The Ancient Mystery of the Sacred Incense: Pitum HaKetoret
Before You Read This
Before you begin this long blog post, I want to ask you for one thing: do not rush through it. Give yourself time to read it carefully, because what follows is not simply an article about ancient incense, oils or Jewish tradition. It is the story of a journey that changed my own life, challenged things I thought I understood about Scripture, and caused me to look again at holiness, obedience, prayer and my relationship with YHWH.
I cannot tell you what conclusion you will reach, and I am not asking you to accept mine. But I can tell you this: what you are about to read has the potential to change the way you look at parts of the Bible you may have passed over your entire life. You may begin asking questions you have never asked before about the Holy Temple incense, anointing oil, the Book of Psalms, prayer, Shabbat, holiness, the ancient practices of Israel and why YHWH placed certain instructions in Scripture in the first place.
This journey took me through Torah, rabbinic writings, Jewish tradition, ancient plants and resins, laboratories, scientific papers, distillation, chemistry, prayer and experiences that I still struggle to explain in ordinary terms. It also forced me to examine myself. I began this journey looking for answers about Pitum HaKetoret. I did not expect that somewhere along the way I would be the one who changed.
So yes, this is a long read. It is meant to be. Some things cannot honestly be explained in three paragraphs or a sixty-second video. Read it slowly. Question what I tell you. Check the sources. Challenge my conclusions. You do not have to agree with me.
But before you leave, ask yourself one question:
What if there are things in Scripture that we have been reading for years, but have never truly stopped to understand?
Why Was the Sacred Incense Considered So Powerful?
Why did YHWH choose these ingredients, surround them with holiness, and place incense at some of the most mysterious moments in Scripture? My search took me from Torah and ancient Jewish tradition to rabbis, Kabbalah, laboratories, chemistry, and finally an experiment I never expected to conduct on myself.
There are certain things in Scripture that are easy to read past because they are so far removed from modern life. The Ketoret, the sacred incense of the Tabernacle and later the Temple in Jerusalem, is one of them. To many modern readers, incense is simply fragrance.
It makes a room smell beautiful, creates atmosphere, or perhaps helps someone feel peaceful during prayer. But when we actually read the Torah and then examine how Jewish tradition understood the Ketoret, we encounter something far more serious.
The Ketoret was holy. It was commanded by YHWH, prepared according to specific instructions and offered as part of the sacred service. Exodus 30 does not describe it as an ordinary perfume that happened to be used in worship. YHWH gives Moses instructions concerning its ingredients and preparation, declares it holy, and prohibits reproducing the sacred composition for personal enjoyment.
Later rabbinic discussion in Keritot 6a preserves detailed traditions concerning its ingredients and preparation and continues to treat the Temple incense as something belonging to the realm of holiness rather than ordinary fragrance.
That immediately raises a question. Why was fragrance treated with such seriousness?
The answer becomes even more fascinating when we reach the book of Numbers.
The Incense That Stood Between the Living and the Dead
Numbers 17 records one of the most extraordinary incidents involving incense anywhere in Scripture. Judgment had fallen upon Israel and a plague had begun among the people.
Moses immediately told Aaron to take his firepan, place fire from the altar upon it, add incense and hurry into the congregation.
Aaron obeyed.
He entered the place where people were dying, offered the incense and made atonement for the people. Scripture then gives us an unforgettable image: Aaron stood between the dead and the living, and the plague stopped.
This is not medieval folklore. It is not Kabbalah. It is not a later legend created around incense. The event itself appears directly in the Torah.
What exactly occurred spiritually in that moment is a much deeper question, but the biblical narrative deliberately connects the commanded incense, Aaron's priestly action, atonement and the stopping of the plague. That alone should prevent us from reducing the biblical Ketoret to something that merely smelled pleasant.
Jewish tradition noticed this immediately.
Rashi, commenting on this passage, preserves a rabbinic tradition from Shabbat 89a that Moses had learned the secret that incense could restrain a plague. In that tradition, the knowledge is associated with the Angel of Death. Whatever one makes of the supernatural imagery, it demonstrates how dramatically the rabbis understood the episode. They did not read Numbers as a story about aromatherapy. They understood the Ketoret as participating in a sacred confrontation between death and life.
Why Incense?
This question has fascinated me for a long time.
Why incense?
Why not simply prayer? Why did Moses specifically command Aaron to take fire from the altar and place incense upon it? Why does Scripture deliberately tell us that Aaron entered the congregation with the Ketoret and then stood between the dead and the living?
There is another important detail. Incense itself was not some independent magical substance. Nadab and Abihu are the clearest warning against thinking that way. Leviticus 10 describes them bringing unauthorized fire before YHWH, and the result was death. The lesson is therefore not that a mixture of aromatic plants automatically possesses magical power.
The Ketoret belonged within obedience, holiness, priesthood and the presence of YHWH.
That distinction is essential.
The power was not man's ability to manipulate God through fragrance. The Ketoret was something God Himself commanded and incorporated into the sacred order of worship.
The Ketoret and the Presence of YHWH
Incense appears at extraordinarily sacred moments in the Torah. The incense altar stood within the sanctuary, and incense was offered continually before YHWH. On Yom Kippur, the high priest brought incense within the veil, where the cloud of incense covered the mercy seat.
The imagery is powerful. Fragrance rises. Smoke rises. Something physical becomes invisible and fills a space that cannot be held in the hand.
Later biblical imagery would continue connecting incense with prayer. Psalm 141 says, “Let my prayer be set before You as incense.” Revelation likewise presents incense together with the prayers of the holy ones.
This does not mean that incense and prayer are identical. It means that Scripture itself gives us a language in which rising fragrance becomes associated with something offered before heaven.
For believers in Yeshua, that should be especially interesting. Prayer is not simply information being transmitted to God. It is worship, offering, surrender and communion with the One who already knows what we need before we ask.
The Eleven Ingredients
Rabbinic tradition preserved an elaborate account of the Temple incense. Keritot 6a describes eleven principal aromatic ingredients, including balm of gilead, onycha, galbanum and frankincense, together with myrrh, cassia, spikenard, saffron, costus, aromatic bark and cinnamon. Additional substances were involved in its preparation.
