Happy Birthday, Lilith!

[kebechet]

 

Lilith, our daughter… we adore you. This is our song to you. With all our love, your mother and father -

At Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, a few scents and remembrances from m’self, Lilith’s mom -
++ MOTHERHOOD 2016

O the mother’s joys!

The watching—the endurance—the precious love—the anguish—the patiently yielded life.

 

O the joy of increase, growth, recuperation;

The joy of soothing and pacifying—the joy of concord and harmony.

 

 

A LITTLE MORE TEA

In June, Lilith was cast as the Mad Hatter in her theater school’s production of Alice in Wonderland. Typecast much?

 

Lilith says that the Mad Hatter should smell like tea (“EARL GREY!”) with honey and cream and lots and lots of cookies.

 

 

BABY’S FIRST KRAMPUSLAUF

Lilith loves Krampus. She’s loved Krampus ever since she was a wee tiny thing, and every Christmas Eve, she leaves chocolate and beef jerky (long story!) for him alongside the cookies and milk she leaves out for Santa. Last December, Lilith attended her first Krampuslauf at ArtWalk in Downtown Los Angeles. She was overjoyed; she absolutely loves Krampus, and being surrounded by so much excitement (and the strange joy of so many scowling bestial faces, swishing switches, and baskets awaiting unruly children) literally swept her off of her feet. She loved the parade, she loved the costumes, and she believed with all her heart – even just for a moment, but maybe forever in her heart - that all of these hairy horned beasts were real. Her favorite Krampus – one she has known since she was a toddler – gave her a card that proclaimed that she was naughty and destined for the basket.

 

Of course, she treasures it.

 

Dark chocolate and a hint of woodsmoke.

 

 

CALDARIUM

Daughter of ægis-bearing Jove, divine,

Propitious to thy votaries’ prayer incline;

From thy great father’s fount supremely bright,

Like fire resounding, leaping into light.

Shield-bearing goddess, hear, to whom belong

A manly mind, and power to tame the strong!

Oh, sprung from matchless might, with joyful mind

Accept this hymn; benevolent and kind!

 

Lilith making an offering at the Temple of Sulis-Minerva in Bath, asking the goddess to take care of her family. I love you and your huge heart, Lilith.

 

Mulberry and honey myrtle with flax and rosemary.

 

 

CIRCUS BEAR

Damn everything but the circus! A scent for Tom and for Lilith, the Empress and the Hierophant at the carnival: rose, gardenia, styrax, and frankincense splattered with cotton candy and the white glop in the middle of Oreos.

 

 

CONENCTING FLIGHT

Achievement Unlocked: Baby's First Time Sleeping at an Airport

 

Lil is a born traveler. She has been easy to travel with - and eager to go new places! – ever since she hopped on her first plane at a little over a year old. While she’s not too fond of long car rides, she loves trains and /LOVES/ flying…

 

…and she really, really loves airports. She loves what it symbolizes to her, and she simply loves being there. She loves watching people go to and fro, wondering where they’re going and where they’re coming from. She loves stale airport croissants, overpriced souvenir stands, and questionable day-old airport bagels. She loves buying chewing gum and city-branded trinkets, and she loves riding her suitcase like a go-kart.

 

An ill-timed overnight stopover in Mexico City marked Lilith’s first time sleeping in an airport. Suffice to say, she takes to it better than either of her parents. She slept through sirens and loudspeakers, through beeping trams and rattling carts… all while Teddy and I sat bolt upright, zombified and staring.

 

I hope her love of travel never, ever wanes.

 

The distant scent of black coffee spiked with coffee liqueur and dusted with cinnamon.

 

 

THE DEVIL WILL FIND WORK FOR IDLE HANDS

Let’s be real: I just wanted an excuse to make a scent inspired by this photo. Lilith and I have incredibly similar senses of humor, full of fart jokes and gross outs and vulgarity. I love her belly laugh, I love how weird and surreal she is. I love that her jokes fall in a strange void somewhere between Harpo Marx, Deadpool, and Andy Kaufman with a huge helping of knock knock jokes that make no sense at all.

 

I love that she and I laugh at so many of the same things, and I love that she and I sometimes laugh together until we’re crying and cramping.

 

This scent is a ridiculous mélange of blue cotton candy, strawberry marshmallows, and whipped cream with sprinkles.

 

 

DINNERTIME AT THE DIVINER’S HUT

Passing the time tossing tarot while mom and dad make dinner.

 

Tomato leaf and frankincense.

 

 

FUNERARY PAPYRI

Lilith was incredibly disappointed that she wasn’t allowed to touch the Egyptian funerary texts at the British Museum.

 

Myrrh and papyrus reed with a smear of vanilla cream frosting.

