Sandalwood

(wished by many, I have added a little picture of Mr. Man....)


Let’s face it-there is a sandalwood crisis looming around the corner. Not that this mere fact surprises me, there were signs on the wall for quite a while; one being the price exploding, the other being quality eroding. But when I talked to Essencia a while ago, my preferred Swiss supplier for standard essential oils, I learned a detail which puzzled me.

You know the Latin origin of the word “perfume”: Pro fumum, meaning literally “for the smoke”. Guiding us etymologically to the roots of perfumery: At the beginning of perfumery there was smoke, holy smoke, produced to please some far away gods, living in the sky (where the smoke would go) and welcoming this scented gift from men and women. You would get rain in summer or turn pregnant in exchange for incense and maybe a good glass of wine devoted to the god of rain or fertility. As a matter of fact, in old Egypt, there was a man-like good, kind of specialized to man’s fertility and related vital functions. I saw pictures of this sub-god in Luxor, highlighting male details that were rather explicit. Wouldn't it be a nice change to get spam mails with pictures of this man god instead of silly e-mails praising Viagra and other little helpers?

Thus, our ancestors praised these gods and sent fragrant messages to them in the old days. Today, we still send smoky messages, the more and more outside of office buildings, as smokers are not allowed to smoke inside buildings anymore. And we come back to the starting point of this little post: Sandalwood is used in low quality but large amounts in ….cigarettes. A somewhat disturbing fact that leads to too early cutting of trees, which that are not mature yet to yield high quality oil and, as most trees are still harvested unsustainably, finally to a depletion of overall Sandalwood trees.
I still do not understand thoroughly why a synthetic replacement such as Sandalore would not do the job in cigarettes, but in the end there is no way but trying to find alternatives. At the given time, the best replacement I could get is Vanuatu Sandalwood from Eden Botanicals which comes rather close to the real stuff. They seem to be able to deliver rather large amounts and the price is reasonable.

But, in the long run, we should also reconsider our smoky messages sent from outside of office buildings, I guess.