lady_pandora

Initial scent from this is primarily vetiver. Early on, I also thought there was patchouli in here, but patchouli is long-lasting on me and this note disappears, so I don't think it's patchouli. Something kind of herbal and headshoppy, anyway. There is also a golden, incensey, kind of sweet note that I think is frankincense but may also be amber. It's not a super perfumey/"nice" scent but I also don't seem to amp it much; it stays close to the skin and is subtle. I've used it twice. Once was in a combination with other oils (Jupiter and Steady Work) in a long-term working to save my job from possibly being cut by the state government. This is still up in the air and I won't know the results for some time, but I can report that the cuts are under heavy debate and opposition, and getting thoroughly dragged out over many months. Then i wore it for my annual review and got a great review!

Somebody compared The White Witch to it--it's an LE from last year, but I don't think it's rare. Might be worth a shot. I've never tried Crypt Queen, but I do love my Witch.

I purchased this from the BPAL Etsy site. So I tested a virgin, but aged, bottle. Symmakhia starts out wine/rose dominant and smells like Lilith's innocent little sister, but once it stabilizes at about the one-hour mark, the vanilla and I think the heliotrope team up to make a rather white-chocolatey note. I end up with white chocolate, a little wine, and a little rose. Very sweet and romantic! It teeters on the edge of being foodier than I like, but doesn't cross the line, and is really pretty. I don't get any pear; I'm not sure if my skin's eating it of if it's blending into the wine or if it's simply aged out. In any case, I'm glad I took a chance on this! I like it.

No description listed at the Twilight Alchemy Lab website This works. Oh, it works. Like, say, if you've sent a package and it seems to be lost in limbo somewhere and just.won't.get.there. Thank you so so much, Twilight Alchemy Lab. The scent is, I think, lemon and lavender and maybe a bit of cinnamon. ETA: I continue to be impressed with this oil. As befits Mercury Himself, it gives results super-fast. For example, last night, I was getting ready to do a communication spell to get someone to call me. I hadn't even started the spell yet--I had the oil on my fingers and was getting ready to anoint the candle when my phone went off. I then got a second call from a different person shortly thereafter--not the one I'd had in mind, but that call also met the parameters of the spell in a way. So I got an instant result and then a bonus result about 30 minutes later.

Probably Lily the Prostitute from the Pretty Deadly series! http://blackphoenixalchemylab.com/shop/pretty-deadly/lily-prostitute/

This starts out almost wholly gardenia, and then morphs into a mixture of gardenia and a faintish heliotrope, and then finally dries down to mostly heliotrope (which on me is almost foody). I do like heliotrope a lot, but it's not very strong here even when it's the last note left, and overall the whole thing just doesn't seem to hang together on me. I may give it another test sometime, but at first test it seems like some notes that are fine by themselves but aren't really melding.

Chuparosa is pretty faint on my skin, but I get rose and I think a bit of honeysuckle, though I don't know if I'd have correctly identified the honeysuckle if others hadn't mentioned it. Briefly, it has sort of an overripe quality to it, but settles down to a nice (and still faint) rose scent. It specifically smells a lot like a rose-scented glass-encased candle I have on my altar. There are some beautiful prayers and invocations online that can be used with Chuparosa oil. This is too faint on me for perfume purposes, but I plan to use it on candles and such.

Narcisse Noir sounds like Hunger. You'd want it aged to get the smoky incense effect. Thank-you! I'll be keeping an eye out for that then- hum! If anyone else has any ideas too, I'd be happy to hear them! Hunger was my first thought too!

Fae starts out smelling like anise, for some reason, and like a fruit I can't identify at this stage. Eventually I pick up a little citrus, probably the bergamot, alongside the anise. I think the anise note might actually be the oakmoss, because as it fades, I start smelling greenery. Peach comes in a little after that, and for a while there's this weird thing where something smells a little burnt or toasted. This may also be a morph of the oakmoss, since by the time I smell the burnt note, the greenery is gone. Peach outlasts all the other notes (I still smelled it the next morning) and it's a really nice peach note. But the other notes (or maybe just the oakmoss) go kind of weird on me, and so I think I'll stick with Mare Nectaris for my peach needs, much as I love the fae.

I think I expected Blood Kiss to either be dragon's blood or to be like Midnight Kiss, which did weird things on my body chemistry. It's neither. What it is is an awesome scent that makes me wish I still went clubbing ever. This is gloriously decadent and goth. Initially, I get mostly vetiver with a little bit of red fruit around the edges that i can't really identify at that stage. Eventually I'm able to pick out BPAL's red wine note as it becomes more prominent, and another red fruit that I think must be the cherry. It stays mostly smoky vetiver/cherry/wine for a few hours and then shifts to smoky vanilla/honey/red incense (reminds me of something in Midnight Mass). It's one of those that tells a whole story in my head--it's sultry for when you're out dancing, and then morphs into a soothing scent for when you get home and crash! Anyway, it's gorgeous, and I'm so glad I started giving vetiver blends a chance. They don't all work, but when they do, mmm. This may be a bottle, and if it's not, then it's only because I rarely go clubbing anymore. This might be a little much for tamer settings.

