This poem is anti-religious. I've had some think this was pro-Christianity. I'm talking about the sweet, seemingly heavenly incense ritual that chains us to all the bad: guilt, fear, inferiority. I hope this makes sense now.
Incense Wafts
The swinging of the potpourri smoke
in Orthodox and Catholicism’s ritual.
On its chain our hopes sway,
though entanglement
hangs us in our faith,
holy becomes impossible,
guilt takes over.
But how it smells so heavenly,
as if God reaching down,
fingertip to lowly fingertip.
A creation at once flawed,
needing repentance and absolution,
cleansing and fear
‘til death.
Religions all seem to come down from pagan rituals going back before record time. Perhaps the use of smell was akin to chanting, music and song to help familiarize the faithful to the same kinds of things every time religious rituals were carried out--reinforcement by repetition.
Sweet smells could have been introduced by priests and shamans as many people crowded into small chambers and their body odor became nearly unbearable unless masked by flowery scents like incense. Since many times these rituals involved bloody sacrifice, the ritual locations probably stunk of gore and the incense was meant to overpower that terrible dead stench.
Love the incense. The only thing about organized religion that makes me happy.
Danae, if you get a chance, read Marvin Cox. He is a great writer, though some of his stories are long.
L,L
an interesting notice of the swinging pot with the pourri smoke. . . it's not only of the beyond fragrance but its physical moving on its chain back and forth, like a pendulum during the session of hypnotherapy, to make you enter into the high/mid/deep trance of obedience. We are convinced with our eyes but actually charmed with the other world's smell. Cheers, alex
Having survived two religious memberships all through my youth and early adulthood, your words speak volumes, and fortify Hitchens, Dawkins and Harris in their position on what religion Has done to us and what it Continues to do to us. There's little question to many of us why ceremony seems so fraudulent today.
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Sweet smells could have been introduced by priests and shamans as many people crowded into small chambers and their body odor became nearly unbearable unless masked by flowery scents like incense. Since many times these rituals involved bloody sacrifice, the ritual locations probably stunk of gore and the incense was meant to overpower that terrible dead stench.
Ron
Danae, if you get a chance, read Marvin Cox. He is a great writer, though some of his stories are long.
L,L