Pearl Diver

Pearl Diver is a Villainess scent. Villainess makes primarily products for facial and body care, but they also have a small line of oil based perfumes and my friend jarvenpa sent me some samples of these. I was very curious about another one that I shall discuss some other time because when I tried it the first time it was too sweet for me. The next day, which was the 22nd of June, I tried Pearl Diver, another one I was rather curious about. 

A delicate play of bergamot and jasmine, orchid and violet, over a sensible wash of sandalwood, and salty kelp.

Very interestingly I recognised immediately a type of scent I usually do not like, yet this particular variety I found myself liking. I liked it enough to reapply when it wore off. Although two days later when I picked up a piece of clothing that the scent had rubbed off on, I did not as much like the remains. It was closer to those scenst I do not like.
I can not yet say what makes this scent different. I am not very willing to test a lot of scents that I usually don't like, only for differentiating purposes. And I don't like the Pearl Diver enough to want a bottle of it. Not yet, anyway. But I'll wear her again as long as the sample goes.


The Pearl Diver, if you did not recognize her from the picture, is the Ama, the Japanese woman who dives without any diving gear or air tanks, to gather oysters and other sea food, but they have become famous because of the pearls that can be found in the oysters. Amas can continue their diving job well into old age and in fact the older women can stay submerged longer than the younger ones. But they usually have another job as well. It is believed that women are better equiped for this work, because the way body fat is distributed  on a woman's body better protects her against the cold of the sea water.

The Apothecary

An Apothecary Grinding Herbs, from The Illustrated Library Shakespeare,

published London 1890 (litho)

This I should have written on June 21st. I am way behind. June 21st was when I wore The Apothecary, of which a bottle arrived together with Smoky Moon.


The Apothecary comes from the Illyria series, scents based on characters in plays from Shakespeare. This is the apothecary in Romeo and Juliet, the one who provided Romeo with the bottle of quick-acting poison he asked for, so that he could 'die with a kiss'. I think we all know the drama of that story.


The lab description of The Apothecary is:

Tea leaf with three mosses, green grass, a medley of herbal notes, and a drop of ginger and fig.

This newly bought lab-fresh bottle did not smell quite as I remembered the probably very aged imp that I once had smelled. It was (how surprising) a fresher green scent. I remembered it to be darker with the mosses, but I am sure it will get this quality with time. Most of the green scents I have tried lately had a very light, fairy-like quality (which wasn't surprising as they were Fae and Leanan Sidhe, to name two). The Apothecary is much more grounded. And then it has the ginger note! I have found that I much enjoy ginger notes and in this scent the ginger gives a nice fresh-spicy twist to the mosses, tea and herbs of the apothecary. I am not sure what the fig note is. I would have to compare a couple of scents with fig notes to figure that out, I suppose. Or just wear The Apothecary more often.

Smoky Moon

The Smoky Moon must be a name only used by Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, because I can not find any other sources on the internet using the same name for a certain moon of the year. The only concept the expression  is used for, is the moon viewed through smoke or fog. At Black Phoenix the Smoky Moon seems to be the full moon in the first week of June. I think this, because there have been two Smoky Moons: one in 2009 when full moon was on the 7th and the one we just had which was on the 4th.

Light-winged Smoke, Icarian bird,
Melting thy pinions in thy upward flight,
Lark without song, and messenger of dawn
Circling above the hamlets as they nest;
Or else, departing dream, and shadowy form
Of midnight vision, gathering up thy skirts;
By night star-veiling, and by day
Darkening the light and blotting out the sun;
Go thou my incense upward from this hearth,
And ask the gods to pardon this clear flame.

This is how the Smoky Moon is introduced this year. I found that this is a poem by Henri David Thoreau, called Light-Winged Smoke.  

Aged champaca, golden amber, guiac wood, dusky patchouli, twilit oudh, and feathery orris, with a touch of grapefruit, davana, and elemi to help lift it to the heavens.

