White Copal

Esoteric use of Copal

Burned as incense, it purifies the environment, uplifts the spirit, provides spiritual protection and honors the ancestors, warding off negative energies and creating a harmonious environment.

Copal is also used in the manufacture of tinctures and ointments in traditional medicine to treat various health conditions such as headaches, respiratory infections and skin problems.

White copal from Mexico is valued for its aromatic properties and is often used in perfumery and natural beauty products. The resin has a mild, balsamic aroma and is often added to essential oils, creams, and other personal care products.

The Copal tree

The most common and well-known type of Copal comes from trees of the Burseraceae family: Bursera aloexylon, B. graveolens and B. jorullensis, although it is also extracted from some species of the Protium family.

Bursera is a genus made up of almost one hundred species that are found throughout the Mexican Republic. Among the Bursera species, B. bipinnata is the one with the widest geographical distribution in Mexico: it is found from southern Sonora to Honduras and is only absent from the Yucatan Peninsula.

Bursera, B. bipinnata is the species usually used to obtain white copal, the most appreciated aromatic resin and of highest commercial quality; but also for the resin that these trees release naturally, known as stone copal, black copal, or copal gum.

Bursera, B. bipinnata is a low tree, with grayish bark and highly branched, its average height is six meters, it lives in steep places and is part of the transition between pine and oak forests and low deciduous forests.

It is found in places between 800 and 1,600 m altitude, with a generally warm subhumid or dry climate. In these places, there is a very strong drought for more than four months a year, which causes the trees to shed all their leaves and then green up with the rains.

Most copales produce flowers at the beginning of the rainy season, towards the end of May and beginning of June. Flowering is rapid and towards the end of June there are already green fruits. In Mexico, states that have a greater number of different types of burseras are Guerrero, Michoacán and Oaxaca.

Copal extraction

Copal resin is extracted during the rainy season (July to October) by copaleros, specialized farmers, in order to have the resin for the festivals of the dead in November, which are celebrated in many Mexican homes.

The farmers and copaleros of Jolalpan (Puebla), for example, extract copal resin by making cuts or scratches with a small blade on the bark of the thickest branches of copal trees, and the resin that flows from these cuts is directed towards containers that hang tied to each of the branches of the tree.

The copaleros, in order to avoid damaging the tree, make the cuts every third day. As the copal is deposited in the container, it is cleaned of leaf remains and other impurities; The purer and cleaner it is, the greater its value.

To harvest white copal, on numerous occasions, copal growers go into the mountains with their entire family for entire weeks. They return from the mountain around October 15, since on the 18th, they market the copal on the occasion of the festival of San Lucas in Tzicatlán (Puebla), since the wholesalers come to buy the white copal and through them the distribution is achieved. annually to much of Mexico.

The type of resin they call stone, black or tree copal is that which copal trees secrete naturally. In addition to white and gray copal, copaleros recover lamellar fragments of bark, like chips, impregnated with copal resin.

Another type of Bursera bipinnata copal is the tecopal, a small, rounded, very compact and naturally configured structure, with anthill stones amalgamated with copal resin. It is a particularly therapeutic product and of equal or greater value than white copal.