Incense is placed or "set" in a thurible or censer on burning charcoal. A Thurible or censer is basically a pot suspended by one or more chains in which incense is burnt.

The incense itself is carried in a small vessel known as a navicula or boat and with it is a small spoon with which to place the incense on the charcoal in the censer.

When being carried, the cencer is normally held in the right hand with the bowl hanging at full length. The boat is generally carried in the left hand.

When in use (when persons or things are being censed) the chain is generally held in the left hand and while the right hand grasps the chains just above the bowl.

Within the setting of an Eucharist, incense is normally only placed in the thurible by the priest, and thereafter blessed.

The thurifer approaches the priest, bows moderately, and presents the opened thurible after having handed the boat to the priest. As he does so the thurifer should say "bless, reverend father." The priest then places the incense on the burning charcoal and as he does so may say "Be thou blessed by him in whose honour thou art to be burned Amen." The priest then makes the sign of the cross over the thurible. Then, but not before, the thurifer closes the lid.

Incense should be blessed afresh for each act of incensing, but if the act for which incense has been blessed lasts for a long time, and all the incense in the censer is consumed, then the thurifer may add additional incense to the censer without ceremony and with help from another server if necessary.

The drawing following this paragraph is from Ritual Notes and shows the manner in which the altar and the oblations should be censed.

When the thurifer censes individual people or groups of people, he bows first to them and they return the bow, with the exception of the celebrant who should generally not return the bow.

The thurifer then censes the person or groups according to their rank. Groups of people should be censed with three single swings - center - left (from the thurifer's point of view) and right.

Objects which have been blessed are similarly triply censed, though in these cases with double swings.

Incense is properly used at Morning Prayer following the second canticle and at Evening Prayer following the first canticle.

At the Mass incense is properly used: in procession before the service; to cense the altar at the introit; in the Gospel Procession to cense the Gospel book before and the Gospeler after reading the Gospel; at the oblations to cense them and the altar and those present; and lastly, in procession at the close of the service.