doomsday_disco

Lilac-soaked amber cream, orris root, blue lotus absolute, white sandalwood, and purple yam.

You also, Hyacinthus, would have been set in the sky! if Phoebus had been given time which the cruel fates denied for you. But in a way you are immortal too. Though you have died. Always when warm spring drives winter out, and Aries succeeds to Pisces, you rise and blossom on the green turf. And the love my father had for you was deeper than he felt for others. Delphi center of the world, had no presiding guardian, while the God frequented the Eurotas and the land of Sparta, never fortified with walls. His zither and his bow no longer fill his eager mind and now without a thought of dignity, he carried nets and held the dogs in leash, and did not hesitate to go with Hyacinthus on the rough, steep mountain ridges; and by all of such associations, his love was increased. Now Titan was about midway, betwixt the coming and the banished night, and stood at equal distance from those two extremes. Then, when the youth and Phoebus were well stripped, and gleaming with rich olive oil, they tried a friendly contest with the discus. First Phoebus, well-poised, sent it awhirl through air, and cleft the clouds beyond with its broad weight; from which at length it fell down to the earth, a certain evidence of strength and skill. Heedless of danger Hyacinthus rushed for eager glory of the game, resolved to get the discus. But it bounded back from off the hard earth, and struck full against your face, O Hyacinthus! Deadly pale the God’s face went — as pallid as the boy’s. With care he lifted the sad huddled form. The kind god tries to warm you back to life, and next endeavors to attend your wound, and stay your parting soul with healing herbs. His skill is no advantage, for the wound is past all art of cure. As if someone, when in a garden, breaks off violets, poppies, or lilies hung from golden stems, then drooping they must hang their withered heads, and gaze down towards the earth beneath them; so, the dying boy’s face droops, and his bent neck, a burden to itself, falls back upon his shoulder: “You are fallen in your prime defrauded of your youth, O Hyacinthus!” Moaned Apollo. “I can see in your sad wound my own guilt, and you are my cause of grief and self-reproach. My own hand gave you death unmerited — I only can be charged with your destruction. — What have I done wrong? Can it be called a fault to play with you? Should loving you be called a fault? And oh, that I might now give up my life for you! Or die with you! But since our destinies prevent us you shall always be with me, and you shall dwell upon my care-filled lips. The lyre struck by my hand, and my true songs will always celebrate you. A new flower you shall arise, with markings on your petals, close imitation of my constant moans: and there shall come another to be linked with this new flower, a valiant hero shall be known by the same marks upon its petals.” And while Phoebus, Apollo, sang these words with his truth-telling lips, behold the blood of Hyacinthus, which had poured out on the ground beside him and there stained the grass, was changed from blood; and in its place a flower, more beautiful than Tyrian dye, sprang up. It almost seemed a lily, were it not that one was purple and the other white. But Phoebus was not satisfied with this. For it was he who worked the miracle of his sad words inscribed on flower leaves. These letters AI, AI, are inscribed on them. And Sparta certainly is proud to honor Hyacinthus as her son; and his loved fame endures; and every year they celebrate his solemn festival. – Ovid Beloved of Apollo, the Spartan prince Hyacinthus was cherished above all companions. They raced beneath the open sky, hunted together, and Apollo trained his beloved in the art of prophecy, the lyre, and the discus. Some say Zephyrus, the West Wind, grew jealous and bent the arc of the throw one day and the shining disc, meant as sport, struck Hyacinthus down. Though he used all his skill in the art of healing, the god could not save Hyacinthus’ life. … when he beheld thy agony Phoebus was dumb. He sought every remedy, he had recourse to cunning arts, he anointed all the wound, anointed it with ambrosia and with nectar; but all remedies are powerless to heal the wounds of Fate… – Bion Apollo gathered Hyacinthus in his arms as the light dimmed from mortal eyes and wished to join his lover in the realm of death, but it was not to be. Where the blood touched earth, Apollo pressed his grief into the soil and from that wound sprang the hyacinth, petals veined with lament, marked with the cry of immortal love and immortal mourning. The flower became a living testament, renewed each spring, a sign that love does not vanish. The Lovers revealed in their most tender truth: that though love and devotion cannot provide a shield from the slings and arrows of the Fates, memory makes love eternal. It is love that refuses oblivion. Blood into blossom, rubedo unfolding in vegetal fire. Beauty bound to mortality, and through that binding made eternal. Golden laurel and sun-warmed skin, cypress shadow and noontide amber, crushed violets, lilies, and poppy, gilded myrrh, date palm, and hyacinth petals.

Vanilla sandalwood, chrysanthemum, and lemon peel.