Although there are enough notes in this scent that I like a lot, like champaca, patchouli, oudh!, grapefruit and elemi, it was not so much the description as some intuitive reaction to it that made me buy this unsmelled. Since the Moon scents are only available during a short period around the full moon, one has to order these unsmelled. Oak Moon had not disappointed me, so I did not hesitate and answered the call of this Smoky Moon. Although if there had been tobacco in this one as there was in the Smoky Moon of 2009, it could have called all it wanted but I wouldn't have bought it. Any amount tobacco in a scent makes me smell like I have been rolling in wet sigarette butts.

This year's Smoky Moon however is a good one for me. At first it smelled oddly incensy to me, like there was frankincense in it (which may still be the case although it isn't mentioned). I did not really smell grapefruit, but there was a certain sharpness in the very beginning that might have been grapefruit. The frankincense however was stronger. 
Then, after a while, there was a spicy smell that made me think of the Indonesian shops we have here, selling ingredients for Indonesian food. I wondered if there was galangal in the scent, which I use in my cooking as laos. Again it is not in the description, but it might well be there. Slowly the champaca began to come through. I decided to reapply, knowing that a second application after several hours helps me to distinguish more different notes.
The second time the champaca was obvious, but it was still a rather spicy champaca. Like I was still in the Indonesian shop, somewhere between the incense area and the spices.


Al together this is a strange but very nice scent, different from anything else I have tried, warm and indeed a smoky kind of scent but not in the way of tobacco smoke or wood smoke. It is more like a spicy flowery incensy kind of smoke. It would do well in an Asian temple.

Magnolia Champaca

Rose Cross

The picture above is the rose cross (or rosy cross) as it appears on the back of the cards of the tarot that Aleister Crowley designed and had painted by Lady Frieda Harris. It was my introduction to the rose cross. The symbol is associated with Cristian Rosenkreutz (= rose cross) who was the founder of the Rosicrucian Order in the early 17th century. Later it was used in Freemasonry and of course in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Crowley made his tarot because each member of the Order of the Golden Dawn at some point made their own tarot. Crowley later developed the spiritual philosophy Thelema in which the rose cross played an important part. With this the rose cross had moved from a largely Christian based philisophy to one inspired by ancient Egyptian deities. Arthur Edward Waite however, the man who designed that other well know tarot, in the same period established The Fellowship of the Rosy Cross, which was a Christian mystical organisation.

A profound symbol of an individual’s personal initiatic process, spiritual refinement and evolution, synthesis, grace found as a result of trial and suffering, and the alchemical process by which we transform the raw essence of our souls through light in extension. This is a holy oil, a representation of the triumph of spirit over matter: purest rose with sacred frankincense.

This is the interpretation of Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab of the Rose Cross. And indeed this is exactly what they say: rose and frankincense, in that order. The scent starts out with a stately rose (I dare say that I find it stately because of the frankinsence beneath the rose, but it is rose what I smell). Then after about an hour and a half the frankincense has (almost) completely taken over. I was wondering if I should re-test Seraphim next, as this scent too has both rose and frankincense (but also ample rosewood although it is not mentioned as a note). I did not. In fact I later went to wear King Cobra, because the king has frankincense too. But he deserves his own page and I shall write about him when he is the one I start the day with.

The Rosy Cross Lamen as worn by Adepts in the Rosae Rubae et Aureae Crucis, 

the inner order of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

Blood Rose and Black Rose

I have quite a few rose scents, but most of them came with my very first imps and I haven't worn them for quite some time. So today I wanted to smell them again and I could not choose so I am testing two at the same time. I have Blood Rose on the outside of my wrists and Black Rose on the inside. And that, perhaps, was not a very good idea because now the smells mix before they reach my nose. But when I lift my arm to my nose I can choose which side to smell.


To begin with Blood Rose is quicker to reach my nose than Black Rose. Perhaps because she is on the outside of the wrist. While I am typing that is the side that is upwards. But the scent is also more volatile I think. I think both have rosewood as well as rose.

Blood Rose: Sensual, robust, and silken: voluptuous red rose bursting with lascivious red wine and sultry dragon's blood resin.