 

GOOD MORNING, LONDON

A scent for my bed-headed September 2nd Virgos: lavender for Lilith and amber for Brian.

 

 

THE GREAT PYTHON SNAKE

This past March, Lilith played Kaa in a small kids’ production of the Jungle Book. The image here is from a test photo we took of her snakey makeup!

 

Lilith says that Kaa smells like the jungle, so for her and for the Great Python Snake, I’ve bottled an impenetrable canopy of thick, vine-draped trees, primeval flowers blooming in the shadows, and dark, wet earth that has not been touched by sunlight in a millennia.

 

 

HOLY TRINITY

GOOD FRIEND FOR JESUS SAKE FOREBEAR,

TO DIGG THE DVST ENCLOSED HERE.

BLESTE BE YE MAN YT SPARES THESE STONES,

AND CURSED BE HE YT MOVES MY BONES.

 

For years now, whenever Lilith is in a cemetery, she has felt compelled to leave little presents… flowers, beads, toys… graveside, especially at the graves of long-gone children. This moment was captured at the Collegiate Church of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, Stratford-upon-Avon, the site of Shakespeare’s baptism and burial.

 

Soft riverbank soil, winter daffodils, fog-damp grass, curled pondweed, and frankincense.

 

 

HEAVENLY SPARK

This spirit shall return to Him

Who gave its heavenly spark;

Yet think not, Sun, it shall be dim

When thou thyself art dark!

No! it shall live again, and shine

In bliss unknown to beams of thine,

By Him recall’d to breath,

Who captive led Captivity,

Who robb’d the grave of Victory,—

And took the sting from Death!

 

Lilith at Poet’s Corner, Westminster Abbey - one of my favorite places in the entirety of this earth. Piety and intrigue, succor and terror… stone walls and painted glass panels bearing witness to generations of poetry, pride, conquest, and despair: the echoes of the incense smoke of hundreds upon hundreds of years curling around roses and oak branches.

 

 

HEEL

This year, we brought a new baby to the house: Lilith’s little buddy, Pickle. In order for mom and dad to okay Lilith getting “her own” dog, she had to agree to train her, help bathe her, and care for her. Loving her was a given, and somehow Lilith foisted the dooky-removal duties back onto her father.

 

The scent of our backyard in summertime, the scent of Lilith trying to explain to Pickle how to heel correctly: honeysuckle, late summer jasmine, and mowed grass.

 

 

LA MILAGROSA

In life, she was Amelia Goyri de Adot. She was promised into a loveless betrothal, but through patience, guile, and the strength of her devotion, she was able to repeatedly postpone the marriage until the death of her father, upon which she was free to marry the man she truly loved. Tragically, her joy was short-lived: on May 3rd, 1903, both Amelia and her son died during childbirth, and she was laid to rest in the Havana’s sprawling necropolis with her son resting at her feet. Day after day, year after year, Amelia’s heartbroken husband visited their grave. He would knock three times, screaming, “Wake, Amelia! Wake!” In his grief, he could not bear to turn away from her, so when he was forced to leave by exhaustion or circumstance, he would walk backwards until he left the cemetery, always keeping his eyes on the grave of his wife and son. For seventeen years, he came to the grave daily, his heart wracked with anguish. Many years later, Amelia’s remains were exhumed, and witnesses saw that not only were the bodies perfectly preserved, but the infant child now rested in his mother’s arms: a miraculous symbol of eternal love.

 

To this day, pilgrims visit La Milagrosa to pray for her intercession, asking that she watch over, bless, and protect children and loving couples.

 

Lilith paying her respects at the tomb of La Milagrosa, Cementerio de Cristóbal Colón: clusters of mariposa and mahoe, sprays of black orchid, love’s red roses, and a thin drift of cigar smoke.

 

 

THE LIBRARY OF JOHN DEE

Last March, we took Lilith to the John Dee exhibit at the Royal College of Physicians in London. She loved it, especially the bits about his cryptography and the video presentation of his life and works.

I loved her loving it.

 

Truly, there’s little that warms an old occultist’s heart quite like holding her daughter’s hand while gazing at books salvaged from John Dee’s own library, or looking at our reflections – together – in Dee’s scrying mirror. Worn leather bindings, the dry crackle of ancient paper, styrax and onycha, frankincense, a drop of candle wax, and the barest fleck of dried Tudor roses.

 

 

LILITH & SEKHMET

Lilith introduced her plush Egyptian kitty, Goldenshine, to the goddess Sekhmet. She figured they’d get along great, both being cats n’all.

 

Blood wine and amber.

 

 

LILITH AND THE FOUR SONS OF HORUS

Rolling with her homies, profoundly jetlagged at the British Museum.

 

Golden honey and cassia.

