Aleppo Pine Resin

The resin of this Mediterranean pine is best known as the flavouring of the Greek wine called Retsina. Originally used to seal amphorae so that the wine would not oxidize, the resinous taste that the wine picked up soon became beloved and is now used deliberately, even though amphorae are long out of use.

The ancient Egyptian “fat of the pine tree” incense referred to in texts was the resin of this pine, and it was one of the secret ingredients in the famous Kyphi incense. It has a sharp, fresh pine note, as you might expect, but also a strong grapefruit/guava scent from its high content of myrcene, a terpene also found in cannabis, which has been shown to enhance and extend the effects of THC.

Working with the Initiatic, I found it hard to collect my awareness into coherence, and was filled with a buzzy static electricity kind of energy and images of sharp, sparkling pine needles in the sunlight. At first, it was not aligned with the Saturn processing we used for this resin, but as I sat with it, I realized it was a matter of perspective.

We think of Saturn as being a dark energy of death and endings, but traveling from the top of the Tree down, it is also beginnings, where the One intelligence breaks into the shards of its many manifestations in the Sephira below. From this perspective, I could see Saturn as not darkness, but as the point at which the light could no longer be contained.

It’s an interesting aspect of Binah/Saturn, and one which I look forward to exploring more, perhaps with some of our Voacanga Initiatic to more clearly delineate the structure and patterns of the intelligence. The pattern communication from the Aleppo pine reminded me of some of my explorations of Mandrake related to sigils and the magick of writing and words.