oedipa

DCXXXI (631): Tested this from the lid because upon first smell I thought, "Oh, I'm not gonna like this..." This has a very prominent woody note - I'm hesitant to say exactly what it is, but I *know* I've smelled it before, which means it's likely a type of incense or something commonly found in a pagan-type shop. There's also a slightly sugar-y sweet background, but the one note (which I can't identify, grr!) is amping on my skin and so I can't really be sure. Definitely swap material, alas. DI (501): Oh! Yes! Butterscotch is the first thing that hits me straight out of the bottle - thankfully that's not all it is, but somehow there are distinct sweet floral notes that play around the butterscotch and even a gentle hint of - bark, maybe? - but that mostly stays very subdued. I love it!!

I got this as part of a swap with pink.owl - one of two Tarot oils, which I'm glad to review. Wet on skin: Oooh! Sweet (honeysuckle?) and jasmine and overall goodness. 10 minutes: Oh, no. The jasmine is attacking. Call for reinforcements! It's pretty clear that if a scent has a very prominent note like musk (Hymn to Proserpine), amber (Lotus Moon), or jasmine (Nyx, Tarot: The Moon), my skin will amp the everloving crap out of it until that's all I can smell. 30 minutes: Burnt plastic. Heady jasmine with a definite undertone of something burnt and scortched in the microwave. Alas! 2 hours +: Gone by this time, fortunately. Overall, way too much jasmine and burn-y smells. However...I got the notion to use it last night while dealing out some simple Tarot spreads and yikes! Scarily accurate readings all around - I felt like the cards were slapping me in the face saying, "Lord love a duck, woman! You know this shit already!". So while I probably won't be wearing this for scent anytime soon, I think I'll be using the decant I have for any further late-night readings.

I've found Litha smells very headshop-y on me - sweet and a little musky and overall very natural. My family is not so fond of it - I wore it to visit and my sister gave me a sniff, a disapproving look and said, "You smell like a hippy."

My first Lunacy! Wet on skin - Oh-ho, so this is the bubblegum that everyone keeps talking about! I haven't encountered any lotus notes before so I was hoping, fingers crossed, that I'd be one of those who avoided this particular horror. Looks like it isn't to be. 10 minutes - Hello musky smell, my arch-nemesis. It must be the amber. Amber LOVES me, coming right up to the forefront and refusing to go away even after I've nicely complimented its shoes. Stupid, needy amber! 30 minutes - Some pine coming forth, a very nice green smell that's quickly beaten back by the twin hammers of Bubblegum and Musk. Then they do a little dance on its corpse. 2 hours + - On drydown the musk/bubblegum smell gets a little less heady and I can smell what I think are hints of rose, but by then it's almost gone. Final verdict: a swapper, unfortunately. I just don't think I can wear anything with amber, bless her little musky heart.

Since this is a TAL blend I won't be reviewing for scent - I'll just say that I enjoy it. On me it's herbal, bright sharp greens with an undertone of rose. As far as use goes - this was my second attempt at one of TAL's "love blends" (the first attempt, Caliph's Beloved, found me learning I was allergic to cinnamon - joy!). It was for use with Very Special Boy (who we shall call VBS henceforth). VBS and I were going to be at the same party, so I prepared a ritual for said party and, well... I should have been more specific. There was a lot of chaos at the party ("Hi, I'm oedipa, serving Eros/Chaos for a year and a day, and I'll be your party fodder!") and so things didn't go perhaps quite as I'd planned...but I can definitely vouch for its continued effectiveness. As the description mentions, however, I'd exercise caution when using this around more than your intended. I'm partial to chaos, but you might not be.

I've been big on mead this year (mmm, Jadwiga mead...) so I thought I'd pick up a bottle of Litha when it surfaced. Wet on skin: Woodsy and somehow fruity - I think it's the honeysuckle? 10 minutes: Something sharp and almost...spicy? comes out to the foreground. Carnation? Whatever it is comes up, says hello, and gets knocked down by something musky. Gah! Musk, my old nemesis. 30 minutes: Musk has retreated slightly (hooha, take THAT!) and is now making nice with the sweet and the woodsy. Some two hours later it's starting to fade into babypowder drydown obscurity, but oh, so nice! This scent is probably too complex for everyday wear, but I can see it being nice for special occasions where I want to smell grounded and earthy.

Frimp from the Lab. And I don't know if it's the heat or what, but the lid on this poor lil' guy broke and so it's currently being held together with tape and aluminum foil. Must...save...the preciousss... Wet on wrist - Woah there, red wine! Let's let some of the other children come out and play, shall we? I'm overwhelmed by the wet smell of grape-y booze and some of my co-workers are eyeing me suspiciously. I suspect my boss may take me into her office to discuss my drinking habits. 10 minutes - I am generally not a fan of rose scents. Not at all. I love actual roses, but rose scents make me think of musty attics full of lacy, moth-eaten clothes. So not my thing. However - wow, I love this rose! After the wine backs off a bit (yah! yah! back, you!) I can smell it in hints and wafts, along with the now-subdued wine smell and a sharp undercurrent I can only assume is the dragon's blood. I'm only familiar with the latter from incense, where I wasn't terribly fond of it, but it makes a nice pairing here. 30 minutes - A very warm pairing of all three major scents with none overpowering the other. This lingered on me all day and well into the evening - quite the staying power! Overall I don't think it's something I'll buy a bottle of, but I might very well purchase an imp if I can't manage to keep my current one from spilling all over the place.