Black Rose: Exquisitely melancholy. The background scent to an ancient exequies. Heavy, dark and floral: a blend of roses, with a touch of amber and musk.

I have more scents with a wine note, but the wine in Blood Rose smells more like red currant than like wine to me. It is a sweet fruit note and I think it is a little too sweet for me.  So perhaps it is not red currant, because they usually don't strike me as being sweet. 


Black Rose too seems to have a note I do not see described, I think I smell violet here. There is a powderyness too, which makes me prefer the Black Rose over the Blood Rose. But they are both nice. 


Interesting is that although they both have the word Rose in their name, neither scent is in fact a strong rose scent. Two, Five and Seven has a much stronger rose in it. So does Lucy's Kiss. And Elisabeth of Bohemia too. So I am not smelling like a rose garden today, in spite of the fact that I am testing two rose scents.

Vixen 

(and some tests)

I started the day testing O, one of BPAL's best loved scents together with Snake Oil and Dorian. Although when I recently read people's lists for newbies, they all mentioned O because it was supposed to be one of the best loved scents, but they all mentioned they did not personally like it. I am afraid that the same goes for me: I do not like O. I never thought that I would, but because of its fame I thought I should try it. So when I had a chance to get it through a swap, I didn't hesitate. The description of O is:

The scent of sexual obsession, slavery to sensual pleasure, and the undercurrent of innocence defiled utterly. Amber and honey with a touch of vanilla.

I am not a great fan of honey scents to begin with, unless they have a good balance with something else like Harikata does. O is simply too sweet. I might have enjoyed the amber and vanilla without the honey. I might even have enjoyed the honey and vanilla without the amber. But the three of them is just too much. After 15 minutes I could bear it no longer and washed O off. 


I took a break of about half an hour trying to decide what I would smell next, something else new or something familiar. I decided to try Delirium.

Non compos mentis, indeed! A contrary, conflicted scent, bubbling with merry madness. Contains apple, rose, and lemon.

It smelled nice and fresh in the vial, but once on my skin it almost bit off my nose! I really must have been out of my mind trying this! Or if I wasn't when I put it on, the scent was trying really hard to get me out of my mind. It was a very very sharp rose-and-lemon cutting into my olfactory senses like a knife. I have tried over 250 scents now and this was the first one that really seemed to be trying to give me a headache. The apple that was so nice in its poisoned variety (see yesterday's post) was only there in the vial, on my skin it had completely given way to the razor-like lemon-rose. I had to was if off, very thoroughly.


After that there was only one solution: Vixen, earthy non-sweet and trustworthy, although the description would make one think otherwise.

Lascivious, flirtatious, and vampy as hell. A true heartbreaker’s perfume. The innocence of orange blossom tainted by the beguiling scents of ginger and patchouli.

Of course the inspiration was not Jánàček's Vixen, it was the popular meaning of the word. But I enjoyed both the performance of De Nederlandse Opera (picture above) and the Dutch version that was performed outdoor by Opera Animous (below the picture from their poster). This scent would have fitted Jánàček's Vixen well.

Poisoned Apple

The queen stepped before her mirror: 

Mirror, mirror, on the wall,
Who in this land is fairest of all?

The mirror answered: 

You, my queen, are fair; it is true.
But Little Snow-White with the seven dwarfs
Is a thousand times fairer than you.

When the queen heard this, she shook and trembled with anger, "Snow-White will die, if it costs me my life!" Then she went into her most secret room -- no one else was allowed inside -- and she made a poisoned, poisoned apple. From the outside it was red and beautiful, and anyone who saw it would want it. Then she disguised herself as a peasant woman, went to the dwarfs' house and knocked on the door. 

Snow-White peeped out and said, "I'm not allowed to let anyone in. The dwarfs have forbidden it most severely." 

"If you don't want to, I can't force you," said the peasant woman. "I am selling these apples, and I will give you one to taste." 

"No, I can't accept anything. The dwarfs don't want me to." 

