The Lupercalia update is live at Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab!

[kebechet]

Love is in the air at Black Phoenix, and it has suffused both our Limited Edition section and the general catalogue.

 

First things first: the Love Potions section is now “Ars Amatoria”. Why? Because we’re a little mercurial here at the Lab, and it seemed like a good idea. New to Ars Amatoria…

 

++ GENERAL CATALOGUE: ARS AMATORIA

DEEP IN EARTH

Deep in earth my love is lying

And I must weep alone.

 

Rose geranium, Spanish moss, Irish yew, and graveyard dirt.

 

 

DEFUTUTA

Good Gods, what a night that was,

The bed was so soft, and how we clung,

Burning together, lying this way and that,

Our uncontrollable passions

Flowing through our mouths.

If I could only die that way,

I'd say goodbye to the business of living.

 

Olive blossom, honey, smoky vanilla, cinnamon, jasmine, sandalwood, and champaca flower.

 

 

FASCINUM

Hic habitat felicitas! The penis was a potent and popular symbol of good fortune, strength, power, and fertility in ancient Rome. Images of phalluses adorned Roman homes and shops, bringing the positive energy that the symbol represents into the lives of the inhabitants.

 

Golden amber, golden musk, litsea cubeba, cedar, and saffron.

 

 

L’ECOLE DES FILLES

We sang till almost night, and drank my good store of wine; and then they parted and I to my chamber, where I did read through L'Ecole des Filles; a lewd book, but what doth me no wrong to read for imagination's sake… and after I had done it, I burned it, that it might not be among my books to my shame.

 

Published around 1655, this is considered to be the origin of modern pornography in France. It is a discourse between two young ladies, the elder instructing the younger in the ways of passion.

 

This is a libertine’s celebration of decadence, debauchery, and sexual freedom: orange blossom, ambergris, orris root, white rose, lemon balm, jonquil, carrot seed, and benzoin.

 

 

LOVE’S TORMENTS

Love's torments sought a place of rest,

Where all might drear and lonely be;

They found ere long my desert breast,

And nestled in its vacancy.

White sandalwood, neroli, and vetiver.

 

 

TO A WOMAN

Thy fatal shafts unerring move,

I bow before thine altar, Love.

I feel thy soft resistless flame

Glide swift through all my vital frame.

 

For while I gaze my bosom glows,

My blood in tides impetuous flows;

Hope, fear, and joy alternate roll,

And floods of transports whelm my soul.

 

My faltering tongue attempts in vain

In soothing murmurs to complain;

My tongue some secret magic ties,

My murmurs sink in broken sighs.

 

Condemned to nurse eternal care,

And ever drop the silent tear,

Unheard I mourn, unknown I sigh,

Unfriended live, unpitied die.

 

Benzoin, cassis bud, patchouli, rose otto, and petitgrain.

 

 

 

And, the new Limited Edition scents…

 

 

 

++ LUNAR NEW YEAR

EARTH RAT

A new year's blessing! Peony, China's national flower, with bamboo for flexibility, plum blossom for perseverance, courage, and hope, tangerine for wealth, lychee for strong family relationships and peace in the home, orange for happiness, pine resin for constancy, golden kumquat and quince for prosperity, narcissus and King mandarin for good fortune, coconut for longevity, and candied melon for good health, with a splash of blazing red of dragon's blood... to help you scare away the rampaging Nian.

 

 

PARENTALIA

The Day of the Fathers. A festival of remembrance, honoring family that has passed into the next life.

 

Cypress, rose, violet, frankincense, ambrette, marjoram, and Lebanese cedar.

 

 

 

++ LUPERCALIA 2008 UPDATE

ANACTORIA

I feel thy blood against my blood; my pain

Pains thee, and lips bruise lips, and vein stings vein.

Let fruit be crushed on fruit, let flower on flower

Breast kindle breast, and either burn one hour.