Dear sweet goddess, I think I'm in love. Wet on wrist - It's sharp and green (!?) but also warm with a sweet undercurrent - my (uneducated) guess is the sharpness is ginger, while the sweet undercurrent is milk/honey. 10 minutes - Already starting to fade, alas! The sharp, spicy ginger has melded back a bit and let the sweet come through and oh...the wonderful things this does for my nose! 30 minutes - Barely able to be smelled - my skin apparently soaks this puppy right up. WTF, skin? You eat up precious scents like Fae and now this, but Hymn to Proserpine stays on after two scrubbings? For shame!! Final verdict? This definitely will be a 10ml purchase - again, not an everyday scent...but Sudha Segara gives me visions of late nights out, leaning over to grab a drink from a crowded bar and a cute boy leaning in just a little too close. Warm, spicy, electric. Oh yeah, I could raise some hell with this one.

I have to note - I tried Hymn to Proserpine first (verdict - musky musk musk, damnit!) and so was a little leery of trying Fae...but I'm plesantly surprised! Wet on wrist - Peeeeeeeeeach of DOOM. Very sugar-y peach, but it's the 24/7 Peach on Peach channel where even the commercials are advertising peach. Still, I'm not overwhelmed (which is saying something). It's just woah, peach. 10 minutes - The sugar-y scent (heliotrope I'm guessing) comes a little to the foreground and smacks peach down. I also get a little earthy smell, a little green - the oakmoss? Whatever it is it's really gorgeous. 30 minutes - Peach/sugar/green smiffyhappygoodness. Final verdict? I'm sad it didn't last longer - it was gone approx. an hour after I applied (unlike Hymn to Proserpine which hung around after two handwashings!). I think I'll be buying a 5ml and slathering - while this isn't an everyday scent, I can see wearing it in spring, laughing with a boy while we're caught under a tree waiting for the rain to abate. EDITED TO ADD - Wow, second time's the charm apparently! I put some on this morning (7am) and it hasn't worn off yet (9am), though it has faded so again all I'm getting is a peachy peach peach smell.

Wet on wrist - Oh no! Old lady smell. It's musky, and there may be a hint of sweetness (the pomegranate, I think) underneath, but it's mostly musk musk musk. 10 minutes - I'm mentally renaming this "Mostly Musk". I try to get an up-and-close sniff and catch a bit of something else (vanilla?) but the musk is literally making me feel naseous, so I back off. 30 minutes - Ok, I never made it half an hour. Everytime I lift my hand I smell musk. The fingers that touched the bottle smell like musk. Everything smells like musk! When the apocalypse comes, all that will remain are cockroaches, twinkies, and musk. Final verdict? I scrubbed my wrist, hands and fingers and they still smell faintly of, you guessed it, musk. I'm really disappointed, because I love pomegranate and wanted to love something named Hymn to Proserpine...but alas! musk prevails!

As far as scent goes (though I review TAL oils only as far as their "purpose" goes), I really love Caliph's Beloved. The scent is spicy and a little sweet - I can definitely catch the patchouli, which I'm not totally fond of, but it's not bad. Lots of cinnamon and honey. I was preparing to go out to a party where one of my crushes is and so I thought this the appropriate time to finally get a crack at this ritual oil. Alas, it was not to be! I put the teensiest bit on my neck, continued to prep, and when I came back to the mirror not five minutes later... ALL BOW BEFORE THE QUEEN OF HIVES!! I don't know what in the blend caused this (I suspect cinnamon, the right bastard) but I had to immediately take it off. I'm terribly disappointed, of course, but still have hopes I can wear this in a scent locket or the like. To sum up - Caliph's Beloved = red rashy goodness.

As I said with my review of Ouroboros, I don't use magical oils for non-magical purposes so I won't really be reviewing Lionheart as a scent - except to say yum! It's warm and sweet and spicy, and were it not a magical oil I'd be wearing this puppy like nobody's business. I used Lionheart prior to a job interview last week - anointing my hair (it's golden, curly, and massive and has been called a mane on more than one occasion) and my pulse points, offering up a brief prayer for courage, grace, and little bit of leonine egotism to impress my potential employer. With the Lionheart in my hair I'd catch a whiff of it on occasion and it bolstered my spirits, enough to the point where I firmly believe I kicked ass on my job interview. I haven't heard back from them yet, but I owned so thoroughly that if they don't hire me, it's their loss! Clearly there's a bit of egotism left over. Long and short - Lionheart bolstered my spirits and let me stride with my head high, exactly what I needed exactly when I needed it. Also, you can read about my use of Lionheart in conjunction with Ouroboros here at my Ouroboros review.

Since I don't use magical oils for anything other than, well, magical purposes, I'm not going to review Ouroboros as a scent except to say that it's a strong, sharp-smelling oil - I caught lemon and ginger and somehing distinctly pine-y, but that may just be me. As far as magical use goes - wow!! I've had a rather nasty falling-out with a friend, and he's definitely suffered the brunt end of some chaos (longtime girlfriend breaking up with him, father's sudden passing, etc) in part due to that. While I know I'm certainly not fully responsible, I do feel that I might have been a catalyst and so want to help him heal, close his circles, live and love again. So I dried some roses (white for sorrow, yellow for friendship) and anointed them - the white with Ouroboros, the yellow with Lionheart, while I burned a white and a yellow candle carved with his name and thought about all the things I wanted for him. Then I applied a little Ouroboros to my heart and asked that I be given the ability to move on and learn from this, should he not want to remain friends. Then one of the candles burned my finger and I spilled almost the whole decanter - frustrating, but somehow oddly appropriate! I bought the decanter only for use in this ritual, and it's pretty clear I won't be using it again. Immediately after the ritual I felt 1,000 times better and I slept like a baby (no more terrifying dreams). This morning I dropped the roses and a note at his apartment and felt even better - that cycle of my life is complete, at least on my end. I now feel I've done everything in my power to try and help him through this, to the point where my worrying was starting to have a negative effect (letting go of things is not one of my strong points, alas!). I really think Ouroboros helped me work through this issue.