Richard, our sourcer, has travelled down the incense trade routes since he was a child, visiting Medain Saleh and Al Ukhdood in the 1980s. He relentlessly explores ancient cultures, as here in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain or in the UAE. He has traveled all over Somaliland, from Taleex and Badhan to Berbera and Borama, traveled from Somaliland to Harar in Ethiopia where he met Rainbo, driving on back roads to Addis Ababa to avoid irate locals, and then down the Nile all the way to Alexandria. He can walk for days in the mountains, finds sustenance easily and rarely tires. The further he gets from the comforts of civilisation, the more elated he becomes.

For 2Mages he identifies the best resins, establishes cordial relations with the harvesters, and while he brings it back he doesn’t once lose the precious cargo from sight.

Olympias, our operations manager, is a historian who learns from books but mostly from speaking to people. In Somalia oral history – of the kind told, never written down – is often a better source than books. She has a vast knowledge of the cultures, past and present, of the Horn of Africa and the Arabian peninsula. She established the Museum of Contemporary Ancient Arabia to explore the repressed past of this region whose greatness once hailed from frankincense and myrrh. In Somaliland she discovered ancient statues, convincing her that here, too, a high level of cultural development was attained in ancient times. With the support of the Somali archaeologist Sada Mire she is searching for the traces of Queen Arawelo, a legendary Somali queen who may have been the local incarnation of the Queen of Sheba / Arab Bilqis / Ethiopian Makeda.

Professor Bai-Bi, our chief scientist, is the kind of academic who draws as much knowledge from her intution as from books and papers. She taught courses about international interventions in developing countries and Arab contemporary art at Sciences Po in Paris but grew tired of Western approaches to social sciences, which she terms ‘sterile’. She started taking her students to the field with her but this caused her to be rejected by universities; now she is a ‘professor at large’. Her current research seeks to renew political science with insights from contemporary forestry and ecological studies. This, and the need to make a living, has drawn ‘Baby’, as she is affectionately known, to join the 2Mages team.

Enkidu, the 2Mages product developer, has studied the hidden side of reality for many decades and become adept at connecting it to manifest reality. In his art he applies the occult knowledge gained through astrology, tarot, experimentation with hallucinogenic drugs, vision quests and regression into past lives, filtering these tricky energies through the lessons of the Bhagavad Gita and other ancient sacred texts. In his current position he has rekindled his passion for alchemy, with a raw matter formed by the resins of frankincense and myrrh. Distilling is a truthful way of arriving at the essence of plant life, and unchains those 35% of genes that frankincense and myrrh share with humans, to produce or refine energy and repair damage.

Rainbo, variously called Rainbow, Rambo or the Rimbaud Warrior, is our head of business development. To put a revolutionary in charge of this sector may seem unwise, but in these times we need a breakthrough, and playing by the rules will get us nowhere. He is determined to operate outside a commercial system where greed leads, where both producers and consumers are played for fools while most of the money disappears in the pockets of middlemen. He wants to (re)build an (old) new type of commerce which is transparent and honest, and the middleman plays a modest role putting the producer and in this case nature itself in the spotlight. He defines profit in karmic rather than monetary terms.

Tantrix, whose original (Nahuatl) name is Iyaqui, “valiant young warrior”, is the public face of 2Mages. He is the one who seduces customers of all ages and genders into buying our wonderful wares. You feel his soft touch on your skin when you apply our cosmetic products; he massages your body and holds your head while you let yourself be physically or spiritually carried away by our ancient essences. He is the shining star of youth and joy and embodies the healing power of frankincense and myrrh. His amazing scent lingers on long after he has left, making you pine for more.

Tantrix is also in charge of this website and customer relations, so please address him with any personal query.

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