malanna

In the bottles: Cherries! Yum! After application: Cherries are fading, with the anise quickly taking over. Oh no. Licorice. I don't think I knew that anise smelled like licorice when I ordered this. The cherries are gone, leaving licorice in their wake. And it stays that way. However, the scent has no staying power--it's faded to a wisp after an hour. After the fading, the licorice is lighter, which makes it more bearable. And, it's gone in two hours.

To me, the name aptly describes the scent. Dragon's blood with lotus. However, while at first, the dragon's blood made the lotus a bit tart, it's pretty much faded after three hours, just leaving lotus. But perhaps it's there, tempering it. I ordered this before I realized I didn't like lotus, so I suppose this is why I don't have much to say about it. As with all lotus scents, this seems very watery--not aquatic, but watery. Definitely lotus, then.

Like many others before me, this scent wasn't "me." In the bottle, it's a nice aquatic scent. However, when I apply, it gets very tangy. Pink grapefruit alert! The grapefruit mixes with the aquatic notes pretty well and, I'm thinking, is acting as ozone. I really expected a scent that would be like looking into the water when it's the sun isn't very bright and seeing deep, dark blue. However, the imager I'm getting is more along the lines of when you go sailing, and the sun is bright and glinting off the water, making it appear that there are little diamonds in the small waves.

I love orchid, but this didn't work so well on me, even though it's a beautiful scent. It was just too masculine. This is a powdery, white floral, which made me think that there was jasmine there, for the powder smell. Yet, even though I normally associate powder and floral as a feminine sort of scent, it was most definitely masculine. However, since I keep on thinking it should be a feminine scent, it seems like not very strong-masculine. If I smelled this on a guy, I would think he would be wearing a starched white blouse. However, while I was thinking this, I suddenly thought that this also smelled a bit like deodorant the guys wear and double as fragrance. There's also a tiny bit of citrus in there to me.

I'm not good with the notes, but luckily, the above posters already have them figured out. I first put this on and was hit with a medicinal smell (this is what I've been getting with the other celestials I've tried, such as Sagittarius, Aries, Aquarius). After I put it on, I forgot about it and went to the kitchen and tried to locate the Chinese medicine my grandmother was cooking. I realized there wasn't any, it was just Capricorn. After a few hours, the sharp, medicinal smell calms down, and I get the earthy aspect of this scent. It smells like bark or mulch, with a little something sharp. Maybe mulch drenched in lighter fluid. Even though I'm a Cappie, I didn't like this.

This had a minty astringent smell on application. It smelled like one of those things you apply when you get a bug bite, and when you apply it to your skin, your skin tingles and feels cool. This is a spicy scent and was a bit unbearable for me the first hour or so, because the astringent, minty, spiciness (hot spicy, not Snake Oil spices) was a bit too much (and the scent was very strong). After two hours, the spices have calmed down, and there's still a medicinal feel to it, but it's softer, almost like a spicy flower is there.

In the bottle, it's very ozone-y, tangy and salty. On, after a few minutes, it's less salty and ozone-y, I suppose there is citrus there, but all I can think of is how it smells like water slamming against some rocks in the night. The ozone isn't overwhelming and this is pretty strong. When I went to sleep wearing this, I woke up eight or nine hours later, and I could still smell it. It wasn't very strong by then, but it was a sweeter, lighter, more feminine (the ozone had died down) version of this.

On me, this was very olive-y (suppose it'd be the olive leaf). It smelled like a jar of olives, except less salty. It made me think of standing on the inside of a large, homey kitchen, staring out an open door, with the sun setting. It's also a bit of a woodsy smell, so I guess a combination of the olive jar juice spilled onto the deep oak island in the kitchen. This didn't last very long for me, though.

This smelled like Venom to me. It's a white floral with a bit of edge. Like Venom, it's a stand-offish scent. Very formal and distant. After several hours, it's just a white floral. I could see a mom from The Nanny Diaries wearing this. Polite and stays within the rules, but can be quite malicious. The staying power of this is okay--it fades, but I can still smell it.

Gack, on first application, this is sharp, astringent and minty. If I kept on sniffing it the first hour, I would've had a massive headache. After powering through the first hour, it's calmed down and I suppose the thing that is taming the mint-feeling is lavender. This faded completely after three hours on me. It is a bit cool, yet it has a bit of a humid feel to it, like it's a humid fog hanging out by my skin.

The first few hours, I thought I was smelling Carnal. There was a bit of juiciness there, which I thought was blood orange. Then, the fig gets more dominent, but with something dark lurking in the background, the patchouli, I suppose. In my third hour, it's a little bit woodsy, which I attribute to the cypress and woodmoss. It has a sort of shaven, woodsman sort of thing going on.

Not really floral or fruity on me. This is cinnamon, but not full-blown cinnamon like Three Witches. Cinnamon tampered by something (maybe sandalwood). When I was smelling this, I was reminded of a warm, rough wool blanket. It isn't loud, but a bit comforting (well, if I liked cinnamon). It reminded me a bit of Sagittarius, but not too much.