Why wilt thou follow lesser loves? are thine

Too weak to bear these hands and lips of mine?

The scent of the throes of violent passion: entangled limbs, teeth on flesh, furiously grasping hands, the taste of blood and sweat. Golden amber, white honey, red currant, daemonorops, kush, and Arabian musk.

 

 

KHAJURAHO 2008

The fabled Khajuraho temples of India are shrines of love in all its myriad forms. They are a celebration of love itself -- transcendental, spiritual and erotic. This is a rejection of sorrow, spiritual ennui and despair. The sexual motifs that adorn the temples, and the temples themselves, are monuments to ecstasy and to passion, and through that, they are also monuments to spiritual fulfillment. It is believed that the realization of moksha by dedicating oneself to adhyatma and dharma can be attained only by first experiencing sexual satisfaction. In the midst of the drudgery and struggle that we sometimes endure during the course of our Earthly lives, it is vitally important that we remember the joy found in kama, and that in kama we can achieve transformation of the body and soul. This is a blissful, euphoric blend based on an ancient Indian love potion: honey, date palm, tuberose, davana blossom, amber, white sandalwood, vanilla bean, Damask rose, and champaca flower.

 

 

LUPERCI 2008

Piss off, Saint Valentine! Lupercalia is an ancient Roman celebration, held on February 15th, that kicked in the advent of Spring with a very, very festive purification, fertility and sexuality ritual. The ritual began near the cave of Lupercal on the Palatine, an area sacred to Faunus, as well as Ruminia, Romulus and Remus. During Lupercalia, Vestal Virgins first made offerings of sacred cakes to the fig tree under which the she-wolf suckled the Sacred Twins. A dog and two goats were then offered in sacrifice to Faunus. The blood of the sacrifice was smeared onto two naked patrician youths, who were assisted by the Virgins, and the blood was wiped clean with sacred wool dipped in milk. The youths donned the skins of the sacrificial goats, wielding whips made from the goat skins, and then led the priests and the Virgins around the pomarium, and around the base hills of Rome. This was a ceremony of great happiness and merriment, and was of particular interest to young women: being touched by the goat-whips young men that led the procession ensured their fertility in the coming year. It is believed that, after the initial rite, male participants would draw the name of an available maiden, with whom he spent the rest of the night. This scent is for the Luperci, the Chosen of Faunus, the Brothers of the Wolf: raw, down and dirty patchouli, Gurjam balsam, and essence of Sampson Root sweetened with the heightened sexuality of beeswax, virile juniper, oakmoss, ambrette seed over honey and East African musk.

 

 

PARLEMENT OF FOULES 2008

For the Valentine's Day purists.

 

For this was on seynt Volantynys day

Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his mate.

 

Medieval romance and courtly love. White rose and soft resins.

 

 

RED LANTERN 2008

A tribute to the opium den cum bawdyhouses of Shanghai in the 1930's. Golden amber, blonde tobacco, Sudanese black coconut, rich caramel, black currant, white opium and delphinium laced with a sensual blend of Asian spice.

 

 

SMUT 2008

Smut! Smut! Smut! Three swarthy, smutty musks sweetened with sugar and woozy with dark booze notes.

 

 

VALENTINE OF ROME

Many legends surround St. Valentine, and history has yet to show, conclusively, which ones are true and which are fiction. One tale claims that Valentine was a 3rd century Christian priest. When Emperor Claudius II declared that his soldiers were never to marry – the emperor believed that single men made better soldiers than those with wives and children – Valentine continued to perform wedding ceremonies in secret. When the emperor learned of Valentine’s disobedience, he imprisoned the priest. The emperor chose to interrogate the priest himself, and despite his fury at his orders being flagrantly disobeyed, he was impressed with the priest’s intelligence, wisdom, and passion. He attempted to convert the priest to the Roman faith, and was furious when he failed.

