Introducing The Scent of Gods & Monsters: Olfaction & Belief

5 days ago

6 min read

This autumn, Sunday Scent School returns with a new three-month course devoted to one of my favourite intersections: scent & systems of belief.

The Scent of Gods & Monsters: Olfaction & Belief runs from October through December and brings together six classes exploring the extraordinary roles fragrance has played in the human experience of the divine.

It is a course about scent, yes, but it is also about much more. We will look at how aromatics function in society as ritual technology, supernatural evidence, medicine, offering, metaphor, material culture, and a means of creative expression. Most importantly, we'll use olfaction as a way into the sensory worlds of historical people who understood their relationship with the divine very differently from how most of us do today.

Why Scent and Belief?

We live in an intensely visual time. We expect important information to be something we can see…preferably on a screen, but humans have not always organised knowledge this way.

Across the cultures we'll encounter this autumn, scent could carry information about realities beyond ordinary human vision. Fragrance might signal the presence of a god. The odour of a body could reveal holiness or corruption; paradise could be recognised through its perfumes.

That doesn't mean that scent meant the same thing everywhere, quite the opposite.

One of the things I find so fascinating about olfactory history is that smell is both intensely physical and intensely cultural. We smell with our bodies, but we learn to interpret what those smells mean through culture.

That gives us a wonderful opportunity to approach the embodiment of belief. Instead of asking, "What did these people believe?" in the abstract, we can explore, "How did those beliefs feel to them?" Once we do that, gods and monsters become surprisingly tangible.

Gods, Monsters & Interesting Smells

The programme is arranged around six modules, with two classes each month.

We begin in October with Unit 1: Olfaction & Supernatural Knowledge.

Our first class, Fragrant Incantations: Aromatics in Mesopotamian Ritual and Magic, takes us into ancient Mesopotamia and a cosmos filled with gods and evil winds. We'll look at the practical magic aromatics performed within that world and how people came to use olfaction as a spiritual diagnostic tool.

Then we jump forward to Early Modern Europe for The Odour of Witches: Scent During the European Witch Hysteria. Here, we will see odour again being used as a diagnostic tool to understand the supernatural but with very different, and murderous results.

In November, we’ll explore Unit 2: Sensing the Divine in a Changing World.

In this unit, we will see scent cultures at work in two decidedly different belief systems, both in flux. First, we will explore Ancient Greece in Anointed with Ambrosia: Scent in Greek Myth, which examines the fragrant boundary between gods and humans and how those boundaries shifted as the concept of the gods morphed from embodiments of the ecosystem to abstract symbols.

Then we turn to The Odour of Paradise: Scent in Islam, which examines the rise of the Islamicate in Late Antiquity. Islam’s meteoric rise was in part due to the cultic system of pagan antiquity failing to address the people’s changing needs. Islam offered a paradigm that made sense in this new world. Yet Islamic olfactory traditions had to connect a diverse group of people to a sensory understanding of divinity that was both familiar to former pagans but reformulated through this new paradigm of thought.

Finally, December asks: Is Odour in Nature or Beyond Nature?

Scent of Gan Eden: Olfaction in Judaism explores Judaism's rich aromatic traditions through subjects including the Song of Songs, Temple incense, and Havdalah. Through this history, we will see Judaism’s sensorium evolve as the community moved from a Bronze Age temple/cultic belief system to a spiritual-literary system. We will explore the acceptance and tensions around sacred odours, and the role of embodied knowledge in the modern world.

Our final core class, The Cosmic Odours of Medieval Catholic Saints, enters the medieval world of fragrant holy bodies and stigmata. This is a time of olfactory high drama in the Catholic Church. Still, by the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern period, a growing philosophical and ecclesial debate emerges about how to define the miraculous in the growing light of evidentiary science. This puts the divine odours of earlier times on trial.

And after all of that theology and smelly supernatural danger, we're going to have some fun. Our bonus class, Smelly Santa: A Brief Aromatic History of Christmas, will be a festive mini-lecture accompanied by pomander making and a final course discussion.

An Online Course You Can Smell

I wanted The Scent of Gods & Monsters to be more than lectures. Each class is designed to be interactive, inviting you to ask questions during the Q&A sessions, join discussions in the student group, and share your ideas or creative work if you wish.

Each module is a small learning experience of its own, with pre-class readings or thought exercises, the main lecture, and optional post-class activities that let you explore the subject through fragrance, reconstruction, sensory observation, art, and creative writing. I will provide the learning materials for you, including readings, videos, and handouts. For hands-on activities, you may wish to purchase or gather some basic aromatics for perfume-making and sensory exercises. If you would like to participate in these activities, I recommend having simple ingredients such as frankincense, myrrh, rosewater, spices, and a small selection of essential oils or resins. These exercises are optional, but we will discuss sourcing in the class if you would like to participate.

Throughout the autumn, we'll do things like make Ziggurat Pastilles; reconstruct Ghaliya; and create fragrances based on our favourite stigmatic saints.

Each module also includes supporting materials, including bibliographies, additional readings, videos, handouts, accord formulas, and a short quiz. After each live class, we'll share the materials and recordings through our secure online learning portal, where you can log in anytime to access everything you need. You will receive your login details by email before the course begins. This means you can revisit the material or catch up if you can't attend live. While the live classes will run from October until December, students will have access to the materials until June 2027.

Who Is The Scent of Gods & Monsters For?

I've designed the programme for the wonderfully mixed audience that has gathered around my teaching of olfactory culture. This is a love letter to you!

If you're interested in perfume and fragrance, you'll encounter ways of thinking about aromatic materials and fragrance-making that go far beyond conventional perfume history you will see on TikTok.
If you love history, mythology, folklore, religion, magic, or the occult, scent offers a different route into the subject, grounded in bodies, objects, spaces, and sensory experience.
If you're a perfumer, writer, artist or other creative practitioner, the course offers an
enormous library of ideas to play with. All accord formulas are free to use, and anything you produce in the class is your property.
And if you're simply someone who enjoys following strange historical threads into unexpected places, you will be very welcome.

You don't need previous academic training or perfumery experience. You can engage at whatever level interests you: attend the lectures and enjoy the stories, dive into the readings and bibliographies or turn your kitchen or perfume bench into your historical laboratory.

This program does offer a certificate. To receive the course certificate, you must attend or watch all 6 lectures, pass the 6 mini quizzes, and submit one class activity as a final project.

Take the Whole Journey or Pick Your Monsters

The six modules form a curriculum that builds on core concepts and themes. Ideas introduced in October about sensory knowledge and supernatural experience give us tools that we can carry into the following lectures.

But you can also audit each class individually. You don't need to commit to the full three months if only one or two subjects particularly interest you. Individual class tickets will be sold separately.

Full programme participants receive access to all six live classes, recordings, Q&A sessions, slide decks, and the complete set of supporting materials for each module, including readings, handouts, accord formulas, the student group, post-class activities, and quizzes. They are also eligible to submit a final project and receive a course certificate.

Audit students will only have access to the live class, its recording (for 30 days), the Q&A, and the slide deck for their chosen sessions.

The Scent of Gods & Monsters begins October 11, with new classes continuing every other week through December 20 (followed by our pre-recorded Smelly Santa bonus that drops on December 23).

Over those three months, we'll meet gods who breathe perfume, demons who stink, paradises filled with fragrant trees, and holy bodies that reek with righteousness.

I hope you'll join me.