"If you are afraid, then I will cut the apple in two and eat half of it. Here, you eat the half with the beautiful red cheek!" Now the apple had been so artfully made that only the red half was poisoned. When Snow-White saw that the peasant woman was eating part of the apple, her desire for it grew stronger, so she finally let the woman hand her the other half through the window. She bit into it, but she barely had the bite in her mouth when she fell to the ground dead. 

The queen was happy, went home, and asked her mirror: 

Mirror, mirror, on the wall,
Who in this land is fairest of all?

And it answered: 

You, my queen, are fairest of all.

I suppose most people hear the story of Snow White  at some time during their childhood. The fairy tale became well known through the version that the brothers Grimm collected in 1812, although two centuries later most people see in their mind the image of Snow White that Walt Disney created in 1937. In fact when I was searching for images of the fairy tale it was very hard to find any that were not made by Disney or inspired by his famous animated film. But I am a stubborn person who thinks Disney's Snow White is a far too popular remake. Which is not completely fair, as fairy tales have always had as many variations as they had story tellers.

A perfect, lovely, gleaming red apple whose sweetness masks a swirl of narcotic opium, oleander, and hemlock.

I have to admit that this scent smells as much as apple as I could ever expect an accord of essential oils to do. It is almost like a real apple, perhaps what makes it less real is that it is stronger than a real apple. And... warmer? At first I thought it was like cooked apple, but on second application I had to come back to that. Not like cooked apple, almost like fresh apple but... My scent-friend Voodoocat suggested it smells like poisoned apple. Since I never smelled a poisoned apple, I can not say if this is true. But I do know that this is a lot more comforting than anything poisened should be. Or perhaps that is just the trick with a poisoned apple: that it is so comforting one would not expect any harm to come from it. 


Oh dear, perhaps I should not wear this too often?

Lady in Speckled Pink Kimono

If you have read my earlier posts about this lady, you may remember that she smells of peony and vanilla. She was the reason why I bought a peony plant for my garden, a Peonia lactiflora Sarah Bernhardt (picture below, this is not my own plant). Sadly enough the plant lost the branch with its largest flower bud because of a mysterious rot at ground level. And now the three other buds seem to have dried out. I have seen this kind of browning of flower buds on one of my roses, blush noisette, when she has had too much rain. And we have had a lot of rain lately, so perhaps Sarah suffers from rain as well. I don't know. But it seems that I shall not have any peonies in my garden this year, or I must buy a new plant already in bloom. I may even do that. Or ask one for my birthday, which is in two weeks time.

Earlier posts:
http://scentwise.blogspot.com/2012/03/lady-in-speckled-pink-kimono-this-is.html

http://scentwise.blogspot.com/2012/03/lady-in-speckled-pink-kimono-i-am-still.html

http://scentwise.blogspot.com/2012/03/lady-in-speckled-pink-kimono-when-i.html

http://scentwise.blogspot.com/2012/05/lady-in-speckled-pink-kimono-peony-in.html

Water Dragon

She shook the waterdrops from her wings and settled on her favourite rock. It was a peaceful night. A soft wind dried her skin while she watched the path the moonlight made on the surface of the sea. Soon she would be able to fly. It had become more and more difficult to find areas where it would be safe to fly. In the last few hundreds of sun cycles the race that dominated the planet had multiplied and worse, had invented ways to travel almost any area imaginable. She sighed. Life had become more and more lonely. She missed the mind interactions with her own kind. How long ago was it, that her mate had died? How long ago that her last offspring had left for a safer planet? She felt mildly shocked that she did not remember. She knew that losing count of the cycles was part of ageing. There simply had been too many of them, she thought. Then the clouds covered the moon again and she knew she could venture a little flight. She took wing. And enjoyed the freedom the air gave her. She might be the last of her kind on the planet earth, but she was not ready to give up life. 


