Quick Specs
- Brand: Escential Essences
- Type: Scented stick incense
- Tagline: Dreams and Visions
- Count: 95-100 sticks per package
- Made: Hand-dipped in the USA
- Cruelty-free: Yes
A Night-Leaning Blend for Dreams and Visions
Ebony Opium is a perfumed blend on the herbal and spicy side, with the tagline Dreams and Visions. It leans toward evening, the stick you light when the lamps are low and you’re ready for a different kind of attention. The tagline names two jobs for it: the dreams that come to you and the visions you seek out. Use it as a backdrop for the things people already do after dark: writing down the day’s last thoughts, laying out a three-card spread, or sitting with a candle and a dish of water. Watching the smoke has an old name of its own. Libanomancy is divination by incense smoke, in which you ask one question and note how the smoke rises and drifts, and its manuals reach back to the Old Babylonian period. Because the pack is large, you can reserve this scent for dusk and burn lighter sticks in the daytime, which draws a clear line between the two halves of the day. Light the tip, stand the stick in a holder, and let the smoke fill the room while you get on with what you came to do.
The two words in the name share an old literary address. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the house of Sleep is a cave where lush poppies grow at the mouth, a high couch of ebony stands in the middle, and empty Dreams lie scattered around the sleeping god. The picture works as a mood board for a night-time session: dark wood, poppies, a hush, and a heap of dreams waiting to be sorted. Keep a notebook open beside the cards, so what the smoke and the spread bring up has somewhere to land before you sleep. The mood is the point, hushed and dim and a little drowsy, with nothing demanded of you. Readers who like to set a scene before a late reading can borrow it freely. Put a dark cloth on the table, dim the lamp, light a stick, and take the first card you turn over as the day’s last question. Stay with it until the stick burns down, write one line about what you saw, and close the book for the night.
Practical Ritual Applications
Light a stick while you write your evening journal, then leave the journal and a pen on the nightstand for the morning. Burn one beside your deck before a late reading, or pull a single card for the night ahead and set it where you’ll see it when you wake. Ask one question, watch the smoke for a minute, and write down what you noticed before you read any meaning into it. A dark bowl of water or a mirror, a candle, and a stick make a simple scrying corner for an evening of quiet looking. If you record your dreams, I carry notebooks in my journals collection. Keep the session to the early evening, so the stick is long finished by the time you head to bed.
How to Burn Ebony Opium Incense for an Evening Dream Session
Three steps turn an hour of lamplight into a short, focused session.
- Set the scene and place the holder
Dim the lamp, clear the table, and set a stick holder on a ceramic tile or a heat-safe tray, away from bedding, curtains, and paper. Put your journal and pen within reach. Open a window slightly so smoke can drift out. Decide what the session is for: dreams you'd like to recall, a card you'd like to sit with, or a few minutes of quiet before the day ends.
- Light the stick and write
Hold the coated tip to a flame until it catches, fan out the flame with your hand, and plant the stick upright in the holder. Open the journal and write whatever the evening brings: a worry, a plan, a line from a dream you remember. Keep the pen moving for as long as the stick burns, and let the entries stay rough.
- Put it out and close the book
When the writing slows, dip the glowing tip in a small dish of water or press it into sand until the glow is gone. Leave the ash to cool before you tip it out. Close the journal with a single sentence, such as an intention to remember your dreams, and leave the pen and journal on the nightstand for the morning.
The Tarot Fellow Standard
Evening practices repeat, so I carry Ebony Opium in the bulk pack. A full pack lets you light one every night for a season, or save it for the nights you read cards, and you never have to choose between the two. It’s a good fit for anyone who likes an unhurried, dimly lit evening. The same scent comes in a 16-pack of sticks and as cones if you’d like to start smaller. If you’d like it as an oil, browse my Escential Essences fragrance oils collection.
Frequently Asked Questions
Ebony Opium is a fragrance name for a scented incense stick. Opium itself is the dried latex of the opium poppy and a Schedule II controlled substance in the United States. In perfumery the word has been a scent name since Yves Saint Laurent launched Opium in 1977, an oriental-spicy blend of spices, flowers, and resins that drew attention for its provocative name.
No. Don't leave incense burning while you sleep or when you leave the room: a lit stick can ignite curtains, bedding, or paper, and nobody is awake to notice. Burn it earlier in the evening, put it out before bed, and keep the holder on a fireproof surface away from fabric. A bedroom is a small space, so one stick is enough, and an open window while it burns and afterward keeps smoke from building up.
Write them down as soon as you wake, before you get out of bed, while the details are fresh. Keep a notebook, voice recorder, or phone app within reach, and record emotions and fragments as well as the plot. Setting an intention to remember your dreams as you fall asleep helps, and so does enough sleep: seven hours is the minimum for adults. If you wake from a dream in the night, jot a few words down then too.
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