Experience Real, Raw Natural Incense Tomorrow at the San Francisco Botanical Garden, at Strybing Arboretum.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Kerry Hughes, Ethnobotanist and Author of the forthcoming book, The Incense Bible (Haworth Press) will be offering an incense experience like you have never encountered during the Plants & Magic Symposium in at the San Francisco Garden at Lincoln and 9th Avenue this weekend.

The incense experience is scheduled for Saturday, November 4th from 5:00 to 7:00 pm during a Kava lounge, where you can enjoy Kava (a relaxing herbal brew), art, plant sales, and incense. At approximately 6:30 pm there will be a guided meditation during which you may sit and contemplate the scents and teachings of incense.

The Incense Bible is a comprehensive guide to the spiritual meaning of real, raw, natural incense and how to use it in prayer, meditation, or simply in creating a home environment to reconnect with divinity and nature. This unique book examines the spiritual and ritual uses of pure incense, explores our attraction to it, and explains how we can use it at home to increase wellness.

Filled with easy-to-use references and easy-to-understand technical information, the book looks at the use of incense in health and medicine, a history of its use in a variety of countries and cultures, and various types of raw incense, including frankincense, myrrh, sage, copal, sandalwood, and agarwood.

Explore the far corners of the world, and incense use is sure to be there. From the Catholic priest swinging incense-filled censors censers down the aisles of a church in Rome, to the billows of incense smoke that cloud and curl around the Buddha icons in a Buddhist temple in Thailand, to copal burning in a tribal ceremony in the rainforest -- we have been using incense to connect to divinity in almost every culture and class of society for as long as we can look back in time.

Kerry Hughes, M.Sc., is committed to deepening the relationship between plants and people, and part of this process is through telling the stories of plants. She promotes plant products and traditional arts that can sustain biodiversity, value traditional knowledge, and help enrich lives and provide income opportunities to rural people. She is also co-author of the new book, The Health Professionals' Guide to Dietary Supplements (Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, October 2006), and Botanical Medicines: The Desk Reference for Major Herbal Supplements (Haworth).

For more information about Kerry and The Incense Bible, contact her at: [e-mail]. For information on the Symposium go to (http://www.sfbotanicalgardensociety.org/sfbgs_ course_template.cfm?s=4513). (Due to its length, this URL may need to be copied/pasted into your Internet browser's address field. Remove the extra space if one exists.)