Ahania

Obatala is soft and lovely: Obatala’s ofrenda is soft, white and pure: milk, coconut meat, shea butter and cool, refreshing water.

Hooray for SSDB and her kindness! This is a really wet cinnamon smell- definitely more like sucking on a red hot rather than sniffing a jar of powdered cinnamon. It's lightly sweet, but just enough to mellow it out some, not enough to make it foody. I getting the eye socket attack pretty quickly but that's probably because I keep spritzing it and then sticking my face in the little cloud and sniffing really hard. Also because of this, I can't smell anything for a while after that initial whiff so I don't have any useful comments on how the scent mellows out. I keep meaning to not do this but apparently I have the willpower of a gnat.

I'm not familiar with Ruby Guava, but Machu Picchu has tropical fruits in the list of notes, and it's one of my favorite fruity scents. Despite the 'steamy blossoms' I don't notice much in the way of florals in it, just fruits and amber.

From your bottle list, I would probably go with Bastet, as she is caring and nurturing to those she likes but woe to those she doesn't. Alternatively, is there one that you have a really good association with somehow? When I'm in tough situations I like to wear scents that remind me of a friend, like a scent-reminder that someone does have my back even if they aren't there right that second.

Definitely look for ick-notes, but don't rely *too* much on them. For me, the problem with coming up with a list of notes to avoid is that for every one of my evil-doom-stench notes, there's a bpal containing it that I love, so it really does depend on how things are blended, like kakiphony's red musk examples. It could be that musk is fine for you, and tobacco is fine for you, but musk and tobacco together isn't.

I think Pumpkin Queen comes closest to it, which isn't really much help. Layering this year's #5 (Lightly spiced pumpkin pulp swirled with bourbon vanilla, French vanilla, and raw vanilla bean) with Vixen (orange blossom tainted by the beguiling scents of ginger and patchouli) might be worth a try.

Les Fleurs du Mal is my favorite for this. Some people think it smells like old lady perfume but I think it smells like someone who would rip out your esophagus as soon as look at you.

What about layering Vixen or Ravenous with Cathedral? Now I have to go buy this candle.

That covers books back to the Victorian era but not much older - wood pulping for paper was developed in the 1840's and didn't become the book-making standard until several decades later. Older papers are lignan-free.

Carnation is one of the more common florals used in masculine scents, and it's a spicy-powdery scent to me.

That sounds gorgeous! Maybe Bengal: A sultry and unruly blend that emulates the ambient scent of the markets in ancient Bengal: skin musk with honey, peppers, clove, cinnamon bark and ginger layered with Sri Lanka: Indian sandalwood and cedar, and the dry incense smoke of olibanum, gum mastic, patchouli and myrrh?

Les Fleurs du Mal would be perfect.

There was one series of CTs that had popcorn in a lot of them, so if this one doesn't work out for you, it's worth posting an ISO.

That outfit looks like Blood Countess to me!

Oh man, I wish I got the ginger mentioned in the other reviews. It's there, but not that strong, and is more milk chocolate. Not good milk chocolate, but the gross kind that tastes cloying and has paraffin instead of cocoa butter and says 'chocolate-flavored confection' because they can't legally call it chocolate. Finally this fades down and leaves the butterscotch. Or rather, imitation butterscotch flavor pudding, which I quit liking when I was about 3. Yech.