More entries about Water Dragon:
http://scentwise.blogspot.com/2012/03/water-dragon-dragon-surprised-me.html

http://scentwise.blogspot.com/2012/03/water-dragon-again-i-really-am-in-love.html

http://scentwise.blogspot.com/2012/03/water-dragon-i-like-this-unusual.html

http://scentwise.blogspot.com/2012/04/water-dragon-another-day-of-water.html

http://scentwise.blogspot.com/2012/04/water-dragon-there-is-thread-in-bpal.html

http://scentwise.blogspot.com/2012/05/water-dragon-this-picture-of-water.html

Orc

Some time ago Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab started a new GC series named RPG. There are races, classes and alignment scents. With the ones that I got as freebies until now I could make myself smell like a Lawful Elf Paladin or the same for an Orc. I have not tried either combination yet. A Lawful Orc Paladin would seem rather contradictional to me, but I have have no experience in the game so perhaps it is quite possible.


The scent that the Orc got from BPAL is described as:

Field grey courgette musk, roughly cured leather, and vetiver.

That sounds Orc-like enough, but surprisingly this is a very very nice scent. It is an almost creamy, grey-green earthy soft leather scent. Not at all what I would expect an Orc to smell like. But then, looking back at the BPAL Orc, this must be a very gentle and civilised breed of orc. Those in Lord of the Rings looked a lot worse:

It made me wonder if Orcs existed before Tolkien wrote about them. Tolkien referred to the Old  English origins of the word 'orc' where it meant demon (Beowulf, 'orc-neas'). In 1656 the word okre entered the dictionary, probably through continental  fairy-tales especially those written by Charles Perrault who developed his ogres from 16th century Italian writers (Giambattista Basile and Giovanni Francesco Straparola). The Italian word 'orco' means giant. But there are many other paths and words that may or may not be part of the history of the word Orc or Ork. Tolkien later preferred the spelling Ork, it is assumed that this was to avoid the  word orcish, in which the c would have to be pronounced as an s instead of a k. 

After Tolkien, orcs swarmed the world of fantasy. There are orcs in Dungeons and Dragons and in Warhammer you can build your own Orc army (in miniature, fortunately for the rest of us).

For me orcs have little attraction. Which is sad, in a way, because I really love this scent. 

Lucy's Kiss

I was going through my tin with scents that need a better home and found that I still had this one. I thought I had given it away in a small birthday gift. Most of the scents that I select to pass on are scents I don't like at all, but I remembered that I had added this one as one I could do without because it was not very special (and because I disliked the vampire adoration association). And indeed it is a rather simple rose scent, but today I enjoy that. So Lucy's Kiss is back into my stack.


Indeed because of the vampire adoration it was very hard to find a picture that is not distastefull, with Lucy's mouth drooling blood and fangs showing. There are very many pictures of recent remakes of the movie and of fans making their own images. I am not sure if the photograph I used is from the original movie. It looks old enough to be, but I have once seen it as a part of my photography lessons and I seem to remember images of less quality. So perhaps this too is a remake. 

Created to represent the essence of Bram Stoker’s tragic heroine, Lucy Westenra. Seductive, wanton and deadly, but underscored with a soft, wistful innocense. The gentle scent of rose and a blend of Victorian spices.

I don't know which spices would be considered Victorian and I don't really recognize any. What I smell when it is fresh is a green rose scent, and I think green means that I smell the rose as well as the green leaves of the plant. Or perhaps it is the smell from the small 'glands' that some of the older roses have. I was thinking of Chapeau de Napoleon for instance. 

I must come back to this if I smell something different when the scent has really dried down. I did not smell much when I started writing this so I reapplied. Perhaps this means that it fades rather soon. Or perhaps it could not bear the sun I have been enjoying. After all, this is a scent named after a lady who was turned into a vampire.

Ceanothus Silkmoth

About the Ceanothus Silk Moth (Hyalophora eurealus) not much is to be found on the internet. Lots of photographs but hardly any information about the butterfly. It is found from the dry intermontane valleys and interior of British Columbia to Baja California. Its wing span is 89-127 mm. The adults are on wing from January to July depending on the location. There is one generation per year. That is all. And of course its name: Ceanothus thyrsiflorus, the blue lilac, must be important for this butterfly. I can not find any information about this, but I suspect it may feed from the flowers. Below is both are together in one picture.