This is one of those old-school BPAL florals that does just what it says on the tin. I get rose first, then lavender, then it settles down to mostly what I think is wisteria, and it's really lush and pretty, kind of orchidy maybe? The white musk makes it a little soapy. I don't get any of the white sandalwood, which is fine by me. It suits the concept well, and I'll probably keep it because of the poem, plus I need a few melancholy scents (I'm still bummed I gave away Penthus).

This starts out incensey red musk with one of the notes registering as a red fruit initially (not sure if this is a quirk of the red musk, or maybe of myrrh, which is sometimes raisiny on me in the early stages). Then I get a subtle little kick of smoky leather; the fruitiness fades, and it's incensey musk with a bit of leather and it's glorious. Sexy as hell. Unfortunately, it turns into almost a Red Musk SN, with only hints of the incense and no more leather. I've been amping the hell out of red musk for a few years, and with the exception of a few miracle blends, it's getting to be like the jasmine phenomenon: it's a note I like, but that I amp enough to drown out the differences between blends. I'm keeping my decant, because I love the early stages and don't mind the red musk drydown, but I think I'm going to scale back on buying red musk blends until I make more of a dent in what I have.

Mother Shub's Stygian Nougat! (I actually use Midnight Mass a lot for this too, but that's more idiosyncratic and less "traditional sleep ingredients.")

Burial, Yggdrasil

Maybe Nyx? Similar notes... . Perhaps Depraved or Ravenous? They smell similar. You may have to layer to get the clove... Ravenous is orange blossom and patchouli. I find the strong patchouli in ddepraved muddies the apricot. I like the brightness of March hare's apricot, unfortuneateely. They were kind suggestions. I think some people compared Aristocratic Couple to March Hare (personally, have never smelled either). It's LE and not up anymore, but recent enough i bet a lot of people have it.

This is a morpher, on me. It starts out predominantly cinnamon with something a little lemony, which I think is an early stage of the frankincense. Then, it does kind of a two-part thing, where my first sniff of it smells like dusty cinnamon and wood but there's a "back end" that I smell a moment later, like an aftertaste, that's kind of a funky sweat smell. I think this is something the patchouli is doing. At this point I decided i didn't like it, but at about 45 minutes, I suddenly realized the throw was a GORGEOUS frankincense. The skin scent was still a little wonky, but a little later, finally got it together, with the cinnamon/wood predominant and the patch behaving better. So it seemed like a really nice incensy dry cinnamon scent, until it pulled one last morph and went to kind of a men's-cologne place that reminded me of what Voodoo did on me. After the first 45 minutes, I think this objectively smells good on me, if there's such a thing as objectively smelling good, but after a few hours it turns into something that just doesn't fit me personality-wise. I think it's "working" but not for me.

I amp the hell out of the red musk in this one. I smell just a touch of dragon's blood, too, and I think the resins may be hanging around in the background but I can't pick them out individually. The leather appears partway through the weartime and has kind of a smoky or burnt quality, to me. Unfortunately, I can't really tell this apart from Die Sunde, vom Tod Verfolgt on my skin, other than the leather note, and said leather note isn't quite agreeing with me, thus making Die Sunde the winner of the two. (Not only do I amp the musk in both, but they also share the supporting notes of amber and frankincense, though I can't really pick them out in either, and the orchid in Die Sunde even has a weird dragon's blood quality to it, on me.) So, since I already have a bottle of that, Zmey Gornych may be one for the swaps. I do like it, but I just amp the red musk too much for its individuality to come out.

I get both lavender and cinnamon in the vial and when it's wet, but it very quickly becomes just cinnamon. It's not hugely strong on me, but it's single-note and smells like I've been chewing Big Red. Hand of Hermes may be the first TAL I've tried that seems to work kind of...wonky. I do think it has an effect, and it's a very Hermes-y effect. but it's not precisely what my intent in buying it was. Simply put: Hand of Hermes makes people leave my office. I don't think it's that they're overpowered by the scent, either--like I said, it's not that strong on me scentwise, and it's not a scent that is offensive to most people, and no one has made any comments to the effect of "Hey lady_p, could you tone that down?" I had been wearing HoH because of communication issues in the office. I would say something, and it was like it was being put through babelfish ten times and then finally reaching the listener. I was hoping to straighten out the lines of communication so I could get my points across. But whenever I wear it, suddenly everybody decides to work from home, or go to the gym, etc. It does have the effect of eliminating miscommunication--because nobody's around to misunderstand me! And I can see Hermes in this effect. He's a god of the mind, and he's making people remember other things they want to do; he's a god of swift travel, and he's making people swiftly travel away. It's to the point that I've started using it that way on purpose if I want to work in silence or go home early (I can sometimes go home early on Fridays if everybody else leaves too).

