# Camphor and Metaphor

*Exported from [Holy-Writings.com](https://www.holy-writings.com/) on 2026-06-20 — 1 clipping.*

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Dana Paxson, Camphor and Metaphor, bahai-library.com.
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> 
> Camphor and Metaphor
> 
> Dana Paxson
> 
> 2023
> 
> Openings
> One single word can offer its reader or hearer a glimpse through a portal into an entire
> world. Usually this fleeting vision is an unexpected event, arriving like an uninvited guest
> in our senses and our minds when we were gliding easily through some text or speech
> with our anticipatory intuition prepared for something else altogether, something we have
> come to comprehend with ease and familiarity.
> Not with a new sign, a new term, a new idea wrapped in a word we thought we knew.
> Abruptly we confront this oddly-costumed presence at our mind’s door in some
> confusion, and only after considerable dithering, credential-checking, hemming and
> hawing, internal debate, and urgent research do we offer the new guest our hospitality. It
> is at that moment that this apparent guest reveals that we are not as much the givers of
> hospitality as we are its receivers. Our guest is in fact our host, welcoming us in a realm
> of meanings new to us.
> The word ‘camphor’, which many of us associate with nothing more than the smell of
> mothball insecticides, is one such arrival in certain contexts, awakening in readers of
> those contexts an awareness or consciousness at an elevated tier of meaning. The history
> of the human embrace of camphor is long and rich. Drawing upon both history and the
> most-sacred Writings of our modern existence, we extend our glimpse from the physical
> realm into a much-greater realm of elevated human experience.
> Quotes on Physical Meanings
> To give ourselves a starting point for this crossing of the bridge of meaning, here is a
> basic description of the chemical identified as camphor in our everyday world:
> Camphor is a waxy, flammable, white or transparent solid with a strong aroma. It is a
> terpenoid with the chemical formula C10H16O. It is found in the wood of the camphor
> laurel (Cinnamomum camphora), a large evergreen tree found in Asia (particularly in
> Sumatra and Borneo islands, Indonesia) and also of the unrelated kapur tree, a tall
> timber tree from the same region. It also occurs in some other related trees in the
> laurel family, notably Ocotea usambarensis. The oil in rosemary leaves (Rosmarinus
> officinalis), in the mint family, contains 10 to 20% camphor, while camphorweed
> (Heterotheca) only contains some 5%. Camphor can also be synthetically produced
> from oil of turpentine. It is used for its scent, as an ingredient in cooking (mainly in
> India), as an embalming fluid, for medicinal purposes, and in religious ceremonies. A
> major source of camphor in Asia is camphor basil (the parent of African blue basil).1
> 
> The literature on the material substance of camphor is extensive, fascinating, cautionary,
> contradictory, and rich in detail in everything from its natural and artificial sources to its
> applications in many cultures. References to it in religious scriptures, as mentioned
> above, attest to its significant place in human experience. Its uses are many: in
> embalming fluid, in explosives, in insect repellants, in food flavorings, in religious
> ceremonies, and in medicinal applications.2
> Camphor from the camphor laurel tree and the kapur tree has been in use medically, in
> foods, and in religious ceremonies from antiquity, notably in the Vedic period in India
> between 1500 and 500 BCE.
> Camphor occurs naturally at various levels in many herbs used in cooking, including
> basil (especially African basil), rosemary, marjoram, sage, bay leaves, tarragon, and
> coriander.3 The camphor component amplifies both the sweetness and the pungency (or
> bitterness) of the foods or beverages in which it appears. Many Indian dishes, particularly
> desserts, incorporate it as a flavoring.
> In ancient and medieval Europe, camphor was used as an ingredient in sweets. It was
> used in a wide variety of both savory and sweet dishes in medieval Arabic language
> cookbooks, such as al-Kitab al-Ṭabikh compiled by ibn Sayyâr al-Warrâq in the 10th
> century,4 and an anonymous Andalusian cookbook of the 13th century.5 It also appears
> in sweet and savory dishes in a book written in the late 15th century for the sultans of
> Mandu, the Ni'matnama.6, 7
> 
> Camphor finds numerous medical uses: as a mild analgesic, as a topical rubefacient
> (dilating skin capillaries and improving blood circulation to the area), as a counterirritant
> and itch reliever, and as an inhalant to improve respiratory function. It can be taken
> orally, but is highly toxic in large doses. It excites the central nervous system, at small
> 
> From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camphor.