The name suggests silk production and indeed, as it belongs to the larger species of silk moths, it is possible to collect their cocoons to make silk. However this is not the same quality of silk as produced by the Bombyx mori.


The 2012 LE scent that carries its name has the following description:

Blood orange, night-blooming jasmine, vanilla bean, bog wood, Spanish moss, benzoin, and oudh.

I was expecting much from this, as I love both oudh and blood orange. Benzoin and vanilla would make it a little sweeter, which couldn't hurt. However, the night-blooming jasmine is so strong that I hardly smell anything else and certainly no orange. Of course orange is a very volatile note and if you don't smell it in the wet stage, you probably won't smell it at all. The wet stage was a heavy night-blooming jasmine attack that left no space for a modest blood orange. So the Queen of the Night took all the attention.

In a way I am glad for this, for Pannychis can fill all my needs for night-blooming jasmine so I won't need to but this moth. But I would have liked a little more brown in this scent and a little less night-white.

Passion Butterfly

The Augralis vanillae has two different names: Passion Butterfly and Gulf Fritillary. It is not a real fritillary however, there are the greater fritillaries are from the genus Speyeria and the fritillaries from the genus Argynnis that claim that name. Like the Two-Barred Flasher its habitat ranges from Argentina to the southern states of the US, so it fits perfectly in this years Metamorphosis. Sometimes flights of this butterfly are seen migrating over the Gulf of Mexico, which has given them their half-stolen name. The fritillary part of the name it got because of a similarity in appearance.

The caterpillar lloks like it has dangerous spikes, but those are in fact quite soft and do not sting. The danger is in the eating, because its flesh is poisonous.

What would this butterfly smell like? In spite of its name vanilla is not one of the notes:

Red mandarin, mimosa, pink grapefruit, copal, petitgrain, and black amber.

Now this is a really nice scent. It's a very warm citrus, much more red mandarin than pink grapefruit. I smell the petitgrain, but it doesn't have the sharpness it can have in more aerial blends, the copal and black amber give it a warm foundation. In a way it reminds me of Enraged Orangutan Musk. It has the same warm citrus-musk combination. How interesting, a butterfly and a great ape sharing the same kind of scent.

Ae Aegypti

Since I had to wash the henna out of my hair and thereby lost the perfume that was on my wrists, I had the chance to test another one. Some people were in doubt if they would want a perfume with something as scary as a mosquito on the label, but the description sounded good enough:

Five honeys with vanilla orchid, gardenia, dragon's blood resin, gingergrass, and turmeric.

Although it gave off an initial huff of gardenia, this was mostly honey on me. I think Winnie the Pooh's dreams would smell like this. There is also a hint of ginger in it, the dragons blood does something for the color but is just at the edge. I like it better than Jezebel because of the gingergrass that gives a little bit of a bite to the sweetness of the honey. Yet I wonder why the Yellow Fever Mosquito would smell like honey.

Because that is what Aedes Aegypti is, it's the mosquito that spreads yellow fever and is therefore named after it. Aedes albopictus, the tiger mosquito which has also been honored with a scent named after it, can also spread yellow fever, but Ae. Aegypti is its main carrier. It can also spread dengue fever and chikungunya. In the picture above you can see how the mosquito's belly lights up red because of the blood it has just drunk. Below it is shown empty and, if you can think past its capacity to spread a disease that can be fatal, quite pretty.

Two-Barred Flasher

I was going to leave my new butterfly decants untouched until they would have recovered from their travels. This sounds like nonsense, perfume is not wine. Yet I have found new scents not very interesting at first try and then later discovered I loved them. However, Two-Barred Flasher did not agree and literally flowed out of its vial to make me try it.