Even the composition contains a remarkable lesson. Galbanum was traditionally understood as having an unpleasant odor by itself, yet it was included with the beautiful fragrances of the Ketoret. Rabbinic interpretation eventually saw significance in this mixture: even those considered spiritually unpleasant or sinful were not simply excluded from the community.
The fragrance emerged from the whole.
There is something beautiful in that idea. Holiness does not necessarily mean gathering only those who already smell spiritually perfect. Israel itself was a people made of imperfect human beings being called into the presence of a holy God.
The Zohar Goes Much Further
Centuries later, Jewish mystical tradition developed an even more dramatic understanding of the Ketoret.
The Zohar describes incense as having power against the Sitra Achra, the “Other Side,” a Kabbalistic expression for the forces of impurity and evil. In its mystical interpretation, the Ketoret becomes associated with breaking the influence of destructive spiritual forces. The Zohar also attaches protective significance to contemplating and reciting the passage concerning the preparation of the incense.
We need to distinguish this carefully from the Torah. The Torah records the commanded Temple service and the episode in which the plague stops. The Zohar represents a much later mystical interpretation of what the Ketoret means spiritually.
But that later tradition did not appear in a vacuum.
Jewish mystics were trying to understand something already astonishing in Scripture: why does the Torah show incense appearing at the boundary between judgment and mercy, impurity and holiness, death and life?
Their answer was that the Ketoret contained a profound spiritual mystery.
Is the Ketoret Magic?
No. And I believe calling it magic actually diminishes what Scripture presents.
Magic attempts to place spiritual power into the hands of the practitioner. Biblical worship places the worshipper under the authority of YHWH.
Aaron did not invent the Ketoret. Moses did not invent it. Israel did not discover a secret botanical formula and then learn how to manipulate supernatural forces with it.
YHWH commanded it.
That changes everything.
The Ketoret belonged to a sacred system established by God Himself. The altar, fire, priesthood, ingredients, timing and place were governed by divine command. The Torah's severe restrictions surrounding the sacred incense demonstrate precisely that it was not an ordinary substance for people to manipulate however they wished.
This is also why we should be very careful about claiming that simply burning a particular mixture today automatically produces supernatural results. Scripture does not give us permission to turn the Ketoret into a spiritual machine.
But neither should we make the opposite mistake and pretend that Scripture treats sacred fragrance as meaningless.
It clearly does not.
Why Does Fragrance Matter Spiritually?
Perhaps the deeper mystery is not merely what the ingredients were, but why YHWH chose fragrance at all.
Human beings respond profoundly to smell. A fragrance can awaken a memory that has been buried for decades. It can immediately change our awareness of a place. Smell can announce that something has entered the room before our eyes have even seen it.
The biblical world understood fragrance symbolically as well. Something offered upon an altar could be described as a pleasing aroma before YHWH. Incense filled sacred space. Perfumed oil marked consecration. Fragrant substances accompanied worship, burial, hospitality and honor.
The invisible nature of fragrance makes it a remarkable symbol of spiritual reality. You cannot see fragrance itself, yet you know when it has filled a room.
Prayer is also invisible.
Faith is invisible.
The presence of YHWH cannot be reduced to something our physical eyes can contain.
And yet its effects can transform everything.
The Ketoret and Spiritual Warfare
This is where later Jewish mystical interpretation becomes particularly fascinating.
The Zohar did not merely associate the Ketoret with pleasant prayer. It connected it with confrontation against forces of impurity. In the language of Kabbalah, the Ketoret stood against the Sitra Achra.
For believers in Yeshua, we do not need to accept every later Kabbalistic interpretation as Scripture in order to find the comparison worth studying. The New Testament itself describes spiritual struggle against powers and forces of darkness. Jewish mystical tradition developed its own vocabulary for understanding the struggle between holiness and impurity.
The fascinating question is why incense became connected with that struggle.
Numbers gives us the starting point. Aaron enters a place of death carrying fire and incense from the sacred service. He stands between the dead and the living, makes atonement, and the plague is stopped.
Later Jewish tradition looks at that scene and sees much more than smoke.
It sees a mystery.
The Secret May Be Holiness
Perhaps this is where we have misunderstood the Ketoret.
We keep looking for the secret ingredient.
Was it the frankincense?
Was it the balm?
Was it the onycha?
Was it the galbanum?
Was there some lost botanical substance whose chemistry produced an extraordinary effect?
Those are fascinating historical questions, and I have spent enormous time studying the materials themselves. But perhaps the deepest secret of the Ketoret was never simply botanical.
Perhaps the secret was holiness.
The ingredients mattered because YHWH commanded them. The altar mattered because it was consecrated. The fire mattered because it came from the altar. The priesthood mattered because Aaron had been appointed to that service. The prayer mattered. The obedience mattered. The presence of YHWH mattered.
Remove YHWH from the Ketoret and we are left with aromatic materials.
Place those materials within the biblical story, however, and we encounter something entirely different: fragrance offered within a covenant relationship between heaven and earth.
Standing Between the Dead and the Living
There is one image from this entire subject that I cannot escape.
Aaron standing between the dead and the living.
Behind him were those who had already died. Before him were those who were still alive. In his hand was the firepan. Upon the fire was the Ketoret. And Scripture tells us that the plague was stopped.
Thousands of years later, Jewish people still recite Pitum HaKetoret, the traditional passage describing the preparation of the incense. The Temple no longer stands, and the ancient priestly incense service is not being performed. Yet its words remain embedded in Jewish prayer because the memory of the Ketoret was never merely about perfume.
It was about holiness.
It was about prayer.
It was about atonement.
It was about the presence of YHWH.
And within Jewish mystical tradition, it eventually became associated with protection against the forces of darkness themselves.
For those of us who believe in Yeshua HaMashiach, I believe this ancient tradition deserves to be studied rather than feared or dismissed. We do not need to turn the Ketoret into magic, nor do we need to pretend that Scripture says nothing supernatural happened around it.
