Belladonnastrap

A carnivorous enchantress: diverse, lovely and graceful, emitting a sticky, glowing golden, sweet and terminally inviting scent. Its dew is believed to grant eternal beauty and longevity, and restore vitality and vigor to the magician. First sniff: Like laying in a field of wet flowers watching the sunrise. I know it sounds funny but it's just...oh. Oh. Wet: I'm probably going to be flogged for this but it reminds me a lot of the smell of sunwashed linen. When you wash it and hang it out to dry on a nice ripe breezy sunny day. It reminds me a lot of Daffodil mixed in with the soft aquatic I get from Kingsport. You can tell it's a very sort of yellow scent if that makes sense but it's not cloying. Dry: Oh its a soft muted floral now that reminds me of a daydream...sweet and subtle. Fleeting but very memorable. The staying power seems to be pretty good as well, not as strong as it was when I first tried it but still very much there. Lovely, it's like a lovely spring morning in a bottle.

I have lived long enough, having seen one thing, that love hath an end; Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and befriend. Thou art more than the day or the morrow, the seasons that laugh or that weep; For these give joy and sorrow; but thou, Proserpina, sleep. Sweet is the treading of wine, and sweet the feet of the dove; But a goodlier gift is thine than foam of the grapes or love. Yea, is not even Apollo, with hair and harpstring of gold, A bitter God to follow, a beautiful God to behold? I am sick of singing; the bays burn deep and chafe: I am fain To rest a little from praise and grievous pleasure and pain. For the Gods we know not of, who give us our daily breath, We know they are cruel as love or life, and lovely as death. O Gods dethroned and deceased, cast forth, wiped out in a day! From your wrath is the world released, redeemed from your chains, men say. New Gods are crowned in the city; their flowers have broken your rods; They are merciful, clothed with pity, the young compassionate Gods. But for me their new device is barren, the days are bare; Things long past over suffice, and men forgotten that were. Time and the Gods are at strife; ye dwell in the midst thereof, Draining a little life from the barren breasts of love. I say to you, cease, take rest; yea, I say to you all, be at peace, Till the bitter milk of her breast and the barren bosom shall cease. Wilt thou yet take all, Galilean? but these thou shalt not take, The laurel, the palms and the paean, the breasts of the nymphs in the brake; Breasts more soft than a dove's, that tremble with tenderer breath; And all the wings of the Loves, and all the joy before death; All the feet of the hours that sound as a single lyre, Dropped and deep in the flowers, with strings that flicker like fire. More than these wilt thou give, things fairer than all these things? Nay, for a little we live, and life hath mutable wings. A little while and we die; shall life not thrive as it may? For no man under the sky lives twice, outliving his day. And grief is a grievous thing, and a man hath enough of his tears: Why should he labour, and bring fresh grief to blacken his years? Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from thy breath; We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fullness of death. Laurel is green for a season, and love is sweet for a day; But love grows bitter with treason, and laurel outlives not May. Sleep, shall we sleep after all? for the world is not sweet in the end; For the old faiths loosen and fall, the new years ruin and rend. Fate is a sea without shore, and the soul is a rock that abides; But her ears are vexed with the roar and her face with the foam of the tides. O lips that the live blood faints in, the leavings of racks and rods! O ghastly glories of saints, dead limbs of gibbeted Gods! Though all men abase them before you in spirit, and all knees bend, I kneel not neither adore you, but standing, look to the end. All delicate days and pleasant, all spirits and sorrows are cast Far out with the foam of the present that sweeps to the surf of the past: Where beyond the extreme sea-wall, and between the remote sea-gates, Waste water washes, and tall ships founder, and deep death waits: Where, mighty with deepening sides, clad about with the seas as with wings, And impelled of invisible tides, and fulfilled of unspeakable things, White-eyed and poisonous-finned, shark-toothed and serpentine-curled, Rolls, under the whitening wind of the future, the wave of the world. The depths stand naked in sunder behind it, the storms flee away; In the hollow before it the thunder is taken and snared as a prey; In its sides is the north-wind bound; and its salt is of all men's tears; With light of ruin, and sound of changes, and pulse of years: With travail of day after day, and with trouble of hour upon hour; And bitter as blood is the spray; and the crests are as fangs that devour: And its vapour and storm of its steam as the sighing of spirits to be; And its noise as the noise in a dream; and its depth as the roots of the sea: And the height of its heads as the height of the utmost stars of the air: And the ends of the earth at the might thereof tremble, and time is made bare. Will ye bridle the deep sea with reins, will ye chasten the high sea with rods? Will ye take her to chain her with chains, who is older than all