> Ibid.
> Reliable references to camphor’s natural sources are too numerous to list here. Any online search for camphor and
> any of the herbs listed will demonstrate the point.
> Quoted from Nasrallah, Nawal (2007). Annals of the Caliphs' Kitchens: Ibn Sayyâr al-Warrâq's Tenth-century
> Baghdadi Cookbook. Islamic History and Civilization, 70. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. ISBN 978-0-415-35059-
> 4.
> Quoted from An Anonymous Andalusian cookbook of the 13th century, translated from the original Arabic by
> Charles Perry.
> Quoted from Titley, Norah M. (2004). The Ni'matnama Manuscript of the Sultans of Mandu: The Sultan's Book of
> Delights. Routledge Studies in South Asia. London, UK: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-35059-4.
> Passage and citations taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camphor .
> doses creating feelings of warmth and comfort in the stomach, but at large doses causing
> seizures and even death.
> Quotes on Elevated Meanings
> Now we look outward across the bridge of meaning to see where it may be leading us.
> Here are some passages offering elevated usages of the term ‘camphor’, first a passage
> from the Qur’án of Muhammad, and then two from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh:
> In a right way have we guided him, be he thankful or ungrateful.
> For the Infidels we have got ready chains and collars and flaming
> fire.
> But a wine cup tempered at the camphor fountain the just shall
> quaff:
> Fount whence the servants of God shall drink, and guide by
> channels from place to place;
> They who fulfilled their vows, and feared the day whose woes will
> spread far and wide;
> Who though longing for it themselves, bestowed their food on the
> poor and the orphan and the captive:
> ‘We feed you for the sake of God: we seek from you neither
> recompense nor thanks:
> A stern and calamitous day dread we from our Lord.’8 9
> 
> Bahá’u’lláh, the Manifestation of God in our time, authenticates through His own
> authority the mentions of camphor in the Qur’án and its outflow of traditions:
> He who hath attained this station is sanctified from all that pertaineth to the world.
> Wherefore, if those who have come to the sea of His presence are found to possess
> none of the limited things of this perishable world, whether it be outer wealth or
> personal opinions, it mattereth not. For whatever the creatures have is limited by their
> own limits, and whatever the True One hath is sanctified therefrom; this utterance
> must be deeply pondered that its purport may be clear. “Verily the righteous shall
> drink of a winecup tempered at the camphor fountain.” If the interpretation of
> “camphor” become known, the true intention will be evident. This state is that poverty
> of which it is said, ‘Poverty is My glory.’10
> 
> Muhammad, The Qur’án, Sura 76:5 .--MAN [LII.] (tr. Rodwell).
> An extensive article on this mention can be found at https://indomedieval.medium.com/camphor-in-the-
> qur%C4%81n-8201083b17f6 .
> Bahá’u’lláh, The Seven Valleys and the Four Valleys, Seven Valleys, The Valley of True Poverty and Absolute
> Nothingness, 3d para. This Valley is the last in the human spiritual journey, that condition described as “dying from
> self and the living in God, being poor in self and rich in the Desired One.”
> The Apostle of God—may the blessings of God and His salutations be upon Him—is
> reported to have said: ‘Blessed the man that hath visited ‘Akká, and blessed he that
> hath visited the visitor of ‘Akká. Blessed the one that hath drunk from the Spring of the
> Cow and washed in its waters, for the black-eyed damsels quaff the camphor in
> Paradise, which hath come from the Spring of the Cow, and from the Spring of Salván
> (Siloam), and the Well of Zamzam. Well is it with him that hath drunk from these
> springs, and washed in their waters, for God hath forbidden the fire of hell to touch
> him and his body on the Day of Resurrection.’11
> 
> The Bahá’í Writings make frequent mention of the ‘fountain’ and the “camphor
> fountain”.12
> Onto the Bridge of Meaning
> The use of the term ‘camphor’ in religious writings as offered here appears to draw on the
> positive aspects of the physical experience of its effects, most particularly the excitation
> effect and its concomitant warmth and comfort. In order to grasp more fully the richer
> meanings in these writings concerning camphor, one must examine the metaphorical
> connections between the mundane and the religious usages.
