====== White Sandalwood ======
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---- dataentry herbs----
latin_names: Santalum album
folk_names:  Sandal, Santal, White Saunders, Yellow Sandalwood
gender_tags: Feminine
planet_tags: Moon
element_tags: Water
deity_tags: 
effect_tags: Protection, Wishes, Healing, Exorcism, Spirituality, Meditation, Sex
part_used: wood, essential oil
----
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===== Magical Uses =====

Sandalwood powder is burned during protection, healing, and exorcism spells. When mixed with lavender it makes an incense designed to conjure spirits.

This fragrant wood possesses very high spiritual vibrations and is burned at seances and Full Moon rituals when mixed with frankincense. Write your wish on a chip of sandalwood and burn in the censer or cauldron. As it burns it sets the magic flowing, but remember to visualize your wish at the same time.

Sandalwood beads are protective and promote a spiritual awareness when worn.

Powdered sandalwood can be scattered about a place to clear it of negativity, and it is also used as an incense base.

===== Aromatherapy =====

==== Lore ====

The word is not derived from “sandal” but from the Sanskrit //chandana//.

Sandalwood is commercially grown only in India, where every tree is numbered and protected by the government. Various wild species of sandalwood can be found on many Pacific islands, including the Hawaiian chain.

The woodsy, warm, rather astringent scent of this wood has long been used as incense by the Chinese. In India, temples built solely of sandalwood centuries ago are said to still emit the odor of this wood, and in Hawaii some early missionary houses were constructed with beams of sandalwood.

When early traders discovered this fragrant wood in Hawaii, they began the tortuous sandalwood trade, forcing the local Hawaiian population to turn from subsistence farming to gathering sandalwood. The effects were so devastating that some Hawaiians pulled up young trees to prevent their descendants from suffering the same fate. Isolated stands of sandalwood trees can still be found there, but their exact locations are kept secret from outsiders.

==== Magical Uses ====

Thousands of years ago, the scent of sandalwood was discovered to induce spirituality and the peace of religious union. Its soothing aroma lulls the conscious mind and prepares us for rituals of all kinds. Inhaling the fragrance of sandalwood or its essential oil prior to religious rituals and meditation creates the proper mood.

Visualizing accordingly, the aroma of sandalwood is also useful in stimulating sexual activity. It has been termed one of the true aphrodisiacs. In cases of emotional or mental sexual dysfunction (frigidity, impotency), sandalwood can effect a cure.

To speed healing, add a few drops of sandalwood essential oil to your bath water and visualize its scent and energies doing their work.

Because sandalwood essential oil is somewhat expensive, the wood can be substituted. Search for good quality wood. Sawdust and small chips are available in this country. These are byproducts of the sandalwood carving industry in India. If a friend is traveling to Hong Kong, have them bring you back small chunks of the wood, which can be easily found.

In Asian stores, metaphysical shops and Eastern mysticism centers, look for sandalwood beads, carved elephants and other objects made from this wood. All are useful for these purposes.
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