For me, I haven't quit them per se--in fact, getting into BPAL has given me a greater appreciation for how "regular" perfume also evolves throughout a day--but I just have so much BPAL now that I forget to ever wear the other stuff!

I put this on, and shortly thereafter was thinking, "Wow, I love this!" And on the heels of that, "And it smells familiar!" And then it dawned on me that it smelled like Lights of Men's Lives. Apparently, I'm amping the vanilla and honey and turning into a LoML clone. Doesn't really change much either. So while I think this smells amazingly good on me, it's close enough that I don't need more of this--I now have 2 imps of Bard, a partial imp of Lights of Men's Lives, a full bottle of Lights of Men's Lives, and a bottle of Alma Venus, which also turns into LoML after a few hours on my skin. I'm probably set for a while.

This was a frimp from the Lab, and I didn't expect to like it. I figured it would either go straight dirt--like Zombi without the rose--or it would go manly aftershave. But this, folks, is why you always try the frimps! This is diiiivine. I can't make out every note I'm smelling here, but I smell mint, and pine, and general woodiness, and I can envision being in the "forest primeval" with trees so old I can't see the tops of them. I don't get dirt at all, just green green green, and while these notes sometimes go too dudely on me, here they are perfect and gender-neutral. It gives me the same feeling of primal peace that I get from smelling Midnight Mass, actually. I thought this was just a vibe thing, but then dabbed Midnight Mass in a different spot and huffed them in close succession, and I think they actually share a note, something in the wood family.

Thank you, what category is Spirits of the Dead? ETA: Thank you, Alder. I will try it out It's up at EBay right now!

I loves me some orange blossom. Jezebel mostly blends together really well on me and I can't really make out any of the notes on their own, most of the time, but I do like it and have a big bottle. Les Bijoux is a huge favorite of mine and has orange blossom. Some days I amp it more than others. I also like Hunger and Paramatman, and the OB is the best part (to me) of Tavern of Hell, which was too masculine overall for me, but ohhh that lovely note. The recent LE Alma Venus also has some lovely neroli and OB going on, and I also like the OB in Visions of Autumn IV. An older LE I love is Bijoux Y'ha-nthlei, which starts out with a nice neroli note.

The Lab's frimp psychics were accurate for me too! This was a scent I probably would never have gotten around to. For years, I avoided all vetiver, and even once I stopped avoiding it, it would never have occurred to me that these three notes could fit together. But they do. Oh, how they do. Each of them is kind of the best version of itself here. The honeysuckle smells like a blend of honey and jasmine. Like, I think this is what jasmine does on other people, people who don't power-amp it so that they can still smell the other notes. It sent me scrambling to google to see if honeysuckle had indole, and yep, it does. It's sweet and heady and I love it. The opium avoids the hairspray thing and instead does the powdery-incense thing. The vetiver lurks underneath, never taking over the blend, just giving it a little edge and some grounding. I can pick out each one individually, but it's like they're singing in perfect harmony. (Honeysuckle is a soprano diva, of course. Opium sings alto, and vetiver's a bass.) Between O's being out of stock and not working as well on my chemistry anymore, I've been wanting other honey and honey-like blends, and this is a really nice one, somehow managing to be complex while only having three things in it. And there's a weird synchronicity between the name and some stuff going on in my life. Plus, it makes me think of Anathema Device! I think this will probably be a bottle.

In ancient Rome, Venus Cloacina was the goddess of the . And that's precisely why I bought it. I decided recently that I wanted to start doing little rituals to her because of some recurring plumbing issues in my building, which my landlord has...not been very proactive in fixing when they crop up. I hemmed and hawed and then realized I was never going to get this kind of perfect synchronicity again, of someone actually making an oil named for this relatively obscure aspect. So, I basically bought this as a TAL, even though it's not meant as one. I've been using it on candles for the purpose. But I also tested it for scent, and it's lovely! Like ellocentipede, I'm reminded of Billie Holiday a bit; I could imagine her having smelled like this when she sang. It's a beautiful, lush, soft gardenia. I imagine it glowing a pale greenish white. It's a "damp" scent; the only other gardenia oil I've worn recently is TAL White Light, whose other notes give it a kind of dryness. Not here--the dew is still on this bloom. The supporting notes are well blended and don't really stick out as individual notes. It doesn't morph a ton, just gradually becomes fainter, though I think I smell a little more of the vanilla on the drydown. Pretty, ladylike, great for a hot summer night.