Ginger Quinlan - Scents of the Soul: Creating Herbal Incense for Body, Mind and Spirit

INTUITION has always been a part of my life. At a very early age, ten to be exact, I became aware of the fact that I was different from other little girls. I saw things that were not visible to others. I knew and felt things before they happened, things that my parents preferred not to recognize.

My life was not a normal existence but one filled with spirits, energy and knowing what one should not know at such an early age.

When I turned 15 the drive to find out why I was so different kicked in. It sent me on a search through countless library books, endless discussions with my youth Pastor at the Baptist Church we belonged to and fruitless efforts to find information about why I felt, saw and experienced things before they happened. This led to discovering a wide variety of paths that seemed to all lead me back to being one with Mother Earth and all She had to offer.

During this time of self-discovery, my Father, a gracious man who spent all of his free time digging in the dirt behind our home, took me under his kindly wings, introducing me to the world of plants, hybridizing and breeding Iris especially. I was a willing, delighted student, happy to spend quality time with the man who was my hero. I dug side by side with him every weekend, planting rows and rows of crinkled looking Iris bulbs.

I loved the way the dirt lingered between my toes while I bent over the Iris, plucking tiny seed pods from their middles, then carefully labeling them and plopping them in tiny brown paper bags for later use. I couldnt find a happier time than working the garden, feeling the spring sun beaming down all around us as we dug in the rich dirt of my backyard. My fathers passion became my own.

Gardening, along with all the nature studies, drew me into its bountiful array of healing modalities. I dedicated my early years to studying, growing and drying herbs, working with essential oils from plants, experimenting with the effects ofherbs and oils on the human body, energy movement and manifestation work. In between my studies, I was becoming a very well known Psychic-Medium. My life became a dance of playing in the ethers during my normal working week, and playing in the dirt, in my free time to discover the benefits of healing with herbs.

Herbs are my friends. They grow, they prosper, they make me smile and they are always honest about what they need and who they are. This combination of gardening and working with energy on a daily basis brought me to a complete halt in my studies and work.

The more I searched for information about healing with color, energy, breath and other tools to manifest change in ones life, the less I found. I bought numerous manuals on candle magic, meditation techniques, breath, color, making incense with herbs, working with oils and herbs, and the list goes on.

I spent a lot of money on all of the different topics, becoming frustrated with the fact that none of them were combined in simple techniques to facilitate change in the human body. I wanted that book!

While working with various clients in my healing and psychic practice, I found myself recommending many different books to my clients. I rattled off numerous titles of all the books I could think of, secretly wishing I could offer them one healing primer that would guide them through the basic steps of healing the soul, opening up their intuition and guiding them into emotional balance.

I continued to search and research, finding significant benefits from using aroma, herbs, oils, candles, meditation, releasing of emotions, visualization and self-talk to better ones self. It was working for me in my own life, why couldnt it work for others?

This took me into offering classes and teaching the combined techniques to my clients. I thrived on watching the individual changes that occurred, logging it all in my journal, along with the various methods I used to help facilitate those changes and how the students reacted to them. It was exciting and satisfying to see the changes in the people around me and in myself.

I took what I knew further and began researching herbs in particular. Scott Cunninghams Incense, Oils and Brews led me into playing with herbs and the different combinations of herbal mixtures. It was fun to create incense out of leaves and flowers. I liked the way it felt and the way my body reacted as I mixed, poured and experimented with the recipes. It was a new adventure each time I worked on creating the recipes he suggested, and then it shifted.

I had worked through all of his recipes and combined techniques. I went back through and took what I had learned, taking it a step further through adding energy and intention to the mixing process. I logged those experiments as well, indicatinghow my body felt, what happened while creating different mixtures and how it could affect others when burned in class.

A few months after discovering how to make Incense, a series of significant teachers entered my life. I became an in-house Psychic at a store in Colorado, called Metamorphosis. I was suddenly part of a circle of healers who shared their wisdom freely and offered up new ways to heal, move energy in the body, and who, much to my delight, worked with herbs and oils. My indoctrination into the various healing modalities began the day I entered Metamorphosis Bookstore.

I was privileged to be in the midst of some amazing healers; High Priestesses of Hawaiian Magick, Wicca, Reiki Masters, Tarot Readers, Crystal Healers and Light Workers. My lessons became a daily process of being deeply in-tune with my own wounds, releasing them and acknowledging what I needed to work on in my own life. I had the added benefit of listening to various clients who mirrored back to me all the wounds I needed to look at. My entire life was an energetic school of healing, all designed to shift my energy and heal my soul.

For seven years I worked in and around that little shop of miracles, all the while playing with different ways to facilitate healing on a soul level with various energetic tools.

Incense was my favorite. Herbs were like chocolate cake and essential oils were the frosting. They excited me and drove me to experiment more with incense than any other healing tool. My journal expanded as I worked outside the suggestions of Scott Cunninghams books or Wylundts Book of Incense , and all the herbal lore in the wide collection of books I had read.

I practised the techniques of moving energy through the incense and visualizing what the end result would be if I stood over the incense mixtures and meditated. I quickly discovered that not only did my life change rapidly for the better, but doors flung open wide to offer me situations for change that otherwise may not have manifested. This led to the writing of Scents of the Soul .

My journal of incense experiments, my own energy explorations and releases, countless hours of counseling clients, and hearing every imaginable crisis situation possible, has helped to make this book happen. Advice, classes, meditations and all the recipes have been offered up to individuals that I have worked with for the past 20 years. Now I am offering them up to you to experiment with, process through, and find your own unique healing tools for your soul.