Lady in Speckled Pink Kimono

When I found out I liked the Water Dragon very much I worried that I would like it more than the Lady. But I love them both, each time I love the one I am wearing most no matter which one it is. And today it is the Lady, because her bottle finally arrived after two weeks and four days. I think I said so before, but I had never expected to love the scent of peony as much as I do.


Of course, wearing the same scent more often, it gets harder to write about it again. And those I love much will get a lot of posts. So what can I tell about the Lady today? The picture above is Chinese. Although the scent is based on a Japanese Shunga, there are many more peony picture made in China than there have been painted in Japan. China is larger of course, which may account for part of this difference. But perhaps the peony is more a Chinese flower than a Japanese one. I found many Chinese species of peonies while searching for them.  And apparently the Chinese people appreciated the peony enough to paint it often. There even are many stamps that are decorated with a peony flower.

Two earlier entries about the Lady can be found here: 1  2

Al-Araaf

"Al Aaraaf" is the longest poem written by Edgar Allen Poe. He claimed to have written it before he was 15, but later he adapted this claim. It was published for the first time in "Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems" which Poe considered his first book. The poem was inspired by Tycho Brahe's discovery of a supernova in 1572, which Poe identified with Al Aaraaf, the place where according to stories in the Koran those people stay who are neither good not bad until God forgives them and allows them to enter Paradise. The lab chose the following lines to accompany the scent:

Young flowers were whispering in melody
To happy flowers that night - and tree to tree;
Fountains were gushing music as they fell
In many a star-lit grove, or moon-lit dell;
Yet silence came upon material things -
Fair flowers, bright waterfalls and angel wings -
And sound alone that from the spirit sprang
Bore burthen to the charm the maiden sang:

'Neath the blue-bell or streamer -
Or tufted wild spray
That keeps, from the dreamer,
The moonbeam away -
Bright beings! that ponder,
With half closing eyes,
On the stars which your wonder
Hath drawn from the skies,
Till they glance thro' the shade, and
Come down to your brow
Like - eyes of the maiden
Who calls on you now -
Arise! from your dreaming
In violet bowers,
To duty beseeming
These star-litten hours -
And shake from your tresses
Encumber'd with dew
The breath of those kisses
That cumber them too -
(O! how, without you, Love!
Could angels be blest?)
Those kisses of true Love
That lull'd ye to rest!
Up! - shake from your wing
Each hindering thing:
The dew of the night -
It would weigh down your flight
And true love caresses -
O, leave them apart!
They are light on the tresses,
But lead on the heart.

For me Al-Araaf takes the place of Tiger Lily, a scent I was given an imp of with the first gift of BPAL imps I received. It was my first favorite scent, but alas discontinued long before my nose ever smelled it. By coincidence I came across someone selling the LE Al-Araaf which of course now is as hard to get as Tiger Lily is. The notes are "Honeyed lilies, dry lotus root and fae flowers" where Tiger Lily has been described as "A feisty bouquet of golden, warm, gently honeyed lilies". I think one can safely say that Al-Araaf is Tiger Lily plus something extra. It is a little darker than Tiger Lily, I would say. But that mighty be because Tiger Lily reminds me of the summer when I wore it.

Enraged Orangutan Musk

You didn't think I'd really do it, didja?

Five dark, aggressive, furious musks with ambergris bouquet, Malaysian rainforest plant extracts, black amber and orange peel.

Inspired by Lycanthrope and Heretic on the BPAL forum!

Like most people, I wanted to try this because of the name and also out of curiosity. But I know I like orange peel in a scent. And indeed I do like this scent very much. However, there isn not much aggression in it in my opinion. It smells warm and gentle rather than dark and agressive. More like this, really:

But of course Gentle Orangutan Musk would not have sounded quite as interesting...