The Torah already gives us the image.
A plague was spreading.
Aaron took the incense.
He entered the congregation.
He stood between death and life.
And the plague stopped.
Perhaps before asking whether the Ketoret has “supernatural power,” we should ask an even deeper question:
Why Did YHWH Choose Incense?
Why did YHWH choose incense to stand between the living and the dead? Why did He prohibit the sacred incense and holy anointing oil from being reproduced for ordinary personal use?
These questions have occupied me for a long time.
I have spent years researching biblical fragrance and working personally with the individual materials connected with these ancient traditions. I have studied and experimented with saffron, galbanum, onycha, myrrh, frankincense, spikenard, aromatic woods, resins and many other materials. I have spoken with rabbis, Kabbalists and others who have spent years studying Jewish tradition, and again and again I encountered the belief that the Ketoret represents far more than a beautiful fragrance. Within Jewish tradition, particularly its mystical streams, profound spiritual significance has been attached to it.
Before I go any further, however, I want to make something completely clear. What follows is my personal belief, research and experience. I am not claiming that the incense or oils I create possess supernatural powers, cure disease, heal medical conditions or guarantee any spiritual or material result. I am asking questions that I believe believers should not be afraid to ask.
And the first question is simply: why?
Why these particular substances? Why saffron? Why galbanum? Why onycha? Why myrrh and frankincense? Why aromatic woods, plants and resins? Why combine substances with such dramatically different fragrances into one sacred offering? Why did YHWH care about its composition? Why did He establish boundaries around its use?
And perhaps the greatest question of all is this: how could burning plants, trees, spices and resins possibly become connected with such extraordinary spiritual ideas?
Jewish tradition has associated the Ketoret and its recitation with themes such as parnassah, livelihood and provision, blessing and prosperity, health and healing, protection in times of plague and danger, protection from harmful spiritual forces, resistance to the Sitra Achra, protection from the evil eye and envy, mercy during judgment, repentance, purification, peace within the home, blessing upon the household, spiritual elevation, strengthening prayer and the transformation of harsh judgment into mercy.
Those are enormous ideas. They deserve more than either blind acceptance or immediate dismissal.
What did the ancient sages believe was happening?
Was significance attributed to the individual ingredients? Was it the combination of the ingredients? Was it the fragrance? Was it the smoke rising upward? Was it the Hebrew prayer? Was it the holiness of the person offering it? Was it the commandment of YHWH?
Or was the Ketoret never intended to be separated from the larger sacred relationship between prayer, obedience, holiness and the presence of God?
This becomes even more fascinating when we remember what incense physically does. Solid material is placed upon fire. It changes. Something that could be held in the hand becomes fragrance and smoke, rises upward and fills a space while becoming impossible to grasp. The visible becomes almost invisible.
It is not difficult to understand why generations saw an extraordinary spiritual symbolism in that transformation.
But Jewish mystical tradition asks us to go further. What happens when sacred words are spoken while the Ketoret passage is recited? What did the sages mean when they associated incense with the defeat of destructive spiritual forces? Why did they connect it with blessing and parnassah? Why does the Torah itself place incense in the extraordinary scene where Aaron stands between death and life and the plague stops?
And what are we to make of the cloud?
The Torah repeatedly brings together cloud, incense and the presence of YHWH. On Yom Kippur, the High Priest entered the innermost sacred place with incense so that its cloud covered the mercy seat. Scripture does not tell us that human beings could manufacture the Shekhinah by burning aromatic substances. The presence belongs to YHWH and cannot be controlled by us. But it is impossible to read these passages without noticing that YHWH Himself chose incense and its cloud as part of the sacred environment in which Israel approached Him.
So I keep returning to the same question.
Why incense?
Why did YHWH choose fragrance?
Why did He choose smoke?
Why did He choose these plants, spices and resins?
Why did He declare a particular composition holy?
Why did He prohibit Israel from turning that sacred composition into an ordinary personal fragrance?
Why does incense appear together with prayer, priesthood, atonement, holiness and the presence of YHWH?
And why, at one of the most terrifying moments in the wilderness, did Aaron carry incense into the midst of death, stand between the dead and the living, and watch the plague stop?
I do not believe asking these questions is dangerous.
I believe not asking them means we may be overlooking one of the most fascinating mysteries YHWH placed directly in front of us in the Torah.
YHWH Wants Us to Seek
There is another reason I am not afraid to ask these questions. Scripture does not teach us to stop thinking when we encounter something we do not understand. Again and again, we are told to seek wisdom, pursue understanding, search deeply and draw near to YHWH.
Proverbs gives us one of the most extraordinary statements about this:
“It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings is to search out a matter.”Proverbs 25:2
Think about what that means.
Something can be concealed without being forbidden.
A mystery can exist because it is waiting to be searched.
YHWH could have created a world in which everything was immediately obvious. Instead, He created a world filled with depths. We dig into the earth to find treasure. We search the heavens to understand the stars. We study the human body to understand life. We study language to discover meaning. And when we open Scripture, we often discover that one verse leads to another, one Hebrew word opens an entirely new question, and something we have read a hundred times suddenly reveals a depth we had never noticed before.
Proverbs 2 tells us to seek wisdom as silver and search for understanding as though searching for hidden treasure. Jeremiah tells us that when we seek YHWH with all our heart, we will find Him. Yeshua Himself said, “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.”
Seeking is not rebellion against faith.
Seeking can be an expression of faith.
There is a difference between inventing mysteries that Scripture never gives us and searching more deeply into mysteries that Scripture places directly before us. I am not interested in creating another religion or adding commandments that YHWH never gave. I want to understand why He gave the commandments that are already there.
When YHWH specifies ingredients, I want to know why.
When He calls something holy, I want to understand holiness.
When He prohibits a sacred composition from ordinary use, I want to understand why that boundary mattered.
When incense appears at the moment a plague stops, I want to understand why incense was there.
When the cloud of incense fills the sacred place, I want to understand what YHWH was teaching Israel through fragrance, smoke, prayer and holiness.