The Lovers suspended beneath hostile stars; innocent, youthful love caught in profound celestial tension. Two households, both alike in dignity, are bound by ancient grievance, and beneath their banners walk two young hearts caught in the inexorable turning of the spheres. “A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life whose misadventured piteous overthrows,” and the heavens themselves draw down to witness and grieve the dazzling catastrophe of first love. Their passion is as swift as lightning, tender as dawn, perilous as prophecy. They move as mirrored flame, twin spirits divided by inherited hatred, Gemini energy refracted through vendetta and family saga. In one another they glimpse completion, a reflection unmarred by the violence of the world beyond the balcony that hems them in. The polarity that surrounds them only sharpens their longing. Night and day, Montague and Capulet, poison and potion, oath and silence: each intrinsic, fated duality entwines them closer together. The “black-brow’d night” shelters their whispered promises and heart-rending declarations of love, wrapping them in a darkness that protects and consecrates, while the “garish sun” exposes, divides, and drives them back into the machinery of blood feud and overweening pride. In this reversal, shadow is mercy and daylight is threat, and their passion flourishes in secrecy as though it were a nocturnal bloom opening only when the world’s vigilance sleeps. Night gathers them into momentary wholeness, but the harsh light of dawn demands polarity. Their struggle is not only against their families but against time itself, against the relentless return of morning that tears them from the refuge of darkness and thrusts them toward consequence. Their love is not permitted to grow and thrive, and instead it burns brief, bright, and absolute with the shattering, pure conflagration of a supernova. In the long, shadowed sleep of death they accomplish what life denied them, and the warring houses, confronted by the cost of enmity, lay down their arms. Love as transmutation, sorrow as reconciliation, and what was divided is brought, through tragedy, into uneasy harmony. This is the Lovers as one soul divided, as the soul split and reunited through fate and consequence, union under celestial tension, and devotion that outlives breath and fundamentally alters the world that sought to forbid it. Crushed red rose and night-blooming jasmine unfurl over Verona stone warmed by summer dusk, sugared violets and bitter orange peel steeped in pale cypress smoke, with a single thread of myrrh rising like a whispered vow in the dark.

Peru balsam, champa absolute, sugared patchouli, toasted cardamom, black pepper, labdanum, and coffee bean.

The ultimate personification of the Lovers, the crowned White Queen and Red King appear as personifications of solar and lunar forces, opposing currents poised before their great meeting. Here the King extends his branch and the Queen hers, and in the symbolic imagery the sun and moon stand beside them in the watery vessel where their union will be enacted, reflecting the ancient alchemical principle that the opposites must enter the prima materia if transformation is to occur. In the illuminated plates of the Rosarium Philosophorum, the crowned King and Queen stand facing one another beneath a descending dove, sovereign and sovereign, fixed and volatile, their bodies poised at the threshold of sacred union. He burns with solar tincture, sulfurous and red, the embodied heat of will and form; she gleams with lunar pallor, mercurial and receptive, the shining mirror that receives and transforms. Their meeting is courtship through coniunctio, the deliberate joining of opposites beneath divine blessing. They are the Lovers stripped to archetype, the sun and the moon brought into perfect equilibrium. The King must surrender his isolated dominion, the Queen her cool separateness, and in their embrace the sealed vessel becomes a womb of transmutation. Above them, the spirit descends; below them, the bath and tomb await. What appears as union is also dissolution, for each must die to solitary sovereignty in order to be reborn as unified essence. Alchemically, their conjunction generates the Stone, the filius philosophorum, the radiant third that arises when polarity is neither denied nor allowed to dominate. From red and white emerges the tincture that perfects, the hermaphroditic child crowned in both suns and moons, embodying the reconciliation of sulfur and mercury within a single body of light. The Lovers here transcend flesh and narrative, becoming emblem and equation, the purest symbolic revelation of the card’s mystery: that true union is the marriage of contraries under spirit, and that from such sacred joining comes incorruptible gold. Crimson musk and white amber twined with solar frankincense and lunar myrrh, warm saffron steeped in cool iris root, gold-threaded honey darkened by silvered benzoin, a marriage of fire and pearl beneath a rain of distant stars.

The sun illuminates all. It is sublime consciousness, infallible clarity, perfect revelation. The Lovers live in the sun’s gaze, their union open, witnessed, and sanctified, the beams of life-affirming light warming and sustaining them. Amber and heliotrope aglow with golden frankincense, neroli, citrus peel, golden rose petals, and smoldering cedar incense.

A talisman of pleasure carved from the stone of the heart. Blushing rose cognac, sugared pink grapefruit, iced strawberries, and creamy sandalwood warmed by skin musk, vanilla bourbon, and glowing pink amber.

Honey and Oat Granola.

Honey-Gilded Calla Lilies and Amber.

“Good morning, Eeyore,” said Pooh. “Good morning, Pooh Bear,” said Eeyore gloomily. “If it is a good morning,” he said. “Which I doubt,” said he. “Why, what’s the matter?” “Nothing, Pooh Bear, nothing. We can’t all, and some of us don’t. That’s all there is to it.” “Can’t all what?” said Pooh, rubbing his nose. “Gaiety. Song-and-dance. Here we go round the mulberry bush.” “Oh!” said Pooh. He thought for a long time, and then asked, “What mulberry bush is that?” “Bon-hommy,” went on Eeyore gloomily. “French word meaning bonhommy,” he explained. “I’m not complaining, but There It Is.” Every solid friend group has at least one goth kid representing. Soft grey musk, pink thistle, lavender ash, tea leaves, pale iris, grey lilac, and rain-soaked moss. Each purchase of Gloomily, Gloomily comes with a 1/32 oz imp of The Donkey’s Tail. The Donkey’s Tail is not available for sale on its own, and make sure you keep it safe as you never know where it might end up.