 

While incarcerated, Valentine fell in love with his jailor’s blind daughter. Through God’s grace and the power of Valentine’s pure and true love for this woman, he was able to cure her blindness with a touch. Before he was beaten and beheaded, he sent her a letter expressing his feelings for her, signed ‘From Your Valentine’.

 

Ecclesiastical incense, Roman flora, and the fruits of martyrdom: cypress, olive blossom, frankincense, myrrh, and blood accord.

 

 

 

++ LUPERCALIA: LOVE POEMS

A FAREWELL TO FALSE LOVE

Sir Walter Raleigh

Farewell, false love, the oracle of lies,

A mortal foe and enemy to rest,

An envious boy, from whom all cares arise,

A bastard vile, a beast with rage possessed,

A way of error, a temple full of treason,

In all effects contrary unto reason.

 

A poisoned serpent covered all with flowers,

Mother of sighs, and murderer of repose,

A sea of sorrows whence are drawn such showers

As moisture lend to every grief that grows;

A school of guile, a net of deep deceit,

A gilded hook that holds a poisoned bait.

 

A fortress foiled, which reason did defend,

A siren song, a fever of the mind,

A maze wherein affection finds no end,

A raging cloud that runs before the wind,

A substance like the shadow of the sun,

A goal of grief for which the wisest run.

 

A quenchless fire, a nurse of trembling fear,

A path that leads to peril and mishap,

A true retreat of sorrow and despair,

An idle boy that sleeps in pleasure's lap,

A deep mistrust of that which certain seems,

A hope of that which reason doubtful deems.

 

Sith then thy trains my younger years betrayed,

And for my faith ingratitude I find;

And sith repentance hath my wrongs bewrayed,

Whose course was ever contrary to kind:

False love, desire, and beauty frail, adieu.

Dead is the root whence all these fancies grew.

 

Pale lavender, sweet violet, balsam of Peru, and paperwhite narcissus.

 

 

THE CLOD AND THE PEBBLE

William Blake

Love seeketh not Itself to please,

Nor for itself hath any care;

But for another gives its ease,

And builds a Heaven in Hells despair.

 

So sang a little Clod of Clay,

Trodden with the cattle's feet;

But a Pebble of the brook,

Warbled out these metres meet.

 

Love seeketh only Self to please,

 

To bind another to Its delight:

Joys in anothers loss of ease,

And builds a Hell in Heavens despite.

 

Rose otto, clove, patchouli, Indian sandalwood, nutmeg, and cedar.

 

 

THE FLOWER SONG

Unknown, Written during Egypt's New Kingdom

 

To hear your voice is pomegranate wine to me:

I draw life from hearing it.

Could I see you with every glance,

It would be better for me

Than to eat or to drink.

 

Pomegranate wine, lotus root, river reeds, hyssop, and barley.

 

 

HER VOICE

Oscar Wilde

The wild bee reels from bough to bough

With his furry coat and his gauzy wing.

Now in a lily-cup, and now

Setting a jacinth bell a-swing,

In his wandering;

Sit closer love: it was here I trow

I made that vow,

 

Swore that two lives should be like one

As long as the sea-gull loved the sea,

As long as the sunflower sought the sun --

It shall be, I said, for eternity

’Twixt you and me!

Dear friend, those times are over and done,

Love’s web is spun.

 

Look upward where the poplar trees

Sway and sway in the summer air,

Here in the valley never a breeze

Scatters the thistledowns, but there

Great winds blow fair

From the mighty murmuring mystical seas,

And the wave-lashed leas.

 

Look upward where the white gull screams

What does it see that we do not see?

Is that a star? or the lamp that gleams

On some outward voyaging argosy, --

Ah! can it be

We have lived our lives in land of dreams!

How sad it seems.

 

Sweet, there is nothing left to say

But this, that love is never lost.

Keen winter stabs the breasts of May

Whose crimson roses burst his frost,

Ships tempest-tossed

Will find a harbour in some bay,

And so we may.