Opuhi

This too is opuhi. Apparently there are two ginger species that both carry the name opuhi. The one I presented in my earlier entry is  Zingiber zerumbet, but the more plumelike Alpinia purpurata seems to go by this name too. The more than 230 ginger species are listed in the Alpinia genus, so apparently not all gingers have the Latin name of Zingiber. Alpinia purpurata which is shown in the picture above is also called Red Ginger, Ostrich Plume, Jungle Queen and Pink Cone Ginger. Indeed I have seen pink flowers as wel as red ones. The pink ones, however, seem to be sturdier than the red ones. Tahitian women avoid planting them together, because the pink ones would soon take up all the space and they would lose the red ones. (source)

The BPAL scent Opuhi carries "ginger blossom" as wel as "vanilla orchid" and it appears that  Vanilla too has more than one species. The one we are most used to is Vanilla planifolia, which originates in Mexico but which has spread more widely since it was discovered that the flowers could be hand-pollinated. Bourbon vanilla is from the same plant, but grown on Indian Ocean Islands such as Madagascar, the Comoros, and Réunion, formerly called Île Bourbon. Tahitian Vanilla however is a different species, Vanilla tahitiensis. It is said to have an unique aroma which is more floral and fruity than the planifolia vanilla. (vanilla types) 

My earlier entry about Opuhi.

Mme Moriarty, Misfortune Teller

A colorless woman bursts from an elaborate gold and ruby tent and faints dead at your feet. Soft laughter emits from the dark entrance to the tent, and the scent of musk, black fruits and incense touches your senses. Looking up, you see that the sign hovering above the unconscious woman is adorned with images of the Major Arcana’s Tower and reads:

“Mme. Moriarty, Misfortune Teller.
No fate too grim, no future too bleak.”

A tiny woman with floor-length black dreadlocks walks out of the tent, stepping over the prone body. She is clothed in deep red wrappings, and is bedecked in golden ornaments bearing alchemical symbols and charms representing eternity, chance, and wisdom. She pauses, looks you over slowly, and then flicks a tarot card at your feet.

In spite of her unfortunate presentation, the scent of Mme Moriarty is one I can always turn to and be pleased with it. There are not many scents like that, even some of those I love can just not be the right scent for a certain day. This has not yet happened with Mme M. And I would not have thought I would like her so much from the description:

Red musk, vanilla bean, pomegranate, patchouli leaf and wild plum. 

I had tried some scents with pomegranate as a note (of course there is no essential oil of pomegranate, nor of wild or any other plum for that matter) and they were interesting, a light fruity kind of sweet and sour, but not something I would want to wear often. But I was told by a friend whose taste in BPAL scents is much like mine that this was really good. 
So I bid on a bottle on eBay, as Mme Moriarty had left town with the rest of the Carnaval Diabolique and was no longer available from the lab. But I lost the auction and that was that. I thought. Apparently Mme M. had her own thoughts, two days later I received an email offering me the bottle I had not won. "If you don't like it, you can always sell it," my friend told me. "It is much sought after." 
But I already knew that if I would buy it I would not want to sell it. What I didn't know, was how much I would like it. Mme Moriarty came in and was in my top three immediately. She may even have pushed Saw-Scaled Viper one step down. She must have, I am wearing her more now than I wear my very first favorite. She truly is a scent that is never a wrong choice, no matter wat kind of day it is. 


Thank you Voodoocat for your advise that made me buy a bottle of Mme Moriarty.

Lady in Speckled Pink Kimono

I am still amazed at the smell of this Lady, "Peony blossoms and vanilla orchid". Although, like yesterday's linden blossom, the peony blossoms in June rather than March, this scent is very much a spring scent. It brings the same kind of lightness. And to think I once inherited a peony with the house we bought, how could I have missed this magical scent? But perhaps the Dutch 'boerenpioen' (farmer's peony) does not have the same scent as the many Chinese varieties. There are many Chinese peony species I found, which may be why most oriental peony paintings I found were Chinese and only a few Japanese.

It looked much like this, the peony that came with our house before this one. It was very large and when we moved I took part of the roots with me to our new garden. But apparently it preferred its original spot, where it had grown larger each year. It never grew at its new spot. (And I wonder if it is still there where I left it, the new owners of the house were the kind that lay pavement and place pots on it.)  I think I'll try again, with a new peony that has not yet attached itself to a spot to grow. My plum tree might like the company of a peony.