Each purchase of Gloomily, Gloomily comes with a 1/32 oz imp of the Donkey’s Tail. The Donkey’s Tail is not available for sale on its own, and make sure you keep it safe as you never know where it might end up. “That Accounts for a Good Deal,” said Eeyore gloomily. “It Explains Everything. No Wonder.” Doubles as a bell-pull: a beribboned strip of French lavender, bourbon vanilla, silver thistle, grey musk, pink silk, and well-loved grey cotton.

Winners only beyond this point! Blue hydrangea, airy white musk, and pink jasmine buds.

“If I were chust your doggie. I know vot I vould do, Effry place vot you vould go I vould be going, too!” A warm slab of Kirschenmichel served with a cup of blue chamomile tea.

Dark chocolate with a satisfying crunch of scorched black sesame, hazelnut, and patchouli leaf.

Calla lilies stained blood red by Snake Oil and daemonorops draco, flecked with poison-touched lily of the valley.

Blushing ruby chocolate swirling with vanilla, spices, and the dark, silky sweetness of Snake Oil.

Teakwood, tolu balsam, beeswax, lilac cream, polished amber, and spiced honey.

This starts off with the crushed dandelion stems and honey before deciding it is mostly going to be a floral scent -- and I don't know what pansies smell like, but I think that's the floral note I get the most of here. There's a hint of fruit in the background, but I would not describe this as a fruity floral, at least, not on my skin, as I get more honey with the pansies than strawberries. I tried this twice and never smelled the vanilla, but maybe that would become more noticeable with age. I think that this smells pretty, but there are other currently available floral-heavy scents that call to me more, so I don't need more than my decant.

Crushed dandelion stem, a riot of pansies, warm bare skin, sheer vanilla silk, cherry and apricot blossoms, wild strawberries, wild roses, sun-warmed grass, and a gust of white clover honey. Frederick Sandys

Girl and Butterflies is mostly a black oud and lavender scent on my skin, with touches of the lilac and poppy, a airy quality that must have been from the ambergris, and a bit of brightness that must have been from the white tea. I tried this twice and never ended up detecting the sweet pea on my skin. The oud is not funky whatsoever -- it just smells deeply resinous. Paired with the lavender, it smells a little perfume-y, but it's not high-pitched. As the day goes on, the black oud increases and strength, and the lavender calms down, yet never leaves its side. I think this smells nice, but since this scent didn't make me swoon and there are other lavender scents available right now that I want back-up bottles of, I do not need more of this.

A fluttering tempest of black oud, indigo poppy, pale lavender, blue lilac, white tea, ambergris accord, and sweet pea. Frances Macdonald

This starts off as a really lovely sugary, nutty scent, but the sugar party disappears as the benzoin asserts itself and declares dominion over all, accompanied by a little earthiness. I really enjoyed the wet phase of this scent, but I was sad once the resinous benzoin note took over.

Ulmus rubra’s mucilaginous inner bark produces a thick, protective gel that coats and soothes the throat in herbal medicine, and in rootwork this same quality becomes an act of slippery sorcery: thanks to the Doctrine of Signatures, the same mechanism that heals the body becomes armor against the violence of speech as wicked words slide away, accusations refuse to stick, and malicious talk loses its purchase and slides away, harmless. Governed by Saturn and resonant with the Air element, the domain of communication and the spoken word, slippery elm carries correspondences that reinforce its purpose. Saturn’s cold discipline enforces silence and binds the tongue of the enemy while Air governs every form of speech, rumor, and persuasion. Slippery elm sits at the crossroads of both. In hoodoo and rootwork, this translates into a robust tradition of anti-gossip and protection work and is a guardian of reputation. Slippery elm is carried in mojo bags, powdered into sachets, burned over charcoal, and sewn into charms. Pinches of the bark placed in the four corners of a room are said to protect the home from evil; a knotted yellow thread tied around the bark and cast into fire is a traditional working to cease all gossip directed at you. Keep the root close to your body wherever two-faced company gathers. In court case work, slippery elm shields against false accusations and slander, helping a difficult case move smoothly toward resolution. Slippery elm does not merely silence: it may be worn as a charm to cultivate eloquence, and it loosens the tongue when silence has become a trap or a curse, granting fluency and persuasion to those who carry it while denying the same to their enemies. A nutty, earthy-scented root with a whisper of benzoin, bourbon vanilla, and slippery, sweet sugar cane.

I was fortunate to receive a tester of this from my decanter. Forsaken Elephant Puppet is predominantly a cuddly cotton scent on me, with sprinkles of kettle corn strewn about, on a base of white amber. I didn't really get the honey from this on my skin, but that's okay with me. This was fun to get to try, but I'm glad I didn't fall hard for it since I didn't love the 13 with which this was paired. 😅