This year's Metamorphosis was inspired by the butterflies in the Yucatan and Quintana Roo. The Two-Barred Flasher is a southern butterfly, this is about as much north as it will live. But let me introduce this butterfly to you the way the wikipedia page introduces it:

The Two-Barred Flasher (Astraptes fulgerator) is a cryptic species complex in the spread-wing skipper butterfly genus Astraptus.

If you understand what that means, you probably have a degree in biology. But fortunately wikipedia had links under all the cryptic parts so I can now tell you that a cryptic species complex is a group of different species (meaning they don't interbreed) that look very similar, and a spread-wing skipper butterfly is a butterfly that has quick darting flying habits (skippers) and that widely opens its wings when it basks (spread-wing) but closes them when it rests. 

The BPAL perfume is based on its appearance rather than on its biology, I would say. The notes are:

Orris root, lilac, galbanum, white tea, Italian bergamot, and blueberry.

From what I saw at the reviews the scent surprises most people, not only me. The drops that were spilled first smelled almost soapy to me, not bad, but not like something I would want to wear either. But once applied to my skin the smell changed. Which at first didn't make it better, as I smelled a cologne note and something that made me check back if there really wasn't any tobacco in this one. Of course it could still be in there, as there are only six notes mentioned, but at least it is not in the list. 
After a while all smoothed out and I smelled tea and orris root and perhaps something that must be the lilac. I don't think there is an essential oil of lilac and accords often smell different to my nose than they smell to most, but it could be there.


I'll give this one a second chance after it has really rested, the two-barred flasher really managed to get my attention.

La Mort Qui Danse

Félicien Rops, La Mort qui danse, Vers 1865.

Crayon gras avec rehauts de craie blanche, travail à la pointe et grattoir (25 x 13 cm.)*

Collection Province de Namur, musée Félicien Rops.

In 1864 the publisher Poulet-Malassis brought Félicien Rops and Charles Baudelaire together. At the time Baudelaire was in Belgium to escape his creditors. "There is no Art in Belgium," Baudelaire wrote. "Art has retired from this country. There are no artists except Rops." So when Poulet-Malassis decided to make a reprint of Les Fleurs du Mal, this time including those poems that before had been censured, Rops did the artwork. (source)

I always thought of a different image when I read the name of this BPAL perfume. What I saw in my mind was the tarot card of Death from the Light and Shadow Tarot, designed by Michael Goepferd:

The scent named after Rops's crayon drawing is as much black and white as both pictures are. There is black pepper and white ginger (and calla lily, and lily of the valley). It is not a very strong scent and I smell more pepper than ginger (I was testing this again because of the ginger), but it is a very delicate, gentle, unusual and very nice scent. I might look to buy more once I am through this decant. I like this dancing death.


* (Grease pencil with white chalk highlights, worked at the point and scraping.)

Voodoo

How could I have forgotten that Voodoo smells so heavenly? Of course I mean the BPAL scent. But I could use some Voodoo to get my health back. Who would have thought that an inflamed small intestine could so turn one's life upside down? Here I am living on vegetable juice and yoghurt and even a cup of clear mushroom soup wakes me up in pain in the night. Of course time will heal it, but I would not mind if the pain would leave in less than two weeks. And I certainly wouldn't mind to eat real food again.


But then, I don't think Voodoo is my kind of thing, really. It is to much against the natural flow of things. It is about forces one has to be master of and I am not the kind of person who wants to be master. So, no real Voodoo for me. Just BPAL's wonderful perfume carrying that name. May the bottle arrive before the imp is empty.


If you would like to read about Voodoo, go to my second post about this scent: here!

Mama-Ji

I quickly posted just title and picture yesterday, because I didn't feel well enough to write. Mama-Ji was my first scent after some scentless days in which I simply never got myself as far as my scents shelf. But all the time I was thinking of her. Wearing her scent (indeed in my mind this his her scent) is like feeling the care of the Dark Mother who at the same time looks like Mama-Ji in American Gods and the fierce Goddess Kali. BPAL also has a perfume named after Kali, but Mama-Ji is much more how I expected a perfume of Kali to be. A long living spicy scent that protects me all through the night.


Mama-Ji in May.