Smell like the King.

A few years back I told you how you can smell like the Boss. And I've even told you how you can smell like the President. But now we're going far beyond that -- how to smell like the King.

Today is the last Sunday of Ordinary Time in the Catholic church, the end of the Liturgical Year, and on this day we celebrate the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe. And today I have his soap. Sort of. Not really.

Indigo Wild sells a variety of goat milk soaps in the Zum Bar line, in weird scents that include Juniper-Fir, Clove-Orange, and the inevitable Patchouli-Ylang Ylang. But they also sell this, the Frankincense-Myrrh.

Myrrh is mentioned several times in the Bible, sixteen times in the New American Bible (rev. ed.), reflecting its importance as a valuable resin, used for medicinal purposes and also as incense and a means of anointing the dead. Frankincense is similarly used for incense. Matthew 2:11, relating Jesus's birth, states

and on entering the house they saw the child with Mary his mother. They prostrated themselves and did him homage. Then they opened their treasures and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Thus, the gifts of the Magi are forever joined with the narrative of the Nativity.

Now, I've been curious about these gifts since I was a boy and learned all five verses to "We Three Kings." I knew what gold was, but what were these other substances? The verses explain their threefold purpose in the threefold purpose of Jesus, as king (gold), deity (frankincense), and sacrifice (myrrh). But what did these two weird nouns refer to? And how did they smell? You can't get that out of an encyclopedia.

Well, I still can't tell you how they smell individually, although I wanted to at least get a clue. I winced and paid the price to buy the Zum Bar, which cost more than a bundle of Zest bars. And before I got home, I can tell you this: As substances refined for burial of the dead, who famously do not smell like a bed of roses, they work pretty darn good.

Not that I had any dead with me, but that little bar of soap, way in the hatch of the car, could be detected from the driver's seat. It's not unpleasant, but it is powerful. Pungent is one word. "Deep, sweet, and woodsy aromas" is how Indigo Wild describes it. I'd say it is a woodsy, peppery scent, spicy, sugary the way maple is, but rich and fruity. It put me in mind of the resin in logs when Dad and I would cut up the ol' firewood, but a billion times stronger. As I write it is wrapped in the plastic bag from the store, and you can still smell it when you walk by. Try that with a bar of Yardley.

Frankly, I'm afraid to use it. I don't think people would smell me go by and think, There's one biblical dude! I think they might think I was dead. Or that I'm a serious dead head, trying to cover up the Mary Jane stink. When I was a teenager, that's the only thing I ever saw incense used for. The Zum Bar Web site doesn't really assure me that potheads with money are not their primary customers.

So maybe I'll actually try a shower with it one day that I'm not leaving the house. Even then I'm afraid the dogs will not recognize my smell under all that and go for my throat. Then I might be dead! And I'd be pre-anointed, so I'd have that going for me.

One last note: Jesus did not use myrrh as soap, or perhaps at all. It's suggested by some that the gifts Mary and Joseph received from the Magi were used for money, for the years in which they hid from Herod in Egypt, but we don't know. Also, there's not a lot of descriptions of bathing in the New Testament (not counting baptism), but the one time we see Jesus anointed with expensive oil during his ministry, it contains nard (according to Mark 14); nard, or spikenard, is said to come from the plant Nardostachys jatamansi, not Commiphora abyssinica like myrrh or Boswellia like frankincense. When Jesus had died, the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) say nothing about his body being anointed, and in fact that's why the women who found the empty tomb on Sunday were going there. But John 19 says "Nicodemus, the one who had first come to him at night, also came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes weighing about one hundred pounds," and Jesus was bound "with burial cloths along with the spices, according to the Jewish burial custom." Just FYI.