ye Gods? All ye as a wind shall go by, as a fire shall ye pass and be past; Ye are Gods, and behold, ye shall die, and the waves be upon you at last. In the darkness of time, in the deeps of the years, in the changes of things, Ye shall sleep as a slain man sleeps, and the world shall forget you for kings. Though the feet of thine high priests tread where thy lords and our forefathers trod, Though these that were Gods are dead, and thou being dead art a God, Though before thee the throned Cytherean be fallen, and hidden her head, Yet thy kingdom shall pass, Galilean, thy dead shall go down to thee dead. Of the maiden thy mother men sing as a goddess with grace clad around; Thou art throned where another was king; where another was queen she is crowned. Yea, once we had sight of another: but now she is queen, say these. Not as thine, not as thine was our mother, a blossom of flowering seas, Clothed round with the world's desire as with raiment, and fair as the foam, And fleeter than kindled fire, and a goddess, and mother of Rome. For thine came pale and a maiden, and sister to sorrow; but ours, Her deep hair heavily laden with odour and colour of flowers, White rose of the rose-white water, a silver splendour, a flame, Bent down unto us that besought her, and earth grew sweet with her name. For thine came weeping, a slave among slaves, and rejected; but she Came flushed from the full-flushed wave, and imperial, her foot on the sea. And the wonderful waters knew her, the winds and the viewless ways, And the roses grew rosier, and bluer the sea-blue stream of the bays. Ye are fallen, our lords, by what token? we wise that ye should not fall. Ye were all so fair that are broken; and one more fair than ye all. But I turn to her still, having seen she shall surely abide in the end; Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and befriend. O daughter of earth, of my mother, her crown and blossom of birth, I am also, I also, thy brother; I go as I came unto earth. In the night where thine eyes are as moons are in heaven, the night where thou art, Where the silence is more than all tunes, where sleep overflows from the heart, Where the poppies are sweet as the rose in our world, and the red rose is white, And the wind falls faint as it blows with the fume of the flowers of the night, And the murmur of spirits that sleep in the shadow of Gods from afar Grows dim in thine ears and deep as the deep dim soul of a star, In the sweet low light of thy face, under heavens untrod by the sun, Let my soul with their souls find place, and forget what is done and undone. Thou art more than the Gods who number the days of our temporal breath; Let these give labour and slumber; but thou, Proserpina, death. Therefore now at thy feet I abide for a season in silence. I know I shall die as my fathers died, and sleep as they sleep; even so. For the glass of the years is brittle wherein we gaze for a span; A little soul for a little bears up this corpse which is man. So long I endure, no longer; and laugh not again, neither weep. For there is no God found stronger than death; and death is a sleep. The darkening amber of faith’s sunset, deepened by the dark fruits of Proserpine. I quoted the entire poem because Swinburne = YAY. First sniff: Amber fruits. At first sniff it reminds me a lot of a warmer Morocco with hints of the Pomegrante I get in Persephone. Wet: It's pomegrantes dipped in amber buffed with the warmth of the earth and the last rays of a spring day. I don't know if there is pomegrante in this but it's what my body is amping up the most. I also get a bit of sandalwood but it's not the usual cloying I get when I wear sandalwood, it more anchors the scent firmly in the earth. At least it SMELLS like sandalwood, whether or not that's in the perfume is anyone's guess. The amber is of a sweet nature, not overpowering but just the right hint to push the scent into pure warmth. Drydown: The amber comes out more and also I get a hint of baby powder, no clue where that is coming from. It also turns into a bit of a warm floral on me. It sort of reminds me of a cross between morocco and bearded lady actually. Not necessarily because there's vanilla (cause I don't smell any) but the nice warm drydown I get from B.L. is a lot like this. Think Morocco's more sensual older sister. Aftermath: HELL YES

Created to invoke the ancient Greek deities of dreams. On the shores of the ocean, somewhere in the West, they dwell behind their gates of horn and ivory. Soporific, dark and unfathomable: a somnambular blend of deep lavender, white sandalwood, jasmine, bergamot and mugwort. Inital Thoughts: If Neil Gaiman's Sandman had a scent this would be it. I smell it and it invokes the colour midnight blue and silver. Sort of like Lush's Lavender Snowflower ballistic but not. The sandalwood and mugwort really stands out in my mind. It's a scent one would like to cuddle up I think. I can't way to test it out. After Wearing it: Have you guys ever smelled Johnson & Johnson's Lavender Baby Powder? Oneiroi smells exactly like that. It's very elusive as well...I smell Lavender as the prominent note but there's other layers that I can't quite get...mugwort is definitely strong. This scemt is very subtle and understated orginally I didn't think it was going to last but I would turn my head and get the faintest wiff of it. Like a memory....it's a very nice scent.