> In innumerable poetic and religious works, metaphor serves as a primary conduit from
> mundane experience toward transcendence of thought and feeling beyond the possibilities
> of the everyday. Naturally the reader of such works begins with the mundane level of the
> text in order to follow the metaphorical conduit to some higher, otherwise-inaccessible
> meaning. In references to camphor as in the Qur’án, in the Writings of the Báb, or in the
> Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, the reader often begins with the beneficial effects for which
> camphor is known in our everyday experience: taste enhancement, cognitive elevation,
> healing, and soothing.
> In order to better comprehend the metaphorical connections bridging from mundane
> meaning to higher significances, one turns to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s words:
> For physical things are signs and imprints of spiritual things; every lower thing is an
> image and counterpart of a higher thing. Nay, earthly and heavenly, material and
> spiritual, accidental and essential, particular and universal, structure and foundation,
> appearance and reality and the essence of all things, both inward and outward -- all of
> these are connected one with another and are interrelated in such a manner that you
> will find that drops are patterned after seas, and that atoms are structured after suns
> in proportion to their capacities and potentialities. For particulars in relation to what
> 
> Bahá’u’lláh, The Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, from final pages.
> See Mark A. Foster, Camphor Fountain: Compilation and Commentary, which lists both Bahá’í and Islamic
> sources and uses of the term. It is at: https://bahai-library.com/foster_camphor_fountain.
> is below them are universals, and what are great universals in the sight of those whose
> eyes are veiled are in fact particulars in relation to the realities and beings which are
> superior to them…13
> 
> The opening of this passage suggests to us that the things of our mundane existence are
> signs, imprints, images of corresponding things of our inner, spiritual existence. Due to
> our material beginnings and enduring bonds with this physical existence, we start by
> seeing the correspondence upside down: to us, the reality seems to be the physical,
> mundane world, while the derived, dependent ideas seem less meaningful. Which is the
> reality, and which is the sign or image? The question brings to mind the story of Plato’s
> Cave, in which the experience of the shadows seems the reality to the dwellers of the
> cave, while the reality is in truth the unseen entities casting those shadows.
> Thus ‘camphor’, as we understand the term in our world, can be understood as merely a
> sign, an image, a token, for the divine bestowals on the elevated soul. To gain
> appreciation for the true camphor of the divine realm requires that we detach our
> attention from the detailed, mundane associations of the term in this material world,
> gather potential elevated meanings from a harmonized sense of all of these mundane
> aspects, and grasp thereby some insight into the inner meanings of spiritual life that look
> toward the incomprehensible joy of drinking from “a wine cup tempered at the camphor
> fountain”.
> To approach such insight is the work of a lifetime, akin to traveling a long and narrow
> bridge, spanning above a depthless abyss, from our everyday beginnings to our spiritual
> uplifting. We are born, live, and die in that great journey. In this life there is always
> bridge ahead of us, always more to learn.
> A radiant, ethereal expression appears in one of the quotations offered earlier: ‘the black-
> eyed damsels quaff the camphor in Paradise’ The Arabic word used in such contexts for
> ‘damsel’ or ‘maiden’ is ‘húrí’, sometimes spelled ‘houri’ when using French
> transliterations. Arabic weaves deep and intimate connections among its terms, and ‘húrí’
> is closely related to the word ‘hára’, a word having an arresting series of meanings in its
> various forms, including these: ‘to return to or from, be perplexed, go back, become
> dazzled by a thing which one looked on so that the eyes were turned away from it’; ‘to
> converse with another, hold a conference, argue’; ‘intense whiteness of the eyeballs and
> lustrous blackness of the iris’; ‘pure and clean intellect; purity and beauty’; ‘one tried
> and found to be free from vice and faults; person of pure and unsullied character; one
> 
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, from “Tablet of the Universe”, originally published in Makátib-i 'Abdu'l-Bahá, Volume 1, pages
> 13-32, 1997, translated anonymously and provisionally, and posted at http://bahai-
> library.com/abdulbaha_lawh_aflakiyyih .
> who advises or counsels or acts honestly and faithfully’.14 All of these meanings carry a
> shared thread of potent, glorious purity, and more.
