tarotbydiana

cranberry, you have driven me over the edge. I am going to have to buy the whole patch. I was trying to settle myself on just picking up #2 and #4. I love the face on #3 and I must hold the Murder of Crows in my hand. It's the cutest imp ever. I love it!

I highly recommend getting a scent locket from the Trading Post. It's my lifeline for scents that fade quickly or blends that smell fantastic in the imp or the bottle but shift with chemistry. When I wore grapefruit scents before I had a locket, I would apply more oil which helps and I kept the imp with me to refresh during the day.

Tarot: Empress certainly exudes charm. It is a scent for a person who has presence in a yin way, an empowered woman. Tarot: Sun is good for the energy of friendships and offering the best of yourself. Tarot: Chariot will help you reign in your energies and direct them towards positive action. Very dynamic and outgoing. Tarot: Magician is great for confidence to create the life you want. Tarot: Temperance is useful for balance which you will need with such a shift of energy as your new job requires. Good mojo to you! Edit: double post.

VECHERNYAYA The Evening Star Three white musks with poppy and patchouli. I took the description from excolo. I don't remember how it smelled in the imp, but on my skin it was very close to The Body Shop's White Musk.

I went through a break up a couple of years ago and I wore Dove's Heart almost continuously for the first week and on occasion for about a month. I found I craved the scent of it even though it wouldn't be a typical choice for me. I also love The Penitent Magdalen from the Salon for general emotional healing. I find it uplifting and supportive, the quintessence of light in darkness. Try Tarot:Temperance to help you maintain focus on other areas of your life. It's great for balance and Tarot:Star for release and freedom from the pain you've experienced.

Monsterbait: biggerCritters is a jubilant scent, filled with effervescent merrymaking. The vanilla is like a distant, fluffy cloud high above a playground speckled with blossoms. The flowers and citrus seem like they are riding a bright yellow see-saw teetering back and forth between gardenia and grapefruit. The jasmine doesn't want to come out and play, finding the company a tad too silly. The pink grapefruit sticks out her tongue. I am reminded of the cheeriness of Et Lux Fuit with an added scoop of vanilla ice cream. Despite the description of five vanillas it's more of a golden citrus bouquet than a mouthful of cake. The scent is a sunny day with a plush, huggable critter. Wear your pigtails and polka dots!

The clove in Three Witches is very strong on my skin. It is discontinued but I do see it occasionally in forum sales. That's how I got mine.

The Darkling Thrush seems Otherworldly. I imagine a tiny bird with a fan of plumage in a rustling of irridescent purple, silver snow and a sun-touch of gold. The perfume has a delicacy and a softness that is the inhalation equivalent of running fingers over fine plumage. The violets and the orris are the feathers while the snow note, which seems bright and minty at first and then quiets, is the wind over the white veiled landscape. The amber is the solar rays fading into dusk, the time of in-between, and bridge betwixt the worlds. I can hear songbirds outside the window. Perhaps they too are singing a round of praise to Beth for this lovely creation.

Oh, I completely forgot about Horreur Sympathique! I love it in the locket!

For LEs I would add The Masque and Luperci. Luperci has beeswax listed as the note but it smells like a river of honey on my skin. I love the Masque and Luperci but nothing is as pure a honey to me than Honey Moon.

Tarot: Hermit reminds me of the Maine coast. It is a mingling of aquatics with a touch of pine/fir. I love wearing it when it's raining and I have a book and a cat for comfort.

I recently tracked down a bottle of Harvest Moon 2005 and it is an apple orchard in a bottle. I find the apple note much more prevalent in the Harvest Moon 2005 formulation than the 2006 formulation.

While not necessarily evoking pure sunlight, the Penitent Magdalen has always cheered me. There's something about immortelle that's both golden and uplifting. It is the scent equivalent of the flame in the darkness that comforts.

I no doubt crossed that line from romantic to cynic long ago, but it still cracks me up something fierce to imagine actually partaking in this scenario - then I've always been pretty dubious about dining alfresco upon blankets ever since I first questioned why the men get to keep their clothes on and the women look like they'd rather be somewhere else. That said, I've not tried Tarot: The Lovers but I'm going to go make sure that it's on my wishlist because a blend with apple and rose sounds like a gorgeous scent! edit to fix link This link is hilariously and unintentionally appropriate. My boyfriend works at Grounds for Sculpture in NJ, where this painting has been reinterpreted as a sculptural piece...with the all the figures sculpted life size. Though he didn't work on that particular piece (it was completed long before he started at the atelier) we did discuss it while we were sitting on a blanket eating apples and I was wearing the Tarot: The Lovers! Apparently Manet decided to put a woman in a traditional Grecian pose and classically nude in what was a modern setting at the time it was painted. It caused quite a stir even in Manet's time. Reinterpreting from a feminist's perspective, the woman seems ridiculously out of place and disconnected from the scene...and who wouldn't be? Bringing this back to the theme of the thread, I think the Tarot scents tend to be overlooked. I find The Lovers works well both as perfume and metaphysically. The apple is quite prominent and lovely in balance with the rose. Punkie Night worked nicely with my chemistry without being too foodie. I wore it constantly this October. It reminds me of baked apples like the filling of an apple pie without the buttery crust.