 

And there is nothing left to do

But to kiss once again, and part,

Nay, there is nothing we should rue,

I have my beauty, -- you your Art.

Nay, do not start,

One world was not enough for two

Like me and you.

 

Hyacinth, beeswax, wild roses, vanilla amber, lily of the valley, tiger lily, honeysuckle, carnation, and heliotrope.

 

 

LA VITA NUOVA

Dante Alighieri

In that book which is

My memory . . .

On the first page

That is the chapter when

I first met you

Appear the words . . .

Here begins a new life

 

Apple blossom, white rose, lemon balm, and champagne grape.

 

 

LONGING

Matthew Arnold

Come to me in my dreams, and then

By day I shall be well again.

For then the night will more than pay

The hopeless longing of the day.

 

Come, as thou cam'st a thousand times,

A messenger from radiant climes,

And smile on thy new world, and be

As kind to others as to me.

 

Or, as thou never cam'st in sooth,

Come now, and let me dream it truth.

And part my hair, and kiss my brow,

And say My love! why sufferest thou?

 

Come to me in my dreams, and then

By day I shall be well again.

For then the night will more than pay

The hopeless longing of the day.

 

Rose geranium, frankincense, Ceylon cinnamon, golden musk, bay rum, and bois du rose.

 

 

LOVE’S PHILOSOPHY

Percy Bysshe Shelley

The fountains mingle with the river,

And the rivers with the ocean;

The winds of heaven mix forever,

With a sweet emotion;

Nothing in the world is single;

All things by a law divine

In one another's being mingle;--

Why not I with thine?

 

See! the mountains kiss high heaven,

And the waves clasp one another;

No sister flower would be forgiven,

If it disdained it's brother;

And the sunlight clasps the earth,

And the moonbeams kiss the sea;--

What are all these kissings worth,

If thou kiss not me?

 

Vanilla, saffron, and cream.

 

 

NIGHT THOUGHTS

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Stars, you are unfortunate, I pity you,

Beautiful as you are, shining in your glory,

Who guide seafaring men through stress and peril

And have no recompense from gods or mortals,

Love you do not, nor do you know what love is.

Hours that are aeons urgently conducting

Your figures in a dance through the vast heaven,

What journey have you ended in this moment,

Since lingering in the arms of my beloved

I lost all memory of you and midnight.

 

Lilac, blue musk, dianthus, cedar, neroli, ozone, and luminous Eastern herbs.

 

 

THE PASSIONATE SHEPHERD TO HIS LOVE

Christopher Marlowe

Come live with me and be my love,

And we will all the pleasures prove,

That valleys, groves, hills and fields,

Woods or steepy mountains yields.

 

And we will sit upon the rocks,

Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks

By shallow rivers, to whose falls

Melodious birds sing madrigals.

 

And I will make thee beds of roses,

And a thousand fragrant posies,

A cap of flowers and a kirtle

Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;

 

A gown made of the finest wool,

Which from our pretty lambs we pull;

Fair-lined slippers for the cold,

With buckles of the purest gold;

 

A belt of straw and ivy buds,

With coral clasps and amber studs;

And if these pleasures may thee move,

Come live with me and be my love.

 

The shepherd swains shall dance and sing

For thy delight each May morning;

If these delights thy mind may move,

Then live with me and be my love.

 

Heather, clover, Irish moss, English ivy, tea rose, and carnation.

 

 

THE PRESENCE OF LOVE

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

And in Life's noisiest hour,

There whispers still the ceaseless Love of Thee,

The heart's Self-solace and soliloquy.

______________________

 

You mould my Hopes, you fashion me within;

And to the leading Love-throb in the Heart

Thro' all my Being, thro' my pulses beat;

You lie in all my many Thoughts, like Light,

Like the fair light of Dawn, or summer Eve

On rippling Stream, or cloud-reflecting Lake.