Hello Ladies and Gents. Even though it is quite cold outside here in good olde new york city I am looking toward spring and was wondering if maybe we could start a thread as to what scents would be best for this season. That way people have a quick reference and then they can head into the reviews section to learn more. What do you think?

"A man who knows everything and who never dies." Said to have lived for centuries, the Comte de Saint-Germain is truly a man of legend and mystery. He was an aristocrat, master alchemist, adventurer, magician, artist, and seer with a lust for exquisite jewels, and was reputed to have attained knowledge of the Elixer of Life. His knowledge was so vast and all-encompassing that his claim to have lived hundreds of years - he allegedly knew Jesus and was present at the Council of Nicea - was widely accepted as true. He is a Hermetic Magician's hero for the ages, and his scent is an elegant, timeless, truly refined cologne, bold yet classic: gilded amber, hypnotic lavender, brash carnation and deep mosses. First sniff A very clean and masculine sort of scent, the amber and carnation automatically burst out on me. It smells like something a really intelligent and yet sexy man would wear upon getting out of a shower. Wet ...rawr. Masculine out the wazoo, the amber just *sings* and douses everything in its wake. Mmm. I want to crawl up in my hand and sigh. Drydown Whoa. This is the scent of a man who would read a book to you while you were curled up in his arms on a rainy day. It's very comfortable and refined. There's a bit of sweetness (which I'm assuming is the lavender) and a bit of tartness as well. Giles from Buffy the Vampire would smell like this Aftermath Well BPAL once again succeds in me wishing I had a boyfriend! This is a lovely comforting scent that would smell absolutely divine on a man but on a woman it's very very comfortable, like that old ratty sweater you dig out on a bad day. I'll probably not buy a bottle but I most definitely will almost always keep an imp on hand for my not so good days

A love oil with a twist. Attracts new friends & lovers to your life by enhancing your personal magnetism and charisma For the most part I will forgo my normal review format as I use/d this ritually and so it matters not if the staying power and drydown are influences if I keep it or not. First Sniff I actually think theres a bit of lavender in this because I smell that and roses. No clue what else is in it though...it smells very pretty. Usage I decided to try this out the day I got my hair done. I woke up and anointed my pulse points with the oil while murmuring "I want new people in my life" and went along my merry way. I had a couple of random conversations BEFORE I got to the hairdressers when is sort of weird considering I was bundled up like a yeti and sweating like one. Afterwards I definitely noticed a lot more smiles (that could have been the new hairdo' however) and I actually felt a lot more confident. I wore it out again to dinner with an old friend (anointing my wrists and a sliver of pink wax I carried with me) and they remarked I seemed much more happier and "glowy" which is odd consdiering the past two months have been hellish. I don't know if this has brought new lovers to my life but I know I've made a couple of new friends since I've started to carry it around on the pink wax. I'll probably do a full blown ritual and update this review accordingly.

No description Let me start off by saying that I'm not a very good person when it comes to picking out specific notes and whatnot...but I don't really think that's the purpose of this oil anyway. However for the sake of the review and the fact that I haven't had an oppertunity to USE this yet I'll use the normal format. First Sniff: This smells like a tropical rose. Maybe rose tinged with mango? Wet: More tropical and actually a bit musky. It reminds me a lot of what I imagine the romantized carribbean would smell like. A woman with caramel colored skin drssed in brightly colored clothes with a flower in her hair and a basket full of mangos balanced on the top of her head walks down the street and if you listen closely you can hear the men chanting to the seductive beat of a drum. There's a slight breeze in the air that brings the scents of heated skin, fruits, flowers and the sweet tangyness of the ocean to your nose. EDIT: Add some Jasmine to the mix now. Purpose: I'm actually not quite sure how this would be used as I've never worked with the Loas before but I have a few ideas and plan on reporting back

