Encens Kapnos

The Greek word for smoke, and a way of reading it.

Kapnomancy, also called libanomancy, is divination by watching incense smoke and the ash it leaves. On Artganis a special incense is burned for it, cut with red fruits, green herbs and woods, and the smoke that comes off is a symbolic conversation with the subtle world.

The material behind that is Somalian frankincense resinoid and Spanish cistus labdanum. Sweet and smoky is the type. First opus of les eaux divinatoires.

Maison Incens is a French house built out of a book. Philippe Constantin was born in Cameroon to a French father and a Moroccan mother, grew up in Casablanca, and went to France at eighteen to study economics and international law. The plan was an international organisation and work for people in need. Meeting Jean Claude Gigodot ended that. The house is named for Constantin's father, who left behind a compilation of paintings on leather and stories told in smell.

The releases are the olfactory signature of that book. Each belongs to an opus in the story of Artganis, an unknown civilisation whose life is ruled by smell. The Artganians travel and bring back what they find, and the opuses follow them: their own endemic essences, then the Morocco they settled in, then the divinatory arts they watched, then the legendary earthly materials themselves.