Magic is such a nebulous term. I believe everyone possesses their own unique ability to create “magic” in everything they endeavor to do. One may “cast spells”, use guided imagery, meditate, or engage in other numerous activities that all in my opinion qualify as “magic”. I feel that magic is the essence of making things happen, making changes. In the art of perfumery too, magic plays no less a part. I would like to quote one of my favorite texts here on this point,The Magical and Ritual Use of Perfumes. “The essence of magic lies in psychosensory evocation or stimulation of the mind and body in a highly specified manner. The magicians use of ritual and an elaborate correspondance system is actually a form of communication with higher levels of being.”(1)

One day I was approached (rather confronted!) by a self-proclaimed high priestess of one order or other which I can’t recall. She outright told me that unless I ascribed to some set of beliefs or approved path of discipline I would fail in any purported “magical” undertaking. She then suggested a series of books that I could read to set me straight so to speak, and she proceeded to point them all out to me as I was browsing through the esoteric bookstore which I learned she was the owner of. Well, I thanked her for her recommendations and I did buy some of the books and promptly left.

After I had read through them, I found only further confirmation of my view that indeed, magic of itself is not based on a belief system, but is a personal experience based upon practice and applications. Unbeknownced to her, she had succeeded in affirming for me my own intuited understandings. ( I suspect her goal was the exact opposite!) Needless to say, I am indebted to this person for bringing forth the circumstance that enabled me to trust my own inner guidance. To this day I proudly maintain a most “bohemian” approach toward this subject!

I have found that intuition plays a major role in the perfume arts and the application of scents. Why? To my view, scent is the invisible key to the doorways of higher consciousness and greater awareness. They are as an etheric catylist for creating a new energy and vibration in any endeavor and help one to attain their objective. Scent by nature of our perception of it, has the ability to transform one’s environment, and even ones own inner psyche. “Odours are potent in their influence because they operate on us at a subconscious or subliminal level. Thus, their influence on our emotional nature bypasses the critical mind“(2)

I find this critical or analytic mind to be most demanding, and it permeates every area of our life when we are unaware of it. The critical mind is always exacting from us “qualifications”, comparisons for judgments; and it expects logic and reason to rule. It is forever seeking validations before it will allow us to open to new possibilities. I believe this quality of our mind is the most detrimental one and in regards to magical practices of any kind, it is quick to dismiss them as mere fanciful imaginings that have no merit.

With respect to the preparation of perfumes, it is most helpful if one can get beyond the boundaries of their own mind. At least this is what my experience has shown me. Didn’t you ever notice that smells affect how you feel and perceive things? I recall taking vivid note of this phenomena even as a child. I believe all people have had the same experiences also. Perhaps walking into a room where a scent evokes a remembrance of a time, a place, a person. I find scent evokes memory. Not only that, it also evokes in that memory a sort of re-experiencing of the recalled event. This is a different thing altogether than visualizing things. In visualizations, there is an element of abstraction…where one is removed and observing an idea or picture in their mind. I find that the affect of scent however does not possess this element. When a memory is recalled via the olfactory senses it seems to almost take on a life of its own, it seems more real, more personal. If you use these simple insights as a tool for working with scents, you will find many ways to create useful combinations of them all on your own.

About Employing Scent for
Ritual Purposes

What is a ritual? Well you could look it up in the dictionary I suppose, but to me a ritual is a much more personal thing. I believe a ritual can be any activity repeatedly carried out with a particular intent behind it. To refer again to my favorite text on this subject, “In ritual you are trying to align yourself with some higher quality or resource you seek to infuse into your personality…it is a very potent tool for changing yourself in a prearranged direction…that can be quite useful in your daily life…scents in particular open up direct access to the emotional part of the brain, which has the greatest impact on the autonomic nervous system and the subconscious mind.”(3)

I find that in the application of scent it is the scent itself that becomes the carrier for the experience one is seeking. In gaining familiarity with the quality of a particular essence, one becomes adept at employing it for creative purposes. Scents evoke memory, and each scent carries its own vibration. By using scents in combination specific environments can be facilitated. “Each item in the repertoire of perfumery materials has specific properties that come from their odiferous molecules or volatile oils. A property can be defined as an effect that a material object or substance has on another object or one or more of the senses of an observer. Clearly, the most important biological property of an oderant is that it has an odor that effects the human sense of smell.”(4)