But lets not forget the other half of the scent's description: Vanilla Orchid. It won't even be possible to grow vanilla in my garden, but I can enjoy its image.

My other entry about Lady in Speckled Pink Kimono.

Hairy Toad Lily

Hairy Toad Lily was the second scent I fell very much in love with. I still have to smell my first real Hairy Toad Lily, so I have no idea if it smells like the BPAL creation. It would be wonderful if it does and I hope to find out some day. There are no notes for this scent, unless "spotty, hairy, purple, sweet" are notes. For me it is a scent that both comforts me and adds some sillyness to my day, something that helps to take things less seriously, to make a joke out of a complication. You might say that Hairy Toad Lily is my jester (mind you: the lab also had a scent called Jester, don't confuse the two). 


It's the name as well of course: you can't help but picturing a hairy toad when you hear it. It is probably the lily that is hairy, the leaves perhaps because the flower looks rather smooth to me. But a hairy toad is a funny idea. 
Of course nothing can be so funny and unreal or it already exists and indeed there is a frog that is called 'hairy frog' (Trichobatrachus robustus). It is not really covered with hair, but 

breeding males also develop – somewhat hair-like – dermal papillae that extend along the flanks and thighs. (source)

Hairy Toad Lily is also a sunny scent. When I smell it, it is summer, even in winter. It is warm and sweet indeed but as in a sweet lily, and light hearted. I could imagine the hairy toad flying off as a purple spotted butterfly, such lightness I smell in this scent. It is exactly what I need today.

A Wonderful Light

Honor C. Appleton

Her little hands were almost numbed with cold. Oh! a match might afford her a world of comfort, if she only dared take a single one out of the bundle, draw it against the wall, and warm her fingers by it. She drew one out. “Rischt!” how it blazed, how it burnt! It was a warm, bright flame, like a candle, as she held her hands over it: it was a wonderful light. It seemed really to the little maiden as though she were sitting before a large iron stove, with burnished brass feet and a brass ornament at top. The fire burned with such blessed influence; it warmed so delightfully.

It seems an odd choice for a warm and sunny spring day in March, the kind of day that makes people ride their bicycles without their coats on and that makes children with pale legs sticking out of shorts test their supersoaker water guns. But when you look at the notes of the scent, the choice is perhaps not so strange. 

Three radiant ambers with honey, linden blossom, bourbon vanilla, and orange zest.

 Although linden trees (in England they are called lime trees) will not bloom until June, yet their scent seems very appropriate on a warm and sunny spring day even as early as March.

Cairo

I have never been to Cairo, but I think I would like to visit it some day because of its history. And perhaps also because, in spite of what I have seen in the news, there still is the idea that it must have the magic of the tales of thousand and one night. The scent appeals to that feeling of old treasures and old tales, because it is:

The essence of holy Kyphi, beloved incense of the Egyptian Gods.

Kyphi has fascinated me since I heard about it and I have a small collection of recipes, non of which I have ever tried. There are different recipes and all of them have ingredients of which there is no certainty what they really are. 
The oldest recipe of Kyphi is found in the Ebers Papyrus (1500 BC). It mentions nine ingredients, but the identity of some has been guessed. Including the guesses it might have contained: frankincense (antiu?), mastic, genen (sweet flag?), pine kernels, cyperus grass, camel grass, inektun and cinnamon, all of which were cooked in honey to obtain the incense.
The next recipe is constructed from the Harris I Papyrus which was composed during the reign of Ramses IV, a few hundred years later. Here the delivery is mentioned of six ingredients, so that the temples could prepare kyphi. The ingredients mentioned are:  mastic, pine resin (or wood) camel grass, mint, sweet flag and cinnamon. It is assumed that the recipe would also have contained wine, raisins and honey, but these would not have to be sent from the central stores. They are not mentioned however, there is no recipe, nor a method of preparation.
The next we know about Kyphi comes from Plutarch who visited Egypt and had acces to a text by Manetho, a Greek Egyptian who lived in the 3rd century BC. This text was about the "Preparation of Kyphy Recipes". No copies of Manetho's text have been found, but Plutarch quote one recipe. He mentions that the ingredients were added one by one while magical texts were read aloud. 

