Sal Resin

This is a more obscure incense resin in the West, but it is widely known throughout Asia, especially India, where all parts of the tree are considered useful. The wood is strong and durable, and the leaves are used as eco-friendly disposable plates, but it is the resin and its medicinal and sacred uses we’re interested in here.

In India and the Himalayas, the Sal tree is known as “the deliverer of intoxicating resin”, and is used for Shamanic journeying and trance. Working with just the resin in our censer, we experienced a mild transporting quality, which was enhanced the thicker the smoke became, but when we added a dose of the Initiatic to the practice, its astral travel potential really came through.

One source we read said that the resin calms the physical body so that the spirit can be lifted, and that is exactly the experience we had with the Initiatic. At first, it created a hypnotic feeling of swaying in the body, and we felt that aspect would be wonderful for movement-based trance practice. Then, the movement settled and it brought a feeling of the astral body lagging behind the physical, and an almost “sticky” feeling to the subtle body, as if the astral self was being pulled out of alignment and attaching to the objects around like a magnet.

That effect lasted most of the day after just a small dose, and it could be disorienting at times if we moved too fast and the separation became more prominent. When worked with consciously, though, the easy separation of the subtle and physical selves was very conducive to astral travel and projection for any type of working, and that was enhanced even more by using some of our Astrale Initiatic.

The “sticky” quality of the subtle energy is something we could imagine using to charge objects for magickal uses, since it seemed very easy to leave some of one’s energy behind in any object we interacted with.