Dragons Blood Tears-Grade AA+Island of Socotra-Dracaena Cinnabari-Medieval Dragons Blood-

Description

This listing is for the premium and hard to come by tears of Socotra Dragon’s Blood resin harvested from the Dracaena Cinnabari tree.
The tears are beautiful, clean with no bark and they break to expose a glass-like center of the deepest red colour.
Dragon’s Blood Socotra usually comes in lumps of aggregated resin with little form. It is rare to find it in its tear-form. It will not last long in the shop. Get it while it lasts.

We produce the powder in-house from the same material with no filler. It is extremely fine and dissolves quickly in alcohol when producing magical and mundane inks.
This is truly premium material and of a quality that is difficult to source.

There are approximately 20 different trees around the world that supply a red resin called Dragons Blood. Some grow in Asia and others South America, but, it is thought that the Dragons Blood from the Dracaena cinnabari tree on the island of Socotra is the original resin traded for thousands of years to the West along with Frankincense and Myrrh through the “Incense Route”. For this reason, it is considered to be the material referred to in ancient Greek and Medieval texts, formularies and Pharmacopoeias through the ages. This has lent this resin the nickname “Medieval” Dragons Blood.

The chemical composition of the different Dragons Blood resins varies as do their traditional therapeutic applications in local folk medicine. The Dragons Blood of D. Cinnabari from Socotra is used in traditional medicine as a wound healer, styptic and coagulant, to treat diarrhea, dysentery, ulcers of the mouth and the GI tract, as an antiviral and used as a treatment for eczema.
Traditional applications in the West for Dracaena Cinnabari resin include its use as a pigment and dye and as a durable lacquer used specifically to lend a deep red finish to violins

Perhaps the most familiar use for Socotra Dragons Blood nowadays is in the preparation of a deep and permanent blood-red ink and as a potent incense material for ritual and ceremony.

At first inhalation, the fresh resin of D, cinnabari has no scent of its own. This is due to its high proportion of resin and lack of essential oil.
However, once a small piece is laid on the hot coal as incense, the presence and personality of D. Cinnabari expand to fill the room.

Its scent is deep. Rich. Sensuous. A dark deep Amber with a smooth warm nuttiness that is both calming and stimulating. It delivers hints of Red Sea breezes and perfumed summer nights. Only a little bit of this resin is needed to transform a space.

This is the highest grade of Socrata Dragons blood and is composed of the individual tears that form when the tree is wounded. The Dragons Blood tree is harvested differently than Frankincense trees whose bark is stripped in small sections where the resin can”run” before it solidifies. Only small shallow singular gouges through the bark of D. Cinnabari yield resin and this is seen in the generally small size and shape of these individual resin tears.

One hopes that with the lighter tapping method the D. Cinnabari trees are less stressed than other commercial resin-bearing trees.
I have no provenance on this resin. I can’t say with certainty it is fairly traded and harvested sustainably. It is however of particularly high quality and I hope to visit the island of Socrata in person some day and get acquainted with the local merchants and methods of harvest.

Dan