Plutarch also confirms that Kyphi was drunk to cleanse the body and was thought to bring restful sleep with vivid dreams. According to Plutarch Ancient Egyptian priests burned incense in the temple three times a day: frankincense at dawn, myrrh at midday, and Kyphi at dusk. (source)

Plutarch mentions many more ingredients than nine. The list consist of raisins, wine, honey, myrrh, resin, mastic, bitumen of Judea, cyperus, aspalathos, seseli, rush, lanathos, sweet flag and cardamom.

The latest recipes are from the Temple of Edfu which was built in the first century BC. In the walls of this temple two recipes for kyphi are inscribed. The ingredients are the same in both recipes, only the quantities of ingredients differ. The Temple of Philae too shows a recipe with similar ingredients but different quantities. One of the recipes in Edfu also mentions synonyms for many of the ingredients and it has explanatory notes.

"[Take 273 g each of mastic, pine resin, sweet flag, aspalathos, camel grass, mint and cinnamon.] Place the items in a mortar and grind them. Two-fifths of this will {turn out to} be in the form of liquid to be discarded. There remain three-fifths in the form of ground powder. [Take 1.5 lb each of cyperus, juniper berries, pine kernels and peker (unidentified)] Reduce the ingredients to powder. Moisten all these dry ingredients with [2.5 lb] wine in a copper vessel. Half of this wine will be absorbed by the powder [the rest is to be discarded].

Leave overnight. Moisten the [3.3 lb] raisins with [2.5 lb] oasis wine. Mix everything in a vessel and leave for five days. Boil to reduce by one-fifth. Place [3.3 lb] honey and [1,213 g] frankincense in a cauldron and reduce volume by one-fifth. Add to the honey and frankincense the kyphi macerated in wine. Leave overnight. Grind the [1,155 g] myrrh and add to the kyphi". source

There are three more Greek authors mentioning Kyphi. They are all mentioned in the page that was my main source to write this entry. So if you want to read more about kyphi, follow this link which goes to the same page as the first link above. But since this entry started off with a scent named after Cairo, I think I can limit myself to the Egyptian recipes.

Water Dragon

I like this unusual picture of a water dragon for more than one reason. Of course I like it because of the simple fact that it is a dragon as well as it is water. But I also like it because its surroundings remind me of what I see taking the forest paths from Sobieta to the Col d'Oxibar. I love that area with a deep love and each time I am there I have to walk that route to meet old friends. The oak tree that is special to me, the cave, the top with the ancient circular walls all around it, they are all like friends to me. Where the dragon is in the picture above my path would be, although in a very wet season indeed it would be a stream.

This is the path higher up the mountain and I must have a larger photo of it, but I have to find it. Of the path I am reminded of by the water dragon picture I don't have any photos. I carry it in my heart.

My other entries about Water Dragon can be found here and here.

Queen Mab

Although she is presented as "the Goddess of Magic and Poets, one of the Tuatha De Danaan and the Queen of the Faeries," I found that Queen Mab is in fact a historical person:

Another prince, Eochaidh Feidhlech, was famous for sighing. He rescinded the division of Ireland into twenty-five parts, which had been made by Ugainé Môr, and divided the island into five provinces, over each of which he appointed a provincial king, under his obedience.

The famous Meadhbh, or Mab, was his daughter; and though unquestionably a lady of rather strong physical and mental capabilities, the lapse of ages has thrown an obscuring halo of romance round her belligerent qualifications, and metamorphosed her into the gentle "Faery Queen" of the poet Spenser. One of Méav 's exploits is recorded in the famous Táin bó Chuailgné, which is to Celtic history what the Argonautic Expedition, or the Seven against Thebes, is to Grecian. Méav was married first to Conor, the celebrated provincial king of Ulster; but the marriage was not a happy one, and was dissolved, in modern parlance, on the ground of incompatibility. In the meanwhile, Méav 's three brothers had rebelled against their father; and though his arms were victorious, the victory did not secure peace.

