryness). To intensify the animalic aspect, I added costus root absolute, African stone tincture and honey absolue. And to express the incensey, resinous, smoldering characteristics, I used some fossilized amber resin (steam distilled twice from the dust of the amber that is used in jewelry) and labdanum, and also an Indian amber-aud attar. It begins intensely aud with some smoky ambery notes creeping in from benath, and remains that way for a while. The amber and honey take over after a while though and leave a veil of sweetness behind.

My First Day in Paris

I arrived in Paris late on a gray morning and on the way from the airport was able to view the many chestnuts in blossom while experiencing some Parisian morning traffic jams. The apartment I’m staying is close to everything (walking distance from the Champs Elysees for one thing) is quite old and has very steep swirling staircase leading to it. There I met my boyfriend and his sister and we spent the entire day together.

After spending a couple of hours recovering from the longish trip and its various side effects (via Montreal – over all about 11-12 hours flight), which included eating fresh strawberries from the market and some baguette and trying to taste a ripened cheese with a sharp taste of cooked cauliflower, we left the apartment for the first little tour of Paris on the Champs Elysees. Our first stop was Sephora, a very short stop that is because the entrance was infested by what I could only describe as petroleum fumes. I had to leave before getting an idea of what’s in the store, but I did notice it was gigantic – almost like an entire mall of perfume and makeup! – and that there is some lighter version of KenzoAmour already out in France, that comes in a beautiful white bottle with gradually transparent edges. I left as soon as possible and immediately spotted Guerlain, which is almost the next door neighbour but decided to cross the street and have some tea at Laduree so I can recover some of my strength before the strenuous mental activity of perfume sniffing…

Laduree had the nicest muted turquoise-green entrance in a somewhat art-deco style with a butterly motif and purple accents. We sat at the bar at the back and had some of Laduree’s house-blend tea (very fragrant with roses and violets I suspect), and accompanied by some of their newest macaroons – mango & jasmine, muguet, bergamot and the violet-cassis ones. The mango and jasmine was mostly mango, with the slightest hint of jasmine and quite delicious with an almost jelly-like texture of the mango filling; the muguet tasted primarily of almonds, the bergamot was intense and impressive and the violet-cassis was a heavenly balance of floral sweetness and tart red fruits.
On the way to Laduree we spotted an Arabian Oud boutique and now was a good time to check it out. I smelled 5 types of oudh – two Indian and 3 Cambodian ouds, ranging from light and woody to smoky and animalic. My favourite was one mild Indian oudh and also another more smoky Cambodian oud. This is the first place I’ve seen that actually sells real oud as well as the oud wood chips. The shop owner was kind and knowledgeable and even let me take picture of him and the shop.

We than crossed the street and went over to Guerlain, where the walls of two story shop are stacked with shelves of perfume and eaux de cologne vats ranging from 500ml to 1 and 2 litres. On the second floor is where the exclusive perfumes reside – including Sous la Vent, which I had planned to impulsively buy on this trip and wear it in my 5 days in Paris so it would be how I remember the trip by. .. I tried it at Montreal once and was immediately smitten… I also smelled a few other perfumes there: Vetiver pour Elle, which I had hard time not buying on the spot as well (and my boyfriend loved too – he seems to be really into the vetivers I like – i.e. Sycamore and Vetiver Tonka and always comments on them). He was also smitten with white florals and I think Cruel Gardenia was his favourite. But than he’s also smitten with my gardenia plant that blooms in the middle of my living room…! I love the dry gin beginning of Sous la Vent. It is quite herbaceous and dry with only very little florals and gradually warms up into a chypre base with only the slightest hint of tonka bean. This is how I'm going to smell in the next few days...

By now it was time for dinner and we wanted to check out l’Atlas – a Morrocan restaurant at St. Germain. Unfortunately, 5pm was too early for them to be open and we had to find something else. Of course we knocked into another parfumerie on the way – Diptyque – and I got a chance to check out all the candles I was curious about (Flouve, Figue Vert, etc.) and their new eaux. I was particularly taken with the freesia soap though above all things.

We went on and had some cheese fondue in a little side street and got scratched by a friendly yet aggressive resident cat and than went home all the way through Notre-Dame and along the Sienne, going through the Louvre and Jardin de Tuilleries and than all along the Champs Elysees and Arc de Triumph.
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