> Camphor: The Word
> The Arabic word for ‘camphor’, ‘kafur’, has a root with a set of meanings seemingly
> unrelated to its physical referent, the chemical substance. Its lone appearance in the
> Qur’án among usages related to the root meaning may puzzle some readers except for the
> fact that ‘kafur’ ( ‫) َﻛﺎﻓُﻮًرا‬, appears to be simply a phonetic Arabic representation of the
> Malay name ‘kapur’ for the camphor tree, perhaps via Sanskrit ‘karpuram’.15 The
> neutrality of this reference constrasts sharply with the character of the definitions given
> for the root ‘kafara’: ‘To cover, deny, hide, renounce, reject, disbelieve, be ungrateful,
> negligent, expiate, darken.’; other meanings follow for ‘Kafir’: ‘Disbeliever; Cultivator;
> Tiller; Husband; One who covers the sown seed with earth… Dark cloud; Night; Coat of
> mail; Impious.’16
> To gather elevated meaning here is to generate an organic fusion or integration of all of
> these associations and references into a living entity beyond any worldly definition. That
> classical Arabic invites verbal play of contrastive meanings having closely-similar
> sounds, as exemplified in the use of ‘kafur’ here, suggests a sense of surprise bestowed in
> the revealed Word of Muhammad in the Sura quoted above; the initial mental reaction to
> the familiar root-related meanings in the context jars the hearer until the term for
> camphor can be summoned in the cognitive process.
> This may seem an overly-subtle point for readers here whose backgrounds resemble the
> present author’s, but the use of such verbal devices of association and contrast is
> widespread in Arabic and the Middle East, and deserves highlighting here. For example,
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá writes:
> Call thou to mind the days of Christ, and the afflictions heaped upon Him by the
> people, and all the torments and tribulations inflicted upon His disciples. Since ye are
> lovers of the Abhá Beauty, ye also must, for His love’s sake, incur the peoples’ blame,
> and all that befell those of a former age must likewise befall you. Then will the faces of
> the chosen be alight with the splendors of the Kingdom of God, and will shine down
> the ages, yea, down all the cycles of time, while the deniers shall remain in their
> manifest loss. It will be even as was said by the Lord Christ: they shall persecute you
> for My name’s sake.
> 
> ‘Abdul Mannan ‘Omar, Dictionary of The Holy Qur’án: Arabic Words – English Meanings (Noor Foundation
> International 2010), pp.140-141.
> Online Etymology Dictionary at http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=camphor .
> Mannan, op. cit.
> Remind them of these words and say unto them: ‘Verily did the Pharisees rise up
> against Messiah, despite the bright beauty of His face and all His comeliness, and they
> cried out that He was not Messiah [Masíḥ] but a monster [Masíkh], because He had
> claimed to be Almighty God, the sovereign Lord of all, and told them, “I am God’s
> Son, and verily in the inmost being of His only Son, His mighty Ward, clearly revealed
> with all His attributes, all His perfections, standeth the Father.” This, they said, was
> open blasphemy and slander against the Lord according to the clear and irrefutable
> texts of the Old Testament.’17
> 
> This play on Masíh and Masíkh is also found in other places, attesting to its potency. In a
> study of the Qur’án, the title of Masíh for Jesus Christ is explored in the holy text itself
> and in the traditions, e.g.:
> Qurtubí interprets masíh to mean “one who is anointed (mamsúh) with the ointment of
> blessings with which prophets were anointed. It is of sweet odor.” Still another
> interpretation is that he was so called because he was anointed with beauty. Qurtubí
> offers still another curious interpretation which states that al-masíh is the opposite of
> al-masíkh, which means deformed, disfigured, or transmuted from a human into a
> subhuman form. Thus, al-Masih is the righteous one while al-Masíkh is the one eyed
> liar, al-Dajjál.18
> 
> The word ‘kafur’ ( ‫ ) َﻛﺎﻓُﻮًرا‬appears only once in the entire Qur’án, in Sura 76 as presented
> above. This sura’s verses describe beautifully the realm of the righteous, contrasting it
> starkly with the abode of the wrongdoer. These verses celebrate the drinking of the wine
> tempered with camphor – an image seemingly at variance with the teachings of Islam and
> the Bahá’í Faith concerning the use of wine in any worldly sense.19
> As with the mention of camphor, this image of drinking wine reveals a sharp contrast
> showing the vital divine realm against the backdrop shadow of the material realm, a
> seeming paradox that demands attention and stimulates wonder.