The men of Connacht revolted against him, and to retain their allegiance he made his daughter Queen of Connacht, and gave her in marriage to Ailill, a powerful chief of that province. This prince, however, died soon after; and Méav , determined for once, at least, to choose a husband for herself, made a royal progress to Leinster, where Ross Ruadh held his court at Naas, She selected the younger son of this monarch, who bore the same name as her former husband, and they lived together happily as queen and king consort for many years. source

The Faerie Queen as pictured by Brian Froud

In spite if these historical facts, Queen Mab has somehow changed into a Fairy Queen, starting with Shakespeare (in Romeo and Juliet) and with Spenser (in The Faerie Queene). As the Fairy Queen she is also associated with the Morrigan (the Irish threefold Goddess of War) or Morgan Le Fey (Morgan of the Faeries). And because in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream the Fairy Queen's name is Titania, Queen Mab and Titania have also been thought to be the same person. 


The lab describes their (in 2010 discontinued) scent of Queen Mab as:

Warrior, Trickster and Goddess of Magic and Poets, she is one of the Tuatha De Danaan and the Queen of the Faeries. A very complex scent, both shadowy and fierce: black orchid, sandalwood, night-blooming jasmine, osmanthus, Somalian rose, and Chinese musk.

Her complexity is mirrored in the scent, but her strength as well. This scent has staying power. Although it is not mentioned in the description I think I smell orris root in the later stages. And although there are no 'green' notes mentioned,  the scent smells green to me. Which seems to be a good thing for the Queen of Faeries. 

The Threefold Morrigan

Opuhi

I was busy for quite a while when I wanted to know what opuhi means. At first I found different plants, but the most reliable information tells me that opuhi, also known as shampoo ginger or pinecone ginger (the reason for this name is obvious when you see the picture above), is Zingiber zerumbet, a deciduous ginger that multiplies rapidly and blooms every year. The name shampoo ginger is less obvious, but apparently the mature flower cone contains a large amount of aromatic slimy juice that is used as shampoo or conditioner for the hair, but also as a body wash and even for massage. It makes the hair soft and shiny and can be rinsed out or left in. Other parts of the plant are also used. The leaves and stalks are used in cooking and the rhizomes have a medical use. The flower stalks sprout from the ground and grow below the leave stalks.

Flowers grow from the cones a few at a time:

The last picture comes from this source that gave me a lot of information. Wikipedia also provided some interesting facts. This ginger plant apparently originated in India, was distributed eastward through Polynesia and introduced to the Hawaïan Islands in the canoes of early Polynesian settlers. For this reason the plant has many names. Opuhi is the Polynesian name, as the scent that brought me on this search is from the Flotsam series (a limited edition in 2008) of the Atomic Luau Lounge of Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab. 

Sometimes the reason to choose a certain scent is rather mundane. I chose Opuhi today because someone is selling a bottle of it and it is on my list of scents I want more of. But because I have only a few drops of it, I had not been wearing it for a long time. The lab's description is short:

Ginger blossom and vanilla orchid

At first I wondered why I wanted more of it. I smelled ginger and vanilla, not very special. But it needed some time to settle into a very warm, creamy scent that is more than ginger and vanilla.

Lady in Speckled Pink Kimono

This is only a part from the shunga that was the inspiration for this scent. I didn't know if it would be safe to post the complete picture in a blog, so if you want to see it, follow this link. Shunga is a Japanese term for erotic art. It literally means 'picture of spring', spring being a common euphemism for sex (common in Japan I suppose). I found it interesting that shunga are thought to have their origin in Chinese medicine manuals. 
There is more to the word shunga. Apart from its literal meaning, it is in fact  a contraction of 'shunkyu-higi-ga' (春宮秘戯画), the Japanese pronunciation for Chinese sets of twelve scrolls depicting the twelve sexual acts that the crown prince had to carry out as an expression of yin yang. (source)


The lab description for this scent is short: 

Peony blossoms and vanilla orchid.