And when generations of Jewish sages spend centuries asking these same questions, I want to hear what they discovered, examine their traditions, return to Scripture and continue asking.
That is what seeking means to me.
The Bible Is Filled With Mysteries
We sometimes speak as though “mystery” were an unbiblical word, but Scripture itself speaks openly about mysteries and things that are hidden.
Deuteronomy 29:29 says:
“The secret things belong unto YHWH our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children forever.”
That verse gives us an important boundary. Some things belong to YHWH alone. We are not promised access to everything. Human beings remain human beings, and God remains God.
But notice the other half of the verse.
There are also things that have been revealed.
Our responsibility is not to force open what YHWH has chosen to keep entirely within Himself. Our responsibility is to pay attention to what He has placed before us.
The Hebrew Scriptures are filled with people seeking understanding. Daniel searched the writings of the prophets. Solomon asked for wisdom. The prophets wrestled with visions and symbols. The Psalms meditate upon the works and ways of YHWH. The wisdom literature repeatedly tells us to pursue knowledge and understanding.
Even Yeshua sometimes taught through parables, requiring His disciples to come closer and ask what He meant. He did not always reduce everything to the easiest possible explanation. Sometimes the question itself drew the disciple deeper.
Perhaps we have become too accustomed to instant answers.
We read a verse, accept the surface meaning and continue to the next verse. But our ancestors could spend generations discussing a single word of Torah.
Why this word?
Why this ingredient?
Why this number?
Why this order?
Why this commandment?
Why here?
Why now?
What does it connect to elsewhere in Scripture?
Those questions are not enemies of faith. When approached with humility, they can be part of loving YHWH with our minds.
There Is a Difference Between Mystery and Magic
This distinction is especially important when discussing the Ketoret.
Seeking the mysteries of Scripture does not mean trying to control supernatural forces. It does not mean believing that possessing secret information makes us spiritually superior. And it certainly does not mean that every interpretation found in mystical literature automatically becomes biblical truth.
We test.
We compare.
We return to Scripture.
We pray.
We ask.
And sometimes we are willing to say, “I do not know yet.”
That may be one of the most important sentences a person seeking mysteries can learn.
Because genuine mystery should produce humility, not pride.
The deeper I have gone into the Ketoret, the more questions I have found. Every ingredient seems to open another door. Every ancient commentary leads to another tradition. Every biblical passage connects with another passage.
Frankincense leads somewhere.
Myrrh leads somewhere.
Galbanum leads somewhere.
Saffron leads somewhere.
Onycha leads somewhere.
The sacred anointing oil opens another world entirely.
And eventually I find myself returning to the same question:
YHWH, why did You choose these things?
I believe that is a beautiful question.
Not because I assume I already possess the answer, but because I believe YHWH gave us minds capable of searching, hearts capable of wondering and Scripture deep enough to keep generations searching.
Perhaps some mysteries are not hidden because YHWH never wants us to find them.
Perhaps some are hidden because He wants us to seek Him while searching for them.
And Then I Started Searching
And that is exactly what I did.
I searched, and then I searched deeper. I began looking beyond the religious explanations and started reading scientific papers, laboratory analyses, chemical studies and experiments involving the individual plants, resins and spices connected with the ancient world of sacred fragrance. I searched for frankincense. Then myrrh. Then saffron, spikenard, galbanum, cinnamon and the other materials. I wanted to know what modern laboratories had actually found inside these substances.
And some of what I found blew my mind.
Not because science had somehow “proven” the supernatural. It hadn't. What fascinated me was something completely different. These substances that people sometimes dismiss as ancient perfumes were filled with complicated chemistry, and researchers were investigating some of their compounds for effects I never expected to encounter.
Frankincense was one of the first that stopped me.
Scientists had isolated compounds from Boswellia resin and studied them in cancer research. In one experimental rat model involving glioma, a malignant brain tumor, animals receiving the highest dose of boswellic acids survived more than twice as long as untreated animals. Researchers also reported effects on tumor volume and programmed tumor-cell death. That does not mean burning frankincense cures cancer. It doesn't. But when I read that paper, I had to stop.
Frankincense?
The same family of resins that has been burned for thousands of years?
The resin appearing again and again in Scripture?
Now scientists were separating its chemistry and studying individual compounds in laboratories?
That sent me searching even harder.
Then I began looking into saffron and discovered crocin, crocetin, picrocrocin and safranal. I looked into myrrh and found a complex world of terpenes and sesquiterpenes. Spikenard opened another door. Cinnamon opened another. Galbanum opened another. Even onycha led me into scientific research I never imagined I would be reading when I first began studying the Ketoret.
And suddenly my original question became much bigger.
What in the world is going on with these ingredients?
Why are ancient aromatic substances turning out to contain such chemically interesting compounds?
What happens when they are heated?
What enters the air?
What happens when we smell them?
What happens in the brain when aromatic molecules reach our olfactory system?
Why is smell so powerfully connected with memory and emotion?
And what happens when multiple aromatic materials are combined?
I wasn't finding an answer.
I was finding more questions.
And that was when the Ketoret became much more than an ancient incense recipe to me. I began to wonder whether we have been reading these passages with modern eyes while knowing almost nothing about the actual substances being described.
So I decided to do something.
I began investigating the ingredients one by one.
Then I Went Looking for the People Who Knew the Old Traditions
Scientific papers were no longer enough for me. The laboratory research was showing me one side of these ingredients, but another question kept bothering me. Jewish sages had discussed the Ketoret for centuries, and Kabbalistic writings spoke about it in ways that went far beyond fragrance. There were traditions connecting the Ketoret with prayer, protection, parnassah, blessing, judgment, mercy and the spiritual world. I wanted to know what people who had actually spent their lives inside these traditions believed.
So I began searching for rabbis and Kabbalists who knew the older teachings surrounding the Ketoret, sacred oils, biblical plants and the traditions that are not normally discussed in an ordinary conversation. I wanted to speak with people who had gone deeper.
I will admit something. At first, I thought some of them were crazy.