And looking to the Heaven, that bends above you,

How oft ! I bless the Lot, that made me love you.

 

White musk, rose-swirled amber, pink grapefruit, and jasmine.

 

 

SAPPHICS

Algernon Charles Swinburne

All the night sleep came not upon my eyelids,

Shed not dew, nor shook nor unclosed a feather,

Yet with lips shut close and with eyes of iron

Stood and beheld me.

 

Then to me so lying awake a vision

Came without sleep over the seas and touched me,

Softly touched mine eyelids and lips; and I too,

Full of the vision,

 

Saw the white implacable Aphrodite,

Saw the hair unbound and the feet unsandalled

Shine as fire of sunset on western waters;

Saw the reluctant

 

Feet, the straining plumes of the doves that drew her,

Looking always, looking with necks reverted,

Back to Lesbos, back to the hills whereunder

Shone Mitylene;

 

Heard the flying feet of the Loves behind her

Make a sudden thunder upon the waters,

As the thunder flung from the strong unclosing

Wings of a great wind.

 

So the goddess fled from her place, with awful

Sound of feet and thunder of wings around her;

While behind a clamour of singing women

Severed the twilight.

 

Ah the singing, ah the delight, the passion!

All the Loves wept, listening; sick with anguish,

Stood the crowned nine Muses about Apollo;

Fear was upon them,

 

While the tenth sang wonderful things they knew not.

Ah the tenth, the Lesbian! the nine were silent,

None endured the sound of her song for weeping;

Laurel by laurel,

 

Faded all their crowns; but about her forehead,

Round her woven tresses and ashen temples

White as dead snow, paler than grass in summer,

Ravaged with kisses,

 

Shone a light of fire as a crown for ever.

Yea, almost the implacable Aphrodite

Paused, and almost wept; such a song was that song.

Yea, by her name too

 

Called her, saying, “Turn to me, O my Sappho;”

Yet she turned her face from the Loves, she saw not

Tears for laughter darken immortal eyelids,

Heard not about her

 

Fearful fitful wings of the doves departing,

Saw not how the bosom of Aphrodite

Shook with weeping, saw not her shaken raiment,

Saw not her hands wrung;

 

Saw the Lesbians kissing across their smitten

Lutes with lips more sweet than the sound of lute-strings,

Mouth to mouth and hand upon hand, her chosen,

Fairer than all men;

 

Only saw the beautiful lips and fingers,

Full of songs and kisses and little whispers,

Full of music; only beheld among them

Soar, as a bird soars

 

Newly fledged, her visible song, a marvel,

Made of perfect sound and exceeding passion,

Sweetly shapen, terrible, full of thunders,

Clothed with the wind’s wings.

 

Then rejoiced she, laughing with love, and scattered

Roses, awful roses of holy blossom;

Then the Loves thronged sadly with hidden faces

Round Aphrodite,

 

Then the Muses, stricken at heart, were silent;

Yea, the gods waxed pale; such a song was that song.

All reluctant, all with a fresh repulsion,

Fled from before her.

 

All withdrew long since, and the land was barren,

Full of fruitless women and music only.

Now perchance, when winds are assuaged at sunset,

Lulled at the dewfall,

 

By the grey sea-side, unassuaged, unheard of,

Unbeloved, unseen in the ebb of twilight,

Ghosts of outcast women return lamenting,

Purged not in Lethe,

 

Clothed about with flame and with tears, and singing

Songs that move the heart of the shaken heaven,

Songs that break the heart of the earth with pity,

Hearing, to hear them.

 

Tonka, oakmoss, tolu balsam, grey amber, myrrh, and muguet.

 

 

THE RAGGED WOOD

William Butler Yeats

O, hurry, where by water, among the trees,

The delicate-stepping stag and his lady sigh,

When they have looked upon their images

Would none had ever loved but you and I!

 

Or have you heard that sliding silver-shoed

Pale silver-proud queen-woman of the sky,

When the sun looked out of his golden hood?