I had never tried a peony scent before and to my surprise I liked it so much I wanted more of it. It is sweet and of course the vanilla adds to that. It is perhaps the vanilla that makes this scent smell to me more salmon coloured than pink (and what an odd thing that is, to say a flower is salmon coloured).
Peonies are popular in both Chinese and Japanese art and nowadays they also are popular as tattoos. The picture below is of Peony and Canary, by Hokusai.

The Obsidian Widow

So that's the Obsidian Widow, I though when I found the picture. She too came as a free imp with the Marquis de Carabas and her picture was not with the review. The Obsidian Widow then, is a mechanical Black Widow spider. The lab writes:

Tinkling tiny feet scuttle across a massive oak desk, navigating through a flurry of papers and a maze of discarded books, wires, and bolts. Glistening green venom beads at its chelicerae, and a ruby hourglass flashes from the creature's underbelly as it begins to weave.

Pinot noir, dark myrrh, red sandalwood, black patchouli, night-blooming jasmine, and attar of rose.

Although I doubt if the black widow's venom is green, when searching for information about this spider unknown in Europe I found that indeed the western black widow (Latrodectus hesperus) has a red hourglass shaped spot on her belly. Black Widow Link.


The scent is a surprisingly warm and comforting scent, not at all what one would expect after a description mentioning green venom beads at chelicerae. At first it is a little sharp, but it soon rounds off to a warm and slightly sweet scent in which I can smell both the rose and the night-blooming jasmine. The part that smells sweet reminds me of the lubricating oil the mechanical spider must have in her joints. And then, perhaps, there is still some sharpness, like green venom drops, beneath the smooth warm scent.
But no, as time passes, the scent only grows warmer and the smell that reminded me of lubricating oil now seems more like the natural oil in the wool of a sheep, with a waft of night-blooming jasmine.

Black Widow from this blog.

Screeching Parrot

(Photo by Mark Thompson)

The sun is shining again and although the trees are still bare I am dreaming of summer. I wanted to wear green and the Screeching Parrot. I got an imp of this and I think it was a freebie as it is not a scent I would have chosen from the description:

Golden rum, apricot liquor, pineapple, pomegranate, ginger, brandy, grapefruit, and pink lime.

But I liked it so much that I bought a bottle of it when I saw someone selling one. It is a discontinued scent from the discontinued series Atomic Luau Lounge. I think I like it because I like grapefruit scents, I don't recognize the booze smell it is supposed to have.


Grapefruit in a perfume seems to make a woman seem younger.  The Smell and Taste Institute in Chicago explored the question of what makes a woman smell youthful but not girlish. They found that men estimating the ages of women wearing grapefruit thought them, on the average, 6 years younger than they really were. I found this information in the Etsy shop of Alkemia: here at the page of a scent I still have to try. 

Being estimated younger than my real age is not why I like a perfume with grapefruit. I just like the smell of grapefruit, it's freshness with a bitter edge. Besides, I am estimated younger whether I wear grapfruit or not. I suppose it is that I refuse to act my age.

Water Dragon again

I really am in love with this Water Dragon. And I could have known, Water Dragon has been in my life for even longer than Cobra. When my partner and I had been together for only one or two years we went to Paris on a cheap bus, riding through the night and arriving at dawn after little sleep. We walked through the city that was just waking up. There were vendors on the sidewalks, with just some sort of low tray showing their merchandise and I was looking at different silver rings each with a jade stone when I saw the water dragon. It had very tiny jade stones for eyes, so it wasn't much for the stone but I loved the dragon. My partner bought it for me. Only a few years I didn't wear it, but it went through most that I went through and a few things that were worse for it than for me. It had not cost much because it was very thin, especially the part that was at the inside of the finger. The dragon's head easily got caught and then the ring was torn out of shape or worse, it broke. Fortunately I had a sister who was studying to be a goldsmith, she repaired it each time, finally giving it a stronger back and bending the head closer to my finger so it would not be caught so easily.