Powdery snow, glittering softly with the sweetness of memory, juniper, and heliotrope, with a faint hint of cinnamon-sprinkled sugar cookie. Mmm! Smelling this is sort of like a Thomas Kinkade painting minus the crazy connontations that come with it. At first sniff all I get is the snow, it smells very much like Skadi. Then all of a sudden this crazy sweetness comes in and you get sugar cookies and snow. Kind of like you were walking in a forest, smelling the pine and snow and then all of a sudden the smell of baking cookies hits you. It's very homey and refreshing. I loves it

Hi everyone! I'm extremely pressed for time and do not have the time to figure out my new spreadsheet software so I was wondering if anyone here has all of the oils with their descriptions (including the new ones) in a file and if you do could you perhaps send to me? I would love to re-read and savour it while on my long flight on Wednesday. If you do just fire off a PM and I'll recieve it...thanks so much! (posted in BPAL chatter but if it belongs in randomness you can just move it...I wasn't sure where to put it! )

Hi everyone! Just a reminder to please be aware of the usage of gifs on the forum. They're super fun (my gif folder is an obscene size, trust) but some forum members might be on slower internet connections and a lot of gifs on the page may hinder their experience! We ask that people not reply to GIF/image posts WITH the image in their reply and if you are using more than 2 gifs as a reply to put the rest behind a spoiler. As always if you have any questions please PM a moderator. Thanks!

Hii everyone! We know about the redirect issue some are having. It sucks We're working on trying to get a fix as quick as possible (who wants to look at boobies when we're trying to find out if the new Doc Constantine is better than the old?!) but in the meantime a couple of things: 1) If you can, avoid using google to search for a scent. We know the issue mainly comes from that although there HAVE been instances where it's redirected from the forum itself. 2) If you have any swap/circle transactions on the forum please screenshot them or write the information down. If the forum has to go offline for the fix to be applied (which is a definite possibility) we would have to do it ASAP and don't want the forumites left holding the bag on their swaps. We'll try to give as much of a heads up as possible, however it's best to be a bit proactive in this case. Thanks again, and sorry about this. We came to read reviews and chew bubblegum and it seems we're a bit out on both at the moment :/

Hi everyone! Just a note that the RT rules have been updated for 2.0 of the forum, please take a look at the announcement here ! Thanks so much

I LOVE the perilous parlor label so much. KILLER TEA.

Hello members of the forum! Just wanted to put an apology out there for the lack of being on the ball of putting up review placeholders. WE DUN GOOFED. I'm hoping to have put up all the missing Halloween scents by this evening but I can't promise it. The bulk WILL be posted though so everyone will be able to review before part two goes up and we all go quickly followed by once we realize we can't afford it all The mod team is working on a new system (WE CAN BE TAUGHT!) so that we all have the best forum experience we can. So once again we're sorry for the tardiness of the placeholders, we hope to have them up soon and we thank you for your patience.

That depends on the blend. If it's mentioned here or on BPAL's blog that it's discontinued then it's poof. They leave it on the site I believe just to show what it was/price/components. The same goes for scents that are temporarily discontinued (like Baghdad right now). Searching through the announcements I don't see a notice that the Little Sparrow is discontinued so it might just be component issues. Kathy (Wickedgoddess) might see this thread too and reply, she's really good at letting people know.

Let it be known that I loathe, despise and abominate red musk. Hygeia? Beautiful. It starts off a bit smelling like Smut actually but then it morphs into a bit like Midnight Kiss with more sweetness. The incense comes out to play a bit later with an earthy undertone, maybe that's the tobacco? Either way it's a very red, very warm scent, perfectly evocative of the picture. I love it.

I think as long as he put "Present for LizardQueen on the forums" it'd be fine but I'm not entirely sure

imaginepageant that same witch was also on the Bramrock atmo spray too! Does anyone have more pics of Halloweenie scents? I'm specifically looking for the Nymphae Avarnales & The Vampire Bride.

Nail Polish ETC and Whole Foods in GA do not sell BPAL anymore. I'm not sure about NC. Sorry

I would be interested as well! Especially Pickman stuff

Touched Twice is absolutely beautiful. It's a floral that is a bit heady but unfortunately it just doesn't work for me. I've learned that even if there is vanilla or coconut or musk if there's a floral my skin just amps it up something fierce. I get nothing but super florals from it. I'm gutted it doesn't work for me. It actually reminds me a bit of Shroud just with a bit more oomph. If you ramp up florals and aren't really looking for the rose/vanilla/coconut then give this a try.

