Health is Beauty

The Fundamental Principles of Aromatherapy: Health Is Beauty

The diverse use in essential oils can be traced back to ancient Egypt, Babylon, Europe ,India, and even Asia. In the past, essential oils have been linked to the early inventions of Egyptian cosmetics, perfumes, and initially begin with the Egyptian priest using scented essences as a sign of holiness that could balance mental affiliation that hindered the soul of evil deeds.

While the practice of essential oils varies throughout cultures, one fact remains;

scented oils have miraculously proven to have healing effects upon the body, mind, and soul. This essay compares and reflects on the different uses of essences throughout history but does not provide an in-depth discussion on targeted regions. The focus of this essay is to briefly compare and analyze similarities between Ayurveda and Chinese medicine while proving its efficacy, however, the difference in cultural influence of cosmetics and essences is not mentioned.

The discovery of aromatherapy around 10,000 B.C.E. has been traced back to the Egyptian period and the use of these precious scents was not only used by priest to bless individuals but frankincense, and myrrh was used to preserve the youth of the skin. Long before soap was invented, the Egyptians were extremely clean people and used the fragranced oils to bathe their skin because it appeased body odor. Interestingly, when scientist discovered Egyptian corpses, it became recognized that perfumery was a sacred act used to please the gods and the scented essences, such as cedar oil, was used to aid in the mummification process. Rady explains: “Because “smell” was incomprehensibly fundamental in Egyptian society, perfumery bega...

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...ughout Asia, it appears that the Egyptian, Indian and Asian culture all had some form of a distillation process for essential oils.

While understanding that our ancient ancestors correlated cosmetics, perfume, health, and the divine, with aesthetics and well being, a few questions were brought to mind: could in fact, the Egyptian Gods be linked to some of the Ayurvedic Hindu Gods? And why does Ayruveda seem to have roots in a lot of the eastern medicine? Is there any correlation with Ayurveda and the rest of these cultures?

In concluding, the most extraordinary detail about essential oils is that during its progression throughout history, there seems to be similarities to how the oils where used no matter what region or continent and the scented essences were always essential in the use of health, beauty, spirituality, and religion.