For those who like apple and florals together, try Tarot: The Lovers. It's an apple and rose blend. I wear it constantly in the late summer. It has amazing throw. It's the perfect perfume to wear while sitting on a blanket with your significant other and sharing the first apples of the season. While I am writing this a bit off the proper season, perhaps those in warmer climates could use a little indulgence or the rest of us could just pretend it's picnic weather.

Obatala reminds me of warm milk before sleep. The scent of sweet milk with an underscore of butter and a whiff of coconut is like a soothing blanket. It evokes childhood nostalgia for my mother's best attempts to transport her night owl to dreamland. The milk note here is specifically like hot milk once the molecular structure changes from steaming. I managed a coffee house years ago and Obatala is a coconut steamer condensed in imp form. I can almost hear the sound of the milk frothing as I breathe in the scent. Alas, I am not a foodie and I need a vat of lavender to become remotely sleepy. I do love the milk note in Alice but here it's a bit too drinkable. Although I can appreciate how well balanced the blend is, it's simply not my taste. I'm going to send this off as a surprise frimp and I am certain it will be appreciated.

Pink Phoenix is the succor of butterflies. The contents of a bottle could be found in a rose quartz encrusted chalice at an Otherworldly garden party. It is the iced nectar of the Faerie Queen presiding over a table filled with platters of halved strawberries and chilled pears. The air is hung with sweetness swept by the wings of the Phoenix, pink like an eternally blooming flower, as it rises from the ambrosial lake. The Faerie Queen, clothed in a brocade of petals, claps her hands and laughs with delight at the Phoenix's sparkling ascent. I have but an imp and wish to the faeries for a full 5ml bottle.

Silentium Amoris is the haunting of a comely virgin struck down by consumption before her bridal vows could be spoken. The rose lingers like the memory of her mortal beauty and the ylang ylang is the touch of the infernal realm upon her soul. Flowers bloom out of graveyard loam and her voice whispers to her anguished lover from beyond the moss painted tombstone. Silentium Amoris is languorous, drifting, and dark. The scent takes me into the yearning hearts of poets long since dead who wept for the untimely absence of their beloveds from this earthly plane. Saddened to find this scent discontinued from the general catalogue, I will treasure the contents of my imp.

A dairy maid sets down two brimming pails of cream to accept a hand-woven basket filled with strawberries from a young field-hand. He brings her the reddest fruit so he can watch the juice stain her fingers as she slips each plump berry into her mouth. As she eats, he places a fresh nosegay into the pale fold of her arm. Strawberry Moon is the sumptuous pleasure of ripe, red berries and call of romantic intention. I am tempted to lick my wrists. My bottle courts me each warm day.

I ordered an imp of Hollywood Babylon from the lab in attempt to find a catalog scent similar to my beloveds: Strawberry Moon and Pink Moon. The strawberry note begins the first inhalation and then the red musk leans in for a kiss. Hollywood Babylon makes me think of an untouched maiden clothed in a linen dress standing before a red velvet curtain. The light coming through the burgundy curtain touches her and casts a glow of red over her dress and shadows her pale flesh. The strawberry and heliotrope are the natural flush of her skin while the vanilla is her white dress. The red musk forms the curtain and the Egyptian amber is the light filtering through. I would wear this scent in winter or perhaps a cooler spring evening because of the strong throw. Gorgeous. I must have a bottle.

Crushed herbs and sweet amber resin with a streak of patchouli, neroli and golden musk. A warm day in early summer dressed in green and gold. I can see the praying mantis blending into the newly mown grass at the edge of an abundant herb garden. Mantis is the perfect accompaniment to reading a book in the park and feeling the fresh grass press against a bright cotton dress. The amber is more like a sunbeam than a sultry breath. The neroli, musk and patchouli are hidden like the earth beneath a vast stretch of lawn. Beautiful. I see Mantis in my wooden chest of bottles.

Rakshasa begins like a nearly piercing note in Bengali as Bollywood starlets belly dance atop an effervescent cloudscape. Their mustached suitors aim swords at the faces of stylized demons who bellow from leonine mouths. The pitch of rose blended with patchouli is a fuchsia sari festooned with metallic sequins and orange embroidery thread. The sandalwood returns the couples to the red clay earth where they dance and whirl into an impossibly yellow sunset and their voices quiet into a hum. Rakshasa is blaringly elegant. I feel comfortable with just an imp for now though I can tell the scent will sing to me from my imp box.