Some of what I heard sounded impossible. I would listen, ask questions and sometimes leave thinking, There is no way I am going to believe this. But I kept returning because certain things they said stayed in my mind, and by then I had already learned that dismissing something simply because I did not understand it was not the same as investigating it.
Something also began changing in the conversations themselves. At first, I was another person asking questions. But when they realized that I actually knew the ingredients, had handled the resins, knew the biblical passages and had been studying both the Ketoret tradition and modern scientific research, some of them began speaking to me differently.
Most importantly, I was beginning to ask the right questions.
I wasn't asking, “What magical thing does this incense do?” I wanted to know why saffron was there. Why galbanum? Why onycha? Why frankincense? Why these ingredients together? Why did Jewish tradition associate the Ketoret with parnassah, protection, judgment and blessing? Why did YHWH establish such serious boundaries around the sacred incense and anointing oil? Why does incense appear at the extraordinary moment when Aaron stands between the dead and the living?
Those questions opened conversations I had not expected.
And then I did something else.
I brought them my oils.
By this point, I had begun making experimental preparations from the biblical aromatic materials I had been studying. I worked on three different versions. One line of experimentation came from the aromatic materials associated with the biblical anointing oil.
Another came from my work with the ingredients associated with the Pitum HaKetoret. I wanted to experience these substances physically, not simply read their names in Torah, rabbinic literature or scientific papers.
I wanted to smell what I had been studying.
I wanted to understand what happened when ancient spices, plants and resins were extracted into aromatic preparations. I wanted to know how the materials behaved individually and together. And when I placed these preparations in front of rabbis and others familiar with the traditions, I did not want to tell them what they were supposed to experience.
I wanted them to tell me.
What did they recognize? What did the fragrance remind them of? What traditions did they associate with these materials? Would people who did not know one another tell me completely different things, or would I begin hearing some of the same ideas repeatedly?
At the same time, another part of my investigation had begun.
I Started Testing What Was Already Being Sold
I searched for other people claiming to have recreated the Ketoret or ancient biblical incense. I found products coming primarily from Orthodox Jewish sources, but I also encountered preparations being made in completely different spiritual circles, including people involved in witchcraft and occult practices. Many claimed to possess an authentic ancient incense or some version of it.
By then, however, claims were no longer enough for me.
I wanted to know what was actually inside the material.
Whenever I could obtain samples, I began examining them. I compared their appearance, texture and fragrance with the raw materials I had sourced. I looked at materials under magnification and microscopy and, where I could, investigated them through laboratory testing.
What I found in some samples surprised me.
According to my own examinations and the testing I commissioned, some preparations being presented as authentic ancient incense appeared to contain modern fragrance materials or other components that did not correspond with what I expected to find from the genuine raw plants, spices and resins. What was being marketed and what I believed I was seeing under examination did not always match.
That made me suspicious of another market I had been looking at for years: biblical anointing oils and “holy oils.”
So I began buying them.
I purchased oils available on the market from different sources and started comparing them. I wanted to know what believers were actually receiving when they purchased something advertised as frankincense oil, myrrh oil, anointing oil or a biblical blend.
Again, I was disappointed.
In my own examination, many did not appear to be what their presentation had led me to expect. Others seemed to contain genuine essential oils, but at relatively low concentrations diluted into carrier oils such as olive oil or grapeseed oil.
I kept coming back to one very simple question:
Where are the actual materials?
Where is the frankincense resin?
Where is the myrrh?
Where is the saffron?
Where is the galbanum?
Where is the spikenard?
Where are the plants, woods, spices and resins behind these ancient names?
And what happens if we stop trying to make something merely smell biblical and actually begin with the substances themselves?
That question changed the direction of my work.
So I Went Back to the Raw Materials
I began sourcing the materials myself. I wanted to see them before processing. I wanted to touch them, smell them, compare different origins and understand how they behaved. I wanted to know what happened during extraction, infusion, heating, distillation and combination.
I began experimenting with methods and documenting what I was doing. I photographed materials, recorded preparations, kept notes, compared batches and changed processes when something did not work. When I encountered an ingredient I did not understand, I went back into the texts and then back into the scientific literature.
My work began moving back and forth between worlds that normally never speak to one another.
Torah.
Rabbinic tradition.
Kabbalah.
Botany.
Chemistry.
Laboratory research.
Fragrance.
And my own experiments.
I began working toward reconstructions of the aromatic world surrounding the Pitum HaKetoret and the biblical anointing oil, while also confronting the important boundary established in Exodus 30 concerning the sacred formulations and their ordinary personal use. At this stage, I was trying to understand these materials through direct research and experimentation, not simply reproduce something because a modern label called it “holy.”
I made different versions.
I changed ingredients and methods when the historical identifications were uncertain.
I compared what I smelled with what I had read.
I went back to rabbis and Kabbalists.
I asked more questions.
I returned to the laboratory research.
And I documented my work.
The deeper I went, the more serious I became about it. What had begun as curiosity was becoming something much larger. I was spending enormous amounts of time with these substances, handling them, smelling them, researching them and asking why YHWH had chosen this extraordinary world of fragrance in the first place.
At that point, I still believed I was simply investigating an ancient mystery.
Then something happened.
It was not something a rabbi had told me would happen.
It was not something I had read in a scientific paper.
I wasn't trying to create an experience, and I wasn't looking for a story that I could later tell people.
In fact, when it happened, I did not tell people.
I documented what I was experiencing and kept going. I questioned myself. I continued the work. I changed things. I watched. I waited.
And for a long time, I kept what was happening hidden from the light, almost like a seed beneath the ground.
Because before I could tell anyone what I thought I had discovered, there was one person I needed to investigate first.
Myself.
When the Search Became Real
There was one major problem with everything I had decided to do. If I wanted to understand the Ketoret and the biblical world of sacred fragrance, reading about the ingredients was no longer enough. I needed to obtain them. And I did not want synthetic fragrance oils or modern perfumes designed to smell “biblical.” I wanted the actual plants, spices, woods, shells and resins.
That turned out to be far more difficult and expensive than I ever imagined.
