Regular readers will no doubt be aware that I am not the biggest fan of Hem incense. The fact that it is charcoal based and is (probably) dipped in fragrance oil rather than being made from finely ground ingredients gives it a characteristic odor that I find very distracting on occasion. Sometimes though, Hem creates something that defies my expectations and can truly be classed as something special.

There are few incense ingredients as confusing as Dragons Blood. The name Dragons Blood can refer to no less than sixteen different resins from the same number of trees. It can also refer to the extremely poisonous mineral cinnibar (mercury sulfide) although not in recent times to my knowledge. It is also another name for red rock opium, but it contains no opiates and its intoxicating properties are dubious at best.

The distinction is important because white sage plays a tremendous role in Native American rituals as well as various Wiccan and Pagan spells and rituals for cleansing everything from space to Athames, crystals and more. The cleansing properties of white sage are well documented in hundreds of works and I am not about to argue with the wisdom of the ages. So with that in mind, and a trip to the Native American festival in Fort Walton Florida where plenty of white sage was burned still fresh in my memory, lets see what Hem has to offer with this stick.

Koala Bears. That is the first thing that pops into my head when I hear the word eucalyptus. The second, after a moments thought, is some terrible cough drop that trumpeted how it was made with eucalyptus. Mercifully I have forgotten the brand. Anyway, Hem offers a eucalyptus incense that is actually surprisingly good.

If you have read very many of these little reviews then it should be apparent that I love patchouli. I like the warm, earthy, sometimes oily and woody scent that a good patchouli has. So after having burned approximately half the output of the worlds patchouli incense in a quest to find just the right one, I consider myself to be very familiar with all of its myriad variations in scent.

One of the reasons that you burn incense is to relieve stress and take a short mental vacation from the world. So with a name like “Anti-Stress” Hem is aiming squarely at that target. I am happy to report they created a product that could live up to the name on the box. Now, incense won’t magically remove all of your stress and lower your blood pressure. You have to be an active participant and control your breathing and your muscles. Incense can help though and that is where this stick comes in.

I wasn’t expecting a great deal from this cedar incense stick by Hem after I experienced a pretty bad failure on their part with a cinnamon scented stick. I mean, how hard is it to get the smell of cinnamon wrong? To show you how hard that is to do, I will follow this up with a short post explaining how to take ordinary ground cinnamon and water to create your own cinnamon incense cones.

I am not sure what I expected from this stick, but the thought had crossed my mind that it would smell like cannabis sativa since the name on the package is “Cannabis” and it features the leaf we all know so well. Strangely though it smells very little like the cloud of smoke that generally hangs over the crowd at a Dead concert.