Amber is fossilized tree sap and it can be very expensive due to its rarity in some colors and because of its beauty. It is usually whitish through pale lemon yellow to brown and almost black. Uncommon colors can include red, (cherry amber) green, and the very rare and very much sought after blue amber.

Although all amber will emit a pleasant fragrance when heated, don’t dash off and incinerate your jewelry or heaven forbid, your wife or girlfriends jewelry. Besides, quite a lot of amber jewelry contains prehistoric insects as a selling point and I am pretty certain that burning insects, prehistoric or not, is not a pleasant scent.

Baltic amber or “succinite” is so named because it contains about 8% succinic acid but more importantly to fans of incense, it emits a very unique and very wonderful fragrance when heated. The ancient Greeks burned amber extensively as an incense resin and they believed that the “sun stone” connected them to the sun god and created an atmosphere or renewal and mental alertness. Amber was also a favorite ingredient in mixtures used in temples of the time and for medicinal purposes as well.

A simple recipe you can try in addition to just burning amber is below.

Greek Temple Frankincense

2 parts frankincense
1 part myrhh
1 part cedar
1/4 part amber

Crush all the ingredients together with a mortar and pestle and mix thoroughly. Then heat on a mica plate or with charcoal buried in the traditional way in white rice ash.