Some of the materials were rare. Others were simply unavailable in Israel in the quantities or quality I needed. My search took me to suppliers and specialists dealing with materials from Oman, Ethiopia, other parts of Africa, Greece and elsewhere. I needed genuine frankincense, including high-quality green Hojari Boswellia sacra. I needed myrrh. I needed labdanum. I needed real onycha material. I needed saffron, and not a few threads for cooking. At the prices I was finding, saffron could cost around $12 per gram, and for the distillation and infusion experiments I was planning, I needed enormous quantities.
At one point, after making calls and following leads, I managed to locate approximately two kilograms of saffron.
Then there were the machines. I needed distillation equipment, filters, laboratory tools, microscopes, containers and everything else necessary to work with these materials seriously. I needed money for testing. I needed money for ingredients. I needed money every time the research opened another door.
And somehow, for a long time, the doors kept opening.
I documented what was happening as I went. I have the videos. I have the photographs. I have the records. This is important to me because I am not reconstructing some spiritual story years later and trying to remember how everything happened. I was documenting the project while I was living it. I photographed ingredients, filmed different stages of the work, recorded what I was doing and kept evidence of the journey because I believed I was documenting something important.
Then came one of the most difficult ingredients of all.
Balm of Gilead. Afarsimon.
I had located a grower in Israel working with the plant I was searching for. He explained to me that obtaining oil from the resin produced extremely small yields, although oil could also be distilled using leaves, branches and other plant material. At one stage, I was quoted approximately $18,000 per liter for oil, and I purchased material from him.
But I needed more than oil.
I needed the resin itself.
For incense research, that distinction mattered. I did not simply want fruit or leaves. I wanted the aromatic material that could actually be worked with as incense.
So I searched outside Israel as well. I looked toward Oman, Africa and anywhere else I thought someone might have genuine material. I contacted people. I followed leads. I searched suppliers. I could find many products carrying impressive names, but I could not find another reliable source for exactly what I was seeking.
Eventually I was being asked approximately $1,000 for a single gram of resin.
Think about that for a moment.
One gram.
And I was trying to conduct experiments, not place a microscopic amount in a display case.
By then, this research had begun consuming enormous amounts of money. For roughly fourteen months, I found myself inside a financial cycle that became increasingly difficult to control. I would reach another stage of the work and need another machine, another ingredient or another quantity of material. Then another financial door would seem to open.
The bank offered me credit. Credit cards became available. Loan offers arrived. At one point I received an offer for approximately 120,000 NIS at what appeared to be a favorable interest rate.
I took it.
I bought more supplies. I bought equipment. I continued obtaining ingredients. I continued experimenting.
I kept believing that if these doors were opening, I was supposed to keep going.
Eventually I reached a point where it felt as though I finally had almost everything necessary to do what I had spent months preparing to do.
Then I called the farmer again about the Balm of Gilead oil.
His answer stopped me.
The price I was now being given was approximately $48,000 for one liter.
We argued about it. I remembered our earlier conversations and prices. We went back and forth, but eventually the conversation ended and I found myself sitting in my office and laboratory looking at everything around me.
I had the machines.
I had the bottles.
I had the saffron.
I had frankincense and myrrh.
I had rare materials that had taken months to locate.
I had spent money I did not really have.
And suddenly one of the ingredients I considered essential seemed completely beyond my reach.
The pressure was becoming enormous. By this point I had loans, credit cards and payments hanging over me. I was having increasing difficulty meeting some of those obligations, and the stress was affecting me physically. Yet I was still searching for some of the hardest materials, including genuine green Hojari Boswellia sacra, the saffron I wanted, onycha, authentic labdanum and the Balm of Gilead resin and oil.
I had also learned something uncomfortable along the way. A name on a package meant almost nothing to me anymore. I had encountered questionable materials and substitutions, and I had learned enough from growers, distillers, apothecaries and specialists to understand that this world was far more complicated than I had originally believed.
Still, I kept going.
Then I received a phone call.
“We Need to Drive Somewhere Tomorrow”
Rabbi Shmuel, who had been working with me, called and told me that we needed to drive somewhere the following morning.
He said it was important.
So we went.
I am deliberately not identifying the location here, but I will never forget arriving and realizing what I was looking at.
There were fully grown Afarsimon, Balm of Gilead trees standing in front of me.
Living trees.
After all the searching, all the phone calls, all the suppliers, all the extraordinary prices and all my attempts to find this material outside Israel, I was suddenly standing in front of the plants themselves.
I could see the trees. I could see the fruit. I could see the material I had spent so much time searching for.
I was in shock.
For me, at that moment, it felt impossible. I had been struggling to obtain tiny amounts of resin and had reached a point where a liter of oil was being discussed at tens of thousands of dollars. Now I was standing in Israel looking at living, mature trees.
I felt like I was in heaven.
At that point in my life, I interpreted what was happening as YHWH opening one impossible door after another. I had been telling people around me about what I believed God was doing. I was excited. I spoke about miracles because that was genuinely how I understood these events as they were happening.
There was only one enormous problem.
I had run out of money.
By this stage I was already stretched beyond what I should have been financially. Payments were becoming late. Credit cards and loans were weighing on me. The banks had already extended substantial credit, and there was no realistic way for me simply to walk into another bank and ask for another $100,000.
Yet while standing there looking at those trees, I said yes.
I said I would buy them.
The strange thing is that I did not actually know how I was going to do it.
I just said yes.
Then We Needed $5,000
A few days later I had a meeting with an apothecary in northern Israel. While driving home, I was speaking with my partner in the United States.
We had reached an immediate problem with the trees.
We needed a $5,000 deposit.
I did not have $5,000 available.
She did not have it either. By this point she was already deeply involved financially in what we were doing. We had both put ourselves much further into this project than either of us had expected.
We were talking on the phone about everything that had happened. We talked about the trees, the ingredients, the money, the extraordinary sequence of events and our belief that YHWH had been opening doors for us.
And I remember telling her that we needed this $5,000 deposit, but I did not know where we were going to get it.
While we were still talking, she suddenly stopped.
“Uriel.”
A wire transfer had just come in.
The amount was $5,000.
The exact amount we had just been discussing.
