ON RELIGION

In 2022 we created a pair of fundraiser oils adapting a chapter from Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet into scent. Considering the challenges that await in 2025, we’ve decided to continue this work with a monthly series of fragrances that will gradually complete the entire book.

Proceeds from these scents will be donated to a series of trustworthy charitable organizations, selected month by month; everything above the cost of production will be donated.

First published in 1923, The Prophet (Gutenberg Press link) has been translated into more than 100 languages, continuing to inspire new readers with its lyrical observations of human nature and open-ended spiritual instruction.

The book imagines a series of pronouncements offered by the sage Almustafa (“the chosen and the beloved, who was a dawn unto his own day”) to inhabitants of the fictional city Orphalese as a gesture of gratitude for their hospitality during his twelve-year stay. One by one, various citizens step forward and ask for Almustafa’s thoughts on a long list of topics such as love, death, commerce, justice, and religion.

The Prophet responds with wisdom that could be considered non-denominational, though clearly influenced by the Lebanese author’s familiarity with Sufi and Maronite beliefs as well as the work of Transcendentalist poets. After satisfying the Orphalesians’ many queries, at last he boards a ship setting sail for his homeland.

Since Gibran set these events outside of any known time or geographical location, Almustafa’s wisdom can be received today, or in the future, and ring just as true.

Have I spoken this day of aught else?

Is not religion all deeds and all reflection,

And that which is neither deed nor reflection, but a wonder and a surprise ever springing in the soul, even while the hands hew the stone or tend the loom?

Who can separate his faith from his actions, or his belief from his occupations?

Who can spread his hours before him, saying, “This for God and this for myself; This for my soul, and this other for my body?”

All your hours are wings that beat through space from self to self. He who wears his morality but as his best garment were better naked.

The wind and the sun will tear no holes in his skin.

And he who defines his conduct by ethics imprisons his song-bird in a cage.

The freest song comes not through bars and wires.

And he to whom worshipping is a window, to open but also to shut, has not yet visited the house of his soul whose windows are from dawn to dawn.

Your daily life is your temple and your religion.

Whenever you enter into it take with you your all.

Take the plough and the forge and the mallet and the lute,

The things you have fashioned in necessity or for delight.

For in revery you cannot rise above your achievements nor fall lower than your failures.

And take with you all men: For in adoration you cannot fly higher than their hopes nor humble yourself lower than their despair.

And if you would know God be not therefore a solver of riddles.

Rather look about you and you shall see Him playing with your children.

And look into space; you shall see Him walking in the cloud, outstretching His arms in the lightning and descending in rain.

You shall see Him smiling in flowers, then rising and waving His hands in trees.

A perfume of the sacred in the ordinary and the value of labor, joy built from the things you carry into the temple of your days. Golden hay, frankincense tears, hearthsmoke, amber-streaked cedar, and beeswax.