I keep sniffing myself. Most of the time rose scents on a whole just don't work on me. The only exception previously was Psyche, something about her rose hits all the right notes (it may help that I usually wear it with Hades together). Dawn: Mother however is blooming beautiful. The rose is not all up in your face but the frankincense really is what launches this into OMGYES territory. It gives it a rich edge and makes it just downright sexy. Resins normally don't work on me ither but this is just perfect. I'm already predisposed to love this scent considering I love the source material & have Dawn tattooed on me but even if this was called Rick Sanatorum perfume I'd still buy it. If you're iffy on rose scents I'd suggest to give Dawn: Mother a try anyway, the other notes balance it out perfectly.

I have whacky body chemistry because I get absolutely no vanilla in this. Saffron yes, cream yes (and a cream that doesn't go sour on me! Praise Gackt!) but no vanilla whatsoever. I can see where the comparisons to Love's Philosophy come in, it does have that bit of creaminess with "other" but it hasn't gone bad on me the way LP did. The saffron is really the star player here on me, it's a bit unexpected. It's a fairly strong scent, I keep getting whiffs of it when I turn my head or scratch my nose (who keeps thinking about me today?!) but it's nothing overpowering. It's very sweet but not in the way say Midway is, it's not super cloying.

Hello, BPAL.ORG! As we mentioned before, one of the things the moderators/admins are trying out is keeping you more informed. A lot of stuff gets discussed in the running of a major forum like this, but you folks don't hear most of that. We'd like to rope you in a bit... hence this blog! We'll be using it to keep you updated, toss out some ideas, and if I (Belladonnastrap) am making the post, at some point I'm gonna rant about something that has absolutely nothing to do with the forum. Why? Because that's how I roll! FORUM UPDATE A GO GO GO! First off, we would all like to say thank you for your patience while (whilst?) we go through a bit of construction. The membership has been really patient with us, and while we understand that all recent changes haven't been met with butterflies & unicorns, we appreciate you sticking around. We're going to do our very best to ensure that bpal.org is a place where we can not only discuss the wonderfulness of the Lab/Post & their works, but our own awesome corner of the web. Sort of like Oh No They Didn't, but smelling better and less obsessed with Britney Spears. Moving to the country, gonna buy me a lotta scrubs. Retail Therapy. We admit that the RT organization did not go completely as planned. We're still working on that. In the meantime, please continue to leave your feedback in this thread, and believe us when we say we're working on it. SKINS! And not the crappy MTV show either! Diana goes much more into depth about this then I ever can, so please check out her announcement for news & where we stand when it comes to making the forum look shiny! Changing of the Guard As Diana previously announced, quantumspice is no longer a member of the admin team. We wish her well. We wanted to take the time to just remind you of the moderators. Admins: ShriekingViolet (aka Diana), Morrig Moderators: Silvertree, Ivyandpeony, Andra, alicia_stardust, Jessica, WickedGoddess, parrot_suspect, Belladonnastrap, emzebel, jenpo, Shollin, Sarah, LiberAmoris, maewitch, Noumenon and Heartbeast Please note: These are all of our active moderators. We have some moderators who are on hiatus, so if you should message them with any sort of forum concern, please be aware that they might take a bit to get back to you and/or forward it to another active mod. Odds & Ends A couple of general reminders to the forum population: 1) Please watch your image sizes! Images are to be no bigger then 480 pixels wide. If you upload an image and it's been scaled down, that means it's too big. Please resize. 2) No swaps outside the swaps forum. This includes "Hey, by the way, I have XX available. If you're interested, PM me!" in any section. If you say "I think this is allowed, but I'm not sure..." chances are it's not. Remember, you can always PM a moderator if you have any posting questions. 3) Please search to make sure your topic hasn't been made into a thread already. We're actually doing well in the dupe topic department, but a reminder never hurts! So that's it for February! We'll try making these monthly, although we don't want to spam you all! In conclusion: Tyler from the Vampire Diaries? You're a tool. Seriously, dude: WTF were you thinking?! I'm gonna be vague because I know that not everyone is caught up, but OOOH. You make me so mad. I've been like all night because of your antics! I hope you get kenneled. NEXT TIME: I swap! You Swap! Everyone Swaps!; Working at the Grindhouse; and Lupercalia: What if the Hokey Pokey really IS what it's all about?

Hi everyone, please check out our forum blog for news on the forum & general stuff! Also if you haven't yet please read shriekingviolet's announcement on skinning the forum!