She told me she was sending it to me immediately.
I remember sitting there trying to process the timing of it. We were literally talking about needing $5,000 when $5,000 arrived.
I am not asking anyone reading this to interpret that moment for me. You can call it coincidence. You can call it extraordinary timing. You can believe what you want.
I know how I experienced it.
And again, this is why the documentation matters to me.
I documented this journey.
I have photographs and videos of the materials and the work. I have records from this period. These were not details I invented later because they made a good story. I was recording what was happening because, at the time, I believed I was watching something extraordinary unfold in front of me.
The rare ingredients.
The machines.
The saffron.
The search for Balm of Gilead.
The extraordinary prices.
The loans.
The phone calls.
The discovery of living Afarsimon trees.
The moment we needed $5,000 and $5,000 arrived.
I do not need to make this story more dramatic than it was.
It was dramatic enough.
But there is something I understand differently now.
At the time, I thought I was documenting the creation of something.
I thought the cameras, photographs and notes were documenting ingredients, experiments, oils, incense and a project that I believed YHWH had placed before me.
I did not yet understand that those same photographs, videos and records were also creating a timeline of me.
What was happening to me.
How I was changing.
What I was experiencing.
What was happening while I spent day after day surrounded by these materials, extracting them, smelling them, heating them, combining them, studying them and praying.
And that distinction would become extremely important later.
Because eventually something happened that I had not planned for, had not been looking for and did not immediately understand.
When it happened, I did not run to social media.
I did not announce it.
I did not turn it into a product claim.
I became the person I began investigating next.
And fortunately, without realizing how important it would eventually become, I had already been documenting the journey.
The $5,000 Had Another Story Behind It
There was something else about that $5,000 that made the moment even more powerful for me.
The woman who sent the money later told me that she believed the Holy Spirit had spoken to her and told her to send $5,000. She did not describe it to me simply as a financial decision. She believed she was responding to something the Lord had placed on her heart.
And she already had a connection to what I was doing.
When she had previously been in Israel, she had an opportunity to visit the Balm of Gilead farm herself. She had seen the plants and experienced the fragrance of the Balm of Gilead. She loved the scent. So when she later felt led to send that money, the connection was extraordinary to me.
I was in awe.
Here I was trying to understand how I was going to secure these trees, talking about the exact amount I needed, and someone who had actually visited the farm and smelled the Balm of Gilead believed the Holy Spirit was telling her to send the exact amount we needed.
Again, I can only tell you what happened and what she told me.
You can decide what you believe about it.
But she was not the only person who began coming forward.
Something else was happening that I had not expected. People were hearing about the oils and incense I was developing, and they wanted them. Some began placing preorders for the anointing oils before the work was even finished. There were people willing to put thousands of dollars into orders, including orders of approximately $5,000, $8,000 and more.
That shocked me too.
These were not inexpensive bottles of scented olive oil. People understood that I was sourcing extremely rare and expensive materials and trying to create something very different from the mass-produced “biblical oils” already on the market.
People wanted the oils.
They wanted the incense.
They wanted the real materials.
For me, this became another confirmation that we were onto something.
Money had come when we needed equipment. Rare ingredients had appeared after long searches. Living Afarsimon trees had appeared when the oil and resin seemed financially impossible. A $5,000 transfer arrived at the moment we needed a $5,000 deposit. Now people were willing to preorder the oils I was still developing for thousands of dollars.
For a while, everything seemed to be moving in one direction.
I purchased the trees and was owner of the Afarsimon tree the real balsam balm of Gilead
But then the human side of the story began to change.
When Money Entered the Relationship
Rabbi Shmuel had helped me during this journey. He had connections, knowledge and access that had been important, including the extraordinary day when I was taken to see the Afarsimon trees. I appreciated what he had done.
Then he told me that he wanted 35 percent of the business.
That was a number I could not agree to.
Thirty-five percent was not a small thank-you or commission. It was more than one-third of something I had financed, researched, developed and placed myself deeply into debt to build. I had spent months sourcing ingredients, purchasing equipment, experimenting, documenting the work and assuming enormous financial risk. I simply did not believe that I knew enough about where this business was going, or what it might eventually become, to give away 35 percent of it.
Rabbi Shmuel also supported the project financially and wired funds directly to my bank account, but when he later asked for 35 percent of the business, I simply could not give it to him because I had already committed 20 percent elsewhere and did not have that much ownership available to offer.
And something changed between us.
I cannot tell you what was inside another man's heart. I can only tell you what I perceived at the time. The conversations no longer felt the same to me. Money was now sitting between us. Ownership was sitting between us. I began to sense something that frightened me because it was exactly the kind of thing I had been reading about throughout my research:
greed and envy.
And suddenly the subject I had been studying was no longer safely contained inside ancient books.
I had been reading Jewish teachings about ayin hara, envy, jealousy, blessing and the danger of exposing something before it was fully established. I had been studying the idea that blessing sometimes grows best while it remains concealed.
Yet what had I done?
I told everybody.
I was excited.
I talked about the ingredients.
I talked about the discoveries.
I talked about the trees.
I talked about what I believed YHWH was doing.
I talked about the miracles.
I showed people what was growing before it had finished growing.
At the time, I saw nothing wrong with that. If I believed YHWH was doing something extraordinary, why wouldn't I testify about it?
But looking back, I began asking myself a very uncomfortable question.
Had I exposed something too early?
I did not know the answer.
What I did know was that the atmosphere around the project was changing.
And soon afterward, so was I.
I returned every dollar Rabbi Shmuel had sent me, even though doing so pushed my bank account deeply into the negative. The bank had to process the return of his transferred funds, leaving me with a large overdraft that immediately created serious problems with the bank.
What I did not know at the time was that Rabbi Shmuel had already been giving some of our oils to his daughters and to other people within the Orthodox Jewish community. Later, when he finally opened up to me about what they had experienced, I began to understand why he had become so interested in what we were creating. He told me stories of people who believed the oils had helped them through struggles involving depression, anger, fertility, finances and other areas of their lives. Were these results connected to the oils, to prayer, to expectation, or simply coincidence? I could not prove the answer, and I still would not claim that an oil can cure depression, restore fertility or bring money. But these were the experiences being reported back to him, and when he finally told me everything, I began to see a much larger picture of what had been happening around us.
