Cedarwood

Cedarwood is a broad name for a narrow family of scents, the steam-distilled essential oils drawn from Cedrus atlantica (Atlas cedar), Juniperus virginiana (Virginian red cedar) and Cedrus deodara (Himalayan cedar). The trees are ancient. Cedars of Lebanon appear in the oldest written records; the Egyptians used cedar oil in cosmetics and embalming; Solomon's Temple was built from it. The name comes from the Greek kedros, a word that ran from cedar to juniper to any resinous conifer that burned well and smelled like itself.

The scent opens sharp and turpentine-bright, a little confrontational. Give it a minute. It softens into warm, dry wood: the smell of a pencil touched by a thoughtful hand, of a drawer lined with scraps, of a room that has been lived in by someone who prefers evening to morning. Cedarwood is a fixative: it holds lighter scents in place and it holds the attention too. In the aromatherapy tradition it belongs to the root chakra, to winter, to the evening register: anything that needs slowing and grounding rather than lifting.

The tradition's quiet advice is to give the scent a role in a practice. Keep a small cedarwood object on a desk or bedside table and let it mark territory, a physical place for the attention to return to when the day has scattered it. Cedarwood does not lift the mood; it settles it. That is a different and equally useful thing.

Below: cedarwood essential oil, candles and incense from our catalogue. For the winter evenings, and for the work of grounding.