O, that none ever loved but you and I!

 

O hurry to the ragged wood, for there

I will drive all those lovers out and cry

O, my share of the world, O, yellow hair!

No one has ever loved but you and I.

 

Lily of the Valley, star jasmine, benzoin, vanilla, plumeria, bergamot, Terebinth pine, juniper berry, and tea rose.

 

 

TO HELEN

Edgar Allan Poe

I saw thee once - once only - years ago:

I must not say how many - but not many.

It was a July midnight; and from out

A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring,

Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven,

There fell a silvery-silken veil of light,

With quietude, and sultriness, and slumber,

Upon the upturned faces of a thousand

Roses that grew in an enchanted garden,

Where no wind dared to stir, unless on tiptoe

Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses

That gave out, in return for the love-light,

Their odorous souls in an ecstatic death

Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses

That smiled and died in this parterre, enchanted

By thee, and by the poetry of thy presence.

 

Clad all in white, upon a violet bank

I saw thee half reclining; while the moon

Fell on the upturn'd faces of the roses,

And on thine own, upturn'd - alas, in sorrow!

Was it not Fate, that, on this July midnight

Was it not Fate, (whose name is also Sorrow,)

That bade me pause before that garden-gate,

To breathe the incense of those slumbering roses?

No footstep stirred: the hated world an slept,

Save only thee and me. (Oh, Heaven! oh, God!

How my heart beats in coupling those two words!)

Save only thee and me. I paused - I looked

And in an instant all things disappeared.

(Ah, bear in mind this garden was enchanted!)

 

The pearly lustre of the moon went out:

The mossy banks and the meandering paths,

The happy flowers and the repining trees,

Were seen no more: the very roses' odors

Died in the arms of the adoring airs.

All - all expired save thee - save less than thou:

Save only the divine light in thine eyes

Save but the soul in thine uplifted eyes.

I saw but them - they were the world to me!

I saw but them - saw only them for hours,

Saw only them until the moon went down.

What wild heart-histories seemed to he enwritten

Upon those crystalline, celestial spheres!

How dark a woe, yet how sublime a hope!

How silently serene a sea of pride!

How daring an ambition; yet how deep

How fathomless a capacity for love!

But now, at length, dear Dian sank from sight,

Into a western couch of thunder-cloud;

And thou, a ghost, amid the entombing trees

Didst glide away. Only thine eyes remained;

They would not go - they never yet have gone;

Lighting my lonely pathway home that night,

They have not left me (as my hopes have) since;

They follow me - they lead me through the years.

They are my ministers - yet I their slave.

Their office is to illumine and enkindle

My duty, to be saved by their bright light,

And purified in their electric fire,

And sanctified in their elysian fire.

They fill my soul with Beauty (which is Hope),

And are far up in Heaven - the stars I kneel to

In the sad, silent watches of my night;

While even in the meridian glare of day

I see them still - two sweetly scintillant

Venuses, unextinguished by the sun!

 

Electric ozone, opaline notes, moonflower, white amber, beeswax, and three roses.

 

 

And last, but not least, a temporary wing has been added to the Salon. Novel Ideas For Secret Amusements is a Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab Salon Limited Edition series celebrating the joy, humor, playfulness, and thrill of sexual intercourse through scent interpretations of Edo era Japanese erotic art. This exhibit contains explicit depictions of sexual acts and nudity, and viewer discretion is advised.

 

 

Earth Rat, Parentalia, and all of our Lupercalia blends are $17.50, with the exception of the Salon Limited Edition series, Novel Ideas For Secret Amusements, which are $27.50 each.

 

The Yule, Anniversary, and Resurrected blends will be available until January 15, 2008. The Lupercalia blends, Earth Rat, and Parentalia, will be available until March 23, 2008.

 

 

The Black Phoenix Trading Post update will be live soon, and we’ll be back for Lunacy!