One story in particular stayed with me. Another Rabbi told me about a young woman suffering from what they described as a flesh-eating bacterial infection, whose condition had become so severe that amputation was being considered. She received the oils and later recovered without the expected amputation. The people involved attributed her recovery to the oils created from the Holy Temple Incense.
I am not saying that conclusion was medically proven, and I am not claiming that the oils treated or cured her infection. I am simply sharing what was reported to me and how the people involved interpreted what happened. At this point in my story, I was collecting these accounts, listening carefully and asking questions, because I was beginning to realize there was a much larger picture I had not yet understood.
My wife and I later met the young woman and her family ourselves because I wanted to see what had happened with my own eyes. We photographed her hand and the wound, and what we saw was extremely disturbing. I still have those photographs as part of my documentation, although I have not decided whether I will share them here because of how graphic they are. Again, I am not presenting her recovery as proof that the oils cured an infection or prevented an amputation. I am documenting what we were told, what the family believed had happened, and what my wife and I personally saw afterward.
What This Journey Changed in Me
On this journey, I learned many things, but somewhere along the way I realized that I was not simply researching ancient texts, sacred fragrances, plants, chemistry and Jewish tradition. The investigation was changing the investigator. My own life, my habits, my prayer and my relationship with YHWH began to change.
I grew up in a home where faith and Jewish tradition were very important. My mother was deeply religious, and our home was kosher. But outside our home, especially as I grew older, I did not always live according to those same standards. I ate non-kosher food, and for much of my life I did not observe the holy Shabbat as I do today. Looking back now, I realize that many of the things I am rediscovering were not completely foreign to me. In many ways, I was returning to something that had been around me from the beginning.
Today, I eat kosher and do my best to keep the holy Shabbat. Prayer has become part of my daily life in a much deeper way. I put on my tefillin and tallit. I blow the shofar. I sometimes play my drums while praying and worshiping. I recite Pitum HaKetoret and pray from the Book of Psalms. I burn incense and anoint myself with sacred oil. These are no longer simply ancient practices that I read about in books or subjects that I research. They have become part of the rhythm of my life and part of the way I seek YHWH.
Perhaps that is one of the most important things this entire journey has taught me. I began by asking questions about the Holy Temple incense. Why did YHWH choose these particular aromatic substances? Why was incense given such an important place in the service of the sanctuary and Temple? Why were there such serious instructions and boundaries surrounding sacred fragrance and anointing oil? Why did Jewish tradition preserve Pitum HaKetoret so carefully for generation after generation?
But the deeper I went, the more those questions began turning back toward me. What does holiness require of me? What does obedience look like in my life? What have I been reading in Scripture for years without actually allowing it to change the way I live? What happens when biblical faith stops being something we merely discuss and begins entering our daily lives?
Researching the ancient ways eventually forced me to examine my own ways.
And perhaps that is one of the most unexpected parts of this entire story. I thought I was searching for an ancient mystery, but somewhere along the way, the ancient ways began calling me home.
I have now gathered the research behind this journey on the One New Man Culture website so that anyone who wants to investigate these questions can read the material for themselves. In the Research & Tradition section, I am bringing together the biblical texts, Jewish and rabbinic traditions, information concerning Pitum HaKetoret and the Holy Temple incense, the aromatic plants and substances themselves, and the scientific research that caused me to ask even more questions.
I am also uploading videos, photographs and other documentation from this journey to social media and Facebook. I want people to be able to see what I saw and follow the journey rather than simply being told what conclusion they should reach. There are things I documented along the way, things I purchased, places I visited, materials I obtained, experiments I conducted and events that happened around me. I want as much of that history as possible to be available for people who genuinely want to examine it.
After everything I have experienced, researched and documented, I believe what happened was supernatural. That is my testimony. I believe YHWH was involved in this journey, in the doors that opened, in the provision that appeared when I needed it, and ultimately in the changes that began taking place within my own life.
But that is my conclusion. You are free to decide what you think.
I can tell you what happened. I can show you what I documented. I can explain what I learned about plants, chemistry and ancient traditions, but also what I learned about hiddenness, envy, holiness, obedience, prayer and returning to YHWH. I can tell you what other people reported experiencing, and I can tell you what I personally witnessed. I can tell you how all of this affected me. But I do not need to demand that you reach exactly the same conclusion that I reached.
So read it. Question it. Challenge it. Tell me where you believe I am wrong. Tell me what I may have missed. Tell me if you have encountered something similar in your own life. I would rather open a serious conversation and allow people to investigate than simply demand agreement.
And I do not believe this investigation necessarily has to end with me.
I would welcome contact from qualified researchers, physicians, universities or research institutions who may be interested in examining whether aspects of these practices could be studied seriously in human participants. I would be interested in seeing a properly designed controlled human study with predefined methods, appropriate safety measures, independent oversight and measurable outcomes. Ancient religious tradition and personal testimony are one kind of evidence. A carefully designed modern investigation asks a different kind of question, and I believe there is room for both conversations.
If such research is ever undertaken, I am open to whatever the results show. Perhaps measurable differences would appear. Perhaps they would not. Perhaps some results would be positive, others negative, and others would show no meaningful difference at all. That is precisely why serious investigation matters. If we are going to ask these questions, we should not be afraid of the answers.
I was the beginning of my own investigation. I do not want to be the end of it.
I began this journey searching for the mystery of Pitum HaKetoret, the Holy Temple incense and the ancient fragrances of Scripture. Instead, the journey also caused me to examine my own life, return to practices I had left behind, take Shabbat seriously, return to kosher living, deepen my prayer, put on my tefillin and tallit, pray the Psalms, blow the shofar, burn incense, use sacred oils and seek YHWH in a way that has changed the rhythm of my everyday life.
I have told you what happened. I have shown you what I found. I have told you what I believe, and I have told you what this journey changed in me.
Now, what do you think?
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