> On The Bridge
> Sharp contrast of meanings is often used in literature and memorization as a means of
> embedding ideas and experiences more firmly in one’s memory. The deliberate,
> conscious practice of contrastive memorization dates to antiquity. In one Latin text on the
> subject, written around 90 BCE, the reader finds:
> 
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, from No. 19.
> Mahmoud M. Ayoub, The Qur’án and Its Interpreters, Volume II: Surah 3, p. 132 (SUNY Press)
> See Frank Lewis, Camphor and the Camphor Fountain, which furnishes the reader with a great deal of valuable
> insight. It appears here: https://bahai-library.com/lewis_camphor_fountain.
> We ought, then, to set up images of a kind that can adhere longest in the memory. And
> we shall do so if we establish likenesses as striking as possible; if we set up images
> that are not many or vague, but doing something; if we assign to them exceptional
> beauty or singular ugliness; if we dress some of them with crowns or purple cloaks, for
> example, so that the likeness may be more distinct to us; or if we somehow disfigure
> them, as by introducing one stained with blood or soiled with mud or smeared with red
> paint, so that its form is more striking, or by assigning certain comic effects to our
> images, for that, too, will ensure our remembering them more readily.20
> 
> Consider the sweet, calming, stimulating effects of camphor in tempering a beverage,
> contrasted with the resonant counter-meanings of concealment, shadowing, and covering
> urged by the similar root term in Arabic. Integrate with this the purity and radiance of the
> damsels consuming the beverage, the darkness of their shining eyes hypnotically drawing
> one’s gaze, and the image mounts into an ecstatic, vibrant, unforgettable scene.
> The play of opposites of similar sound generates rhetorical, semantic, mnemonic, and
> cognitive potency that the use of ‘kafur’ can be seen to generate in the phrasing in the
> reported Islamic tradition quoted by Bahá’u’lláh Himself: ‘the black-eyed damsels quaff
> the camphor in Paradise’.
> In the glorious energy of this mystical scene we can sense flashes of warning. As with
> any element generating excitation, excess of use brings risk. In the mortal plane of
> existence, camphor’s elevation of mood and feeling turns to intoxication and poisoning
> on continued consumption. By the same token, material camphor serves as an insecticide
> and preservative against the onslaught of microbes, protecting the cherished from that
> which corrupts it. This quality is a metaphorical mirror – an imprint of the higher
> meaning – for the quaffing of the inner truths of the greater world: in our unquenchable
> desire to gain understanding, we lose our lesser selves in annihilation in the splendor we
> approach. This process draws us toward the last of the Seven Valleys of the spiritual
> voyage, if for this stage we are well-conditioned:
> For when the true lover and devoted friend reacheth to the presence of the Beloved,
> the sparkling beauty of the Loved One and the fire of the lover’s heart will kindle a
> blaze and burn away all veils and wrappings. Yea, all he hath, from heart to skin, will
> be set aflame, so that nothing will remain save the Friend.21
> 
> In reflecting on these words we find ourselves witness to an intimate drama of blinding
> power and staggering, mysterious meaning. As we attempt to tease out some degree of
> 
> Cicero, Rhetorica ad Herennium, No. 22, tr. Harry Caplan (Loeb 1954).Found at
> http://www.laits.utexas.edu/memoria/Ad_Herennium_Passages.html.
> Bahá’u’lláh, The Seven Valleys, The Valley of True Poverty and Absolute Nothingness, opening paragraph.
> understanding from this luminescent flow of holy language, we take halting steps on the
> bridge to more-elevated meaning and understanding, that perilous bridge of life:
> Take thou good heed that ye may all, under the leadership of Him Who is the Source of
> Divine Guidance, be enabled to direct thy steps aright upon the Bridge, which is
> sharper than the sword and finer than a hair, so that perchance the things which from
> the beginning of thy life till the end thou hast performed for the love of God, may not,
> all at once and unrealized by thyself, be turned to acts not acceptable in the sight of
> God. Verily God guideth whom He will into the path of absolute certitude.22
> 
> On this Bridge we all travel together.
> 
> The Báb, Selections from the Writings of the Báb, Excerpts from the Persian Bayán, VII, 2.
>
> — *Camphor and Metaphor (Used by permission of the curator)*