It has been about 25 years since I got my silver water dragon. Its eyes left its sockets within a few weeks and were never found, they were no more than pinpoints. But the little black holes that were left worked as eyes just as well. The spikes on its back took more time, but they are all worn off and his back is smooth now. Only on his nose and tail a few indentations show that once he had spikes. He is not as good looking as he was when he found his way to my hand. But he has the magic of his wearing. And  he was the beginning of my love for dragons.

Water Dragon

The dragon surprised me. This is the Chinese year of the Dragon and it is a Water year, according to this wikipedia page it is Yang Water because the year ends in 2. Since the Dragon in itself is yang, it must be a very yang year, whatever that may mean.


The description of the lab for Water Dragon is: 

A new year's blessing! Peony, China's national flower, with bamboo for flexibility, Buddha's Hand for introspective spiritual growth, plum blossom for perseverance, courage, and hope, coconut for camaraderie, chrysanthemum for a life free of grief and struggle, tangerine and orchid for wealth, orange for happiness, lychee for household peace, pine resin for constancy, golden kumquat, pussy willow, and quince for prosperity, sesame for sweetness, narcissus and King mandarin for good fortune, and peach blossom for longevity, with a splash of blazing red of dragon's blood… to help you scare away the rampaging Nian.

I can't say I smell tangerine or King mandarin, nor coconut (fortunately, I don't like coconut in my scents) and I certainly don't smell chrysanthemum. I think I may smell peony. Dragon's Blood? Not really, but I can imagine it in there. 
(On a side note: I still have to find out how dragon's blood becomes a part of a perfume. I have been told the resin is dissolved in frankincense or sandalwood essential oil, but the dragon's blood I bought refuses to be dissolved. It may be a poor quality of dragon's blood. Or perhaps I should heat it. Or perhaps it is not done like this at all.)


The first time I tried Water Dragon I didn't like it very much, it seemed almost like candy! But today I tried it again and I fell completely in love with it. Now I want more of this yang water dragon, more than just a decant. 
How can I describe the scent? In a way it reminds me of watermelon, a watery fresh fruit scent. And when I think of watermelon, I think of watermelon turmeline.

 

Fae


Searching the web for the word fae I find little. Apparently they are more often named by other names: fairy or faery is what I find most. When I think of faeries or fae, what I see is imprinted on my mind by Brian Froud. So I thought I'd share some of his work:

Or his Green Woman, Froud's faeries are often blue, but I imagine them green. 

The scent is green too. The lab description is:  A brilliant, ethereal scent: white musk, bergamot, heliotrope, peach and oakmoss. The peach note gives it sweetness, the scent is like sunhine in a summer forest to me. It also reminds me of Leanan Sidhe, which is not surprising because the Leanan Sidhe are Fae. But I would have to wear the scent again to be able to really compare them.

Voodoo


With my 90% filled bottle of The Marquis de Carabas I got 5 imps which I could choose and Voodoo was one of my choices. The lab description is: 

A midnight scent, evoking images of flickering golden firelight reflecting off the sheen of glistening skin and the jerking shadows of bodies suffused with spiritual ecstasy. A deep, powerful, resonant blend of myrrh, patchouli, vetiver, lime, vanilla, pine, almond and clove.

I like to use quite a bit of a scent, but Voodoo is so strong that even a little bit whacked me in the face when I put it on. So I left it at that. It smelled indeed powerful and deep, but after a few minutes something soapy crept in. I started to worry, I really thought I would like this scent. But when I looked at the notes I thought it might be the lime (I didn't like the lime in Lysander) and I hoped that the spicy notes of Voodoo would balance it out. Which they did. And now I smell something that might well find its way to my list of real favorites.


It would be nice if the scent could do some voodoo for me. But perhaps I'd have to dance in the firelight first. 


Not at all related with the scent itself, but related to its name, is this etsy shop: ConjuredCardea I haven't bought anything here, but it looks interesting.


(The picture above is from the BPAL website.)