Conjunction of Mars and Saturn

[patina]

Daemonorops, star thistle, wild tobacco, and asafoetida intensified by hemlock accord, black musk seed, mortuary cypress, and black gum leaf.

Super dark, balsamic, medicinal woods, resin and herbs. The scent has a brooding men's cologne feel to it. Really not as offputting as it sounds, not "fetid" at all. (Drydown does have a strong camphor element though.)

It smells like black musk, with faint highlights of dark red and wintergreen.

[sprout]

This certainly smells malefic. Dragon's blood makes an unholy alliance with a powdery resin note. This is dry as bone on my skinistry. I can pick out the black musk, daemonorops, and cypress on drydown. My synesthesia is the red sands of Mars blowing through dried cypress branches.

 

I was hoping for more tobacco and wood notes.

 

I'll cellar it and retest, as black musk rarely works for me when fresh.

 

Very true to concept and I am glad that I was able to experience this but the blind bottle maybe was not a good idea.

[zankoku_zen]

Honestly, I actually like this smell. It's dragon's blood, darkened by tobacco, hemlock, and cypress. It's darkly musk dragon's blood, which isn't typically a thing I'm into but I'm really quasi digging this.

 

More importantly, I really do feel like it has certain TAL like qualities. I'm super happy to have a partial of this and use it in TAL workings.

[Convallaria]

Ooh, this one is leaning towards masculine, but not to the point I'd find it not-me. I guess I need my burnt tobacco with something that can temper it, which flowers and clove in In The Time Of Plague couldn't handle. The opening feels like a chypre-y cologne. It goes a bit more mild and pleasant after that - into a cuddly, cologne-y tobacco. The drydown is sweet musk, but there's still a herbal and tobacco undertone. I really liked it and I'm glad I decided to go for it even though I was disappointed with the other this year's Plague scent.

Edited July 4, 2016 by Convallaria

[Little Bird]

Dark, super powdery, resinous black musk with hints of dry herbs and a gritty, earthy, slightly smoky and ashy note that I think is the tobacco. The herbal notes go a little sour and savory on me, and I actually don't smell any dragon's blood. I don't really like this one. Powdery black musk with sour, dry herbs and ashy tobacco.

[Meirion]

I had to get this one because I'm a huge nerd for astrological aspects, and Mars and Saturn are dominant in my chart. I was hoping for something gritty, dry, herbal, resinous, and a little unsettling.

Before aging, the resins and musk dominated. Not a dry scent at all, and not particularly herbal to my nose. It made me think of a heady dark purple, sweet and chewy. It quickly became a power scent for me, partly because of the association with power-planets, but it was an in-your-face scent that definitely required me to be in a certain mood.

After aging for more than a year ... oh my goodness, y'all. It's gorgeous.

 

In the bottle, I smell the herbs right away. There's something that reminds me of clary sage. It's distinctly medicinal, but mystical. Like opening the medicine chest of a powerful sorcerer who works as the village healer on the side.

And those herbs are totally saturated with rich resins. It's like a bundle of dry herbs was dipped in a (slightly malevolent) magical potion and then left to sit in the sun.

Once it's on my wrist, the resins turn more incensey and the herbs take on a slightly charred quality. As it settles it gets drier and dustier, and I realize that the sorcerer's workshop is in the middle of a dry evergreen forest, on a desolate mountain, in an isolate realm. I could almost swear there's a stone note in there somewhere. Everything blends beautifully, while retaining complexity and the distinctive quality of each note.

This scent has so much personality and I'm smitten with it. It's definitely dark, and a little scary, but strangely down-to-earth at the same time (that's Saturn for you). It's the scent of being forsaken by everyone but yourself and the mountains. Does that sound horrible? I promise it's not.

Major throw and lasting power.