Quick Specs
- Type: Backflow incense cone burner
- Size: 9 inches
- Figure: Blue-green caterpillar with a gold hookah
- Cone spot: Gold-rimmed ring on the toadstool cap
- Base: Round black base with purple roots, blue steps, red toadstools, and playing cards
- Includes: Starter backflow cones
A Caterpillar and His Hookah on a Purple Toadstool Cap
The scene is built to be seen from every side. The caterpillar sits on the cap of a wide purple toadstool dotted with white. His head is blue-green, with a heavy brow, round dark eyes, and two small antennae, and his body shades through yellow and orange bands. Blue hands rest in front of him. Beside him stands a gold hookah with a purple vase trimmed in gold scrollwork, its hose curling across the cap. At the edge of the cap, a gold-rimmed ring holds a yellow cone. Below the cap the stem becomes a twisting trunk, and its roots spread across a round black base in strands of purple and magenta. Blue steps climb the trunk. Red toadstools with white spots grow at the left, a pair of playing cards leans at the right, and a turquoise spiral, like a young fern frond, finishes the front of the base. Because the base is round, any angle shows another detail: the curve of the hose from one side, the card corners from another, and the blue steps from the front.
In Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland the Caterpillar is a large blue creature, and Carroll writes that he is exactly three inches high. That number matters in Chapter V. Alice has shrunk to three inches herself, and she tells him she would like to be a little larger, because three inches is such a wretched height to be. The Caterpillar rears himself upright in anger and calls it a very good height indeed. When the talk ends he takes the hookah out of his mouth, yawns, shakes himself, and crawls away in the grass. John Tenniel’s first-edition illustration of the Caterpillar is a visual paradox: the figure’s human-looking face is formed from the head and legs of a naturalistic caterpillar. The sculpture keeps the blue coloring, the hookah, and the mushroom that the book describes, and it adds a stair, a pair of toadstools, and playing cards to build a small world around him. The yellow cone in its gold ring ties the burner to the story’s smoke, since Carroll’s Caterpillar is first seen quietly smoking his hookah on top of the mushroom.
Practical Ritual Applications
Set the burner on a coffee table, a bookshelf, or a console where the round base can face the room. The purple and blue palette stands out against a plain wall, and the details on the base reward a second look. Stand a cone in the gold-rimmed ring at the start of a reading hour, and the smoke gathers through the scene below while you turn pages. Backflow cones come in many scents, and my backflow cone collection has them. As a gift it suits readers of Lewis Carroll and anyone who keeps a shelf of mushrooms and storybook pieces. Between cones the Caterpillar holds court as a painted sculpture, and he looks right at home beside a stack of old paperbacks.
How to Light a Cone on the Caterpillar’s Mushroom
A backflow burner works best on a heat-proof surface in a quiet room, with the cone seated in its ring before you light it.
- Prepare a quiet, heat-proof spot
Set the burner on a ceramic tile or another heat-proof surface, and choose a room where the air stays still. Move it away from windows, fans, vents, and doorways, since a draft sends the cooled smoke back upward. Keep curtains and paper clear of the burner, and keep it out of reach of children and pets.
- Seat the cone and light the tip
Stand a backflow cone in the gold-rimmed ring on the toadstool cap. Hold a flame to the tip until it glows, then blow the flame out. Give the smoke a few minutes to build and cool, and keep the burner where it is while the cone burns. Stay in the room while it smolders.
- Wait, then wipe the residue
Wait for the cone to finish and for the burner to cool. Backflow smoke leaves a light film from natural oils and resins on the burner and on the surface beneath it, and a damp cloth wipes it clean. A tray or mat under the burner makes that cleanup easy.
The Tarot Fellow Standard
I stock this burner for the details, and there are plenty to find. The Caterpillar sits where Carroll put him, on a mushroom beside his hookah, and the cap carries the cone ring while the steps, toadstools, and cards fill in the world below. Backflow smoke asks for a cone and a still room, and starter cones come with the burner, so it works as a first backflow piece or as a centerpiece for a Wonderland shelf. Browse my backflow burner collection for more shapes to set beside him.
Frequently Asked Questions
A draft is the usual cause. The cooled smoke falls only while it stays denser than the room air, and even a slight breeze, a person walking past, or an air conditioning vent mixes it with warmer air and lets it rise. Move the burner away from windows, fans, vents, and doorways. Some people find that a slightly cooler room gives a more dramatic fall, since the smoke has less temperature to lose before it sinks.
As he crawls away, the Caterpillar says that one side will make you grow taller and the other side will make you grow shorter. Alice wonders one side of what, and he answers as if she had asked aloud: the mushroom. She stretches her arms around the round mushroom, breaks off a bit of the edge with each hand, and nibbles. The first bite shrinks her so fast that her chin strikes her foot, and the other bit stretches her neck high above a sea of leaves.
He is introduced at the end of Chapter IV and is the main center of interest of Chapter V, Advice from a Caterpillar. Alice peeps over the edge of a mushroom and her eyes meet those of a large blue caterpillar sitting on top with his arms folded, quietly smoking a long hookah and taking not the smallest notice of her. Wikipedia lists him as the Hookah-Smoking Caterpillar or the Blue Caterpillar.
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