Copal
The aromatic resin of Bursera trees, burned in an incense burner on the ofrenda. Its white smoke is believed to purify the place and guide the dead to their altar.
Meaning
Copal is the resin of trees of the genus Bursera, burned on the Ofrenda (altar) in an incense burner, the sahumerio. Mexico’s National Forestry Commission (CONAFOR) calls it an element that must not be missing at Día de Muertos, and says it is believed that its scent will guide the spirit to its altar. INPI calls copal the element that lifts up prayer, used to clean the place of evil spirits so that the soul can enter its house without danger. The name comes from the Nahuatl copalli; in Mayan languages it is poom, and Mexico’s biodiversity commission (CONABIO) notes that every language spoken in the country has a word for copal, as tree, resin or smoke. Before Día de Muertos the resin is sold as “copal de penca” at the traditional fairs of Xochitepec, Puebla, and Tepalcingo, Morelos.
Origin and history
Copal was burned and buried as an offering long before the ofrenda took its present form. CONABIO lists offerings of copal recovered from the Sacred Cenote of Chichen Itza and the Laguna de la Luna on the Nevado de Toluca, and sculptures of the resin from the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan. In the Templo Mayor offerings, the archaeologist Naoli Victoria Lona writes, copal is one of the commonest materials, in spheres, cylinders, bars and images of gods. The Mexica called its white smoke iztac teteo, “white gods”, and some interpretations, she adds, see that smoke as a means of communication between people and the gods.
The priests who burned it carried the resin in a bag of cotton or paper and used a ceramic incense burner: a pierced bowl on a handle, often in the shape of a serpent, which let the air through. Sahagún describes people in the month of Tóxcatl carrying clay burners “like pierced bowls, much worked, which they call tlémaitl”, and incensing the image of Huitzilopochtli.
The colonial ofrenda kept it. INPI writes that Indigenous people contributed the incense burner and its copal, and that copal was offered to the gods because incense was not yet known; incense came with the Spanish. Copal survived the Inquisition, CONABIO observes, and is used today by many Indigenous and mestizo peoples.
Copal from the forest
In San Miguel Mininaltepec, a Chinantec community in Oaxaca, people take the resin from their own copal trees and use it on their altars. CONAFOR reports that a family sometimes sells up to 100 kilos of it, and that the money usually pays for whatever is needed to make the family’s altar the finest in the place.
The copal tree and the alebrije
Not every copal gives incense. The copalillo’s resin is sticky and seldom crystallises, CONABIO notes, but its wood is soft when green, and hard, very light and easy to polish when dry, and Oaxacan carvers in San Martín Tilcajete, Arrazola and La Unión Tejalapan use it for the wooden alebrijes.
Read next
- Next in Day of the Dead symbolsSugar skull (calavera de azúcar)A skull moulded from sugar and decorated with coloured icing, set on the ofrenda or given as a gift, often with a person’s name written across the forehead.
- The same shape in Mythical creatures of Greece and EuropeLeshyThe forest spirit of Russian and Slavic folklore, an old man of the woods who can grow as tall as the trees or as small as the grass, guards the forest and its animals, and leads travellers astray.
See also
Ofrenda (altar), Alebrije, Cempasúchil (Mexican marigold), Pan de muerto, Papel picado, La Catrina.
Sources
- Copal. Aroma purificador y sustentable (CONAFOR), Comisión Nacional Forestal, article, Comisión Nacional Forestal (Gobierno de México), article text
- ¿Conoces el significado de los elementos de una ofrenda de Día de Muertos? (INPI), Instituto Nacional de los Pueblos Indígenas, article, Instituto Nacional de los Pueblos Indígenas (Gobierno de México), Copal e incienso
- Copales en México (CONABIO, Biodiversidad Mexicana), Comisión Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad, Biodiversidad Mexicana; species notes taken from Conabio 2008, Copales, diversidad y cultura, CONABIO (Gobierno de México), introduction; copalillo; copal de penca
- El copal en las ofrendas del Templo Mayor (Naoli Victoria Lona, Arqueología Mexicana), Naoli Victoria Lona, “El copal en las ofrendas del Templo Mayor”, Arqueología Mexicana no. 67, pp. 66–71, Arqueología Mexicana (Editorial Raíces / INAH), article text
- Winged Messengers: How Monarch Butterflies Connect Culture and Conservation in Mexico (Tia Merotto, Smithsonian, 2022), Tia Merotto, Folklife magazine, Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, 31 October 2022; as archived September 2026, Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, opening paragraph
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from curves and waves.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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