On application, this smells like Velvet--moist chocolate cake. After it tries, it turns into a smooth scent. To me, the image I get in my head is of smooth leather--without the tiny bumps. This is wine, mixed with tobacco (high-class tobacco), mixed with leather (the old leather chairs, that has the metal circles on the vertical side of the arms). This is a seductive scent...but I don't like it (tobacco and leather, not for me).

I'm not using the Tarot Oils for magickal purposes, so I'm reviewing this based on the way it smells. This is definitely a hot scent. This isn't a bright sun, but a sun that is fuzzy (i.e. not well defined) around the edges. It still beats down upon you. The cinnamon isn't apparent (thank gods!), but there's something I've never smelled before that makes it really warm, which I suppose is the heliotrope. At one point, I was reminded of not-so-sweet shredded coconut. It didn't seem all that citrus to me, either.

When this was drying, I sniffed my arm and an image of drying paint immediately came to mind. That wasn't what it actually smelled like, but it did have a bit of an astringent feel at first. However, after an hour or so (it lost the astringent feel a few minutes after wearing, though), it smelled like a green floral. It made me think of a green greenhouse--not big blooms, or a hot greenhouse, but a cool greenhouse with a gentle wind blowing. I don't like lilies, but the resin anchors it down. This is probably just the power of suggestion speaking here, but it smells like the intermingled smell of a pew and a crushed lily (perhaps you sat upon the lily in a fit of religious fervor).

Bitter almonds, with some spices. The almonds remain bitter (adds a bit of a cleaner fluid aspect to it), but do lighten up a bit in a few hours. This really is the older sister of Dana O'Shee. Much harsher, while Dana O'Shee is pleasant, soft and comforting to me. This lasts longer than Dana O'Shee, though. It makes me think of an open air market in an Arab country, fingering dusty clothes, while the yellow sand is blowing in the background, with the harsh sun bearing down on you.

This reminds me of Voodoo. Cloves, cinnamon, spices. However, while Voodoo was young girls dressed up in masks dancing around a bonfire (with the ashes of the bonfire raining down upon them), this is less outdoorsy, and more of a mysterious woman in a black cocktail dress, who has pagan tattoos hidden upon her body. This faded after three hours on me.

Cherry coke (in the bottle)! When drying, I was slightly reminded of Darkness and I thought it was going to go the full-blown musky smoke route. However, it still retained the cherry scent, with the musky smoke swirling in the background. Now, a few hours later, it smells like chlorine, but not in a bad way, because I'm reminded of being on the swim team when I was young.

Dried roses, rose leaf, Spanish moss, oakmoss and deep brown earth. Fresh rose petals scattered by a sophisticated woman in black (for the funeral) on upturned earth. I don't like rose scents, but even though smelling like upturned earth doesn't sound very good on its own, the dirt smell mellows out the roses enough so that I can like them.

In the bottle, this was cherry coke. Yum! On, it dried down to something...that's really hard to describe. I suppose this could be contrived as angst, because it's such a swirl of scents, it's hard to pinpoint what it really feels like, and when you're feeling angst, you feel like no one can really understand you. Makes me think of a black and red swirl. Smells a bit like Love Me--chewed bubble gum that's been chewed at for a very long time. I can't even really tell there's rose. I'm mostly just getting neroli...

At first, this was very fruity. A pear I could get behind. After a while, the lilies peak out and the fruits fade, making this smell a bit like Queen of Hearts (with the lilies and all). Queen of Hearts is an upright woman in a starched suit, but this is her softer sister, who wears floaty white dresses, like Queen of Hearts' daughter, Tiger Lily. This is lovely, but not for me. What also really turned me off this scent was, when my boss walked into my office, she said, "You smell good. Like powder." Powder wasn't what I was going for and she wears this strong, artificial floral powder perfume that I really don't enjoy. At all. So that pretty much turned me off of Endymion for good.

This is a masculine scent. It smells a bit like root beer in the bottle, but on the skin, it's a dry cedar. Just woody. It reminds me of Anne Bonny in that sauna wood sort of way. It's odd, but I get wafts of a vanilla-y scent (I just know it's pleasant, since it's hard to pin down). When I sniff my wrist, it's just woodsy. Now, two hours later, it's faded (although my nose is a bit overwhelmed at the moment).

Hmm, this is a sweet violet, for sure, so to me, this smells like Saturnalia. I don't like violet that much, but I think I could like it, if not for my horrific experience with Saturnalia.... This makes me think of a Persian princess, lounging along the cushions. This isn't very spicy; it seems to blend very well with the violet, so that it seems like you're just smelling the violet. twistygirl hit it on the head with the creamy--it's a creamy violet, which is why it smells sweet.

Berrylicious! At first, this was berries, with something calming it down. Maybe white musk (not the body heat sort of musk, but what keeps it from getting ragingly sweet like Bordello definitely has a white light)? I get an image of nice witches frolicking. After a while, it seems more like berries, with fresh green leaves peeping out. Altogether, very pleasant.

Whoa. This is hot animal panting musk to me. It reminds me of Fire of Love (musk!), but mostly of Darkness, except with less of the blown-out smoke feel to it. This is definitely what I think body head would smell like. I don't get any floral at all, just dried sweat (a bit more pleasant than that, though).