 

 

LITTLE LADY FRANKENSTEIN

Lilith wants to keep her father’s brain in a jar after he dies so she can implant it into a robot body.

 

“This should smell like electricity and potions.”

 

I did my best, kid.

 

 

MOTHERHOOD

I love this kid. Oh lord, Lilith, you are my joy. You are silly and sagacious, loud and lovely, ridiculous, theatrical, and serene. You possess one of the kindest souls I have every known, and I am blessed by your compassion and your wisdom.

 

Snake Oil, lavender, bubblegum, and gummi bears.

 

 

MY LITTLE GROTESQUE

Lilith expressing herself at the V&A: cardamom-dusted cupcakes.

 

 

O THE JOY OF MY SPIRIT!

O to make the most jubilant poem!

Even to set off these, and merge with these, the carols of Death.

O full of music! full of manhood, womanhood, infancy!

Full of common employments! full of grain and trees.

 

O for the voices of animals! O for the swiftness and balance of fishes!

O for the dropping of rain-drops in a poem!

O for the sunshine, and motion of waves in a poem.

 

O the joy of my spirit! it is uncaged! it darts like lightning!

It is not enough to have this globe, or a certain time—

I will have thousands of globes, and all time.

 

Do I take this exact photo of you every year, Lilith? Always on a see-saw, always laughing with all your heart. You are the joy of my spirit, you are my most jubilant poem.

 

Crooked hazelnut and tonka with a touch of cacao and black pine.

 

 

OUTLAW

Last year, we spent a little time running around ghost towns in California. There was one that wasn’t quite a ghost town, but was… it was an Old West movie set that was abandoned. A ghost town of a ghost town? It was so peculiar, and so very California. The three of us made mini movies together in that odd ghost town until it got too cold to hold a camera. This photo isn’t from that trip, but it reminds me so strongly of our silly little films.

 

This one is for my little bandit: sarsaparilla, leather, and vanilla cream.

 

 

PERFECT FIFTHS

Every instrument she touches, she adores. If she had the money and the space, her bedroom would look like a basement storeroom at the philharmonic. I played violin as a child, so when I saw her waving that bow for the first time, my heart grew ten sizes.

 

Of course, she prefers the drums.

 

Bow rosin and bubblegum.

 

 

PLUSH VISCERA

This winter, Lilith tried her hand at embalming, thanks to the British Museum.

 

Lilith says this should smell like blood and guts, but also strawberries. We came to a compromise through a combination of Dragon’s blood resin, myrrh, and smushed strawberries with a little bit of lavender. She sprays lavender essential oil on her plushies every night before bed, so she thinks plush innards should get the same treatment.

 

 

REAPERS GONNA REAP

I was supposed to be representing Death for our June Gloom Victorian Mourning event, but the Little Grim Reaper kept stealing my scythe.

 

Lilith says this perfume should smell like “pretty meat bones”, and her translation of that is a musky vanilla sandalwood.

 

 

SAN CRISTÓBAL DE LA HABANA

Cuba’s white ginger blossoms, guava pulp, and mango with a touch of white tobacco and sea salt.

 

 

SPIDER WITCH

My little witch, my little lilt of laughter: this scent is for the sorceress you are and the sorceress you will grow to be. 7-year aged patchouli, red musk, and bourbon vanilla with sweet oudh, hazelnut, amber chypre, leather.

 

 

STONEHENGE AT DUSK

Several years ago, I went to Stonehenge for the very first time. Walking through the center of the stones was transformative, and watching the sun set behind the stones stole my breath like a cold dagger of joy plunged into my heart. Teddy and I wanted to share that moment – the feel of the place, the enigmatic majesty of the stones, the mist-shrouded history – with Lilith, so we took her there last March.

 

I cannot put into words what it felt like to watch her run and laugh through the standing stones, to watch her skip and laugh and dance through the shadows and sunsets of thousands upon thousands of years.

 

Wiltshire’s burnt-tip orchids, a scattering of dandelions, crushed grass, wild daffodil, and chips of fog-wet bluestone.

 

 

TEXARE

Lilith is already better at knitting than I am. A few weeks ago, we went to a knitting clinic together just to brush up a bit on our skills. Everything the instructor showed her… she took to immediately. I, on the other hand, had a bit more trouble. Actually, a lot more trouble. Arachne, I am not. Going to that class with her was amazingly fun, and watching her create brings me unbelievable amounts of delight. This scent is inspired by the colors of the yarns she chose that day: raspberry pink, cherry red, sky blue, and lime green, all swirled with frankincense, black oudh, mallow root, and sweet wooly vanilla husk.

 

 

THE TWELFTH

I believe that it’s important to commemorate important, pivotal moments in a child’s life, and 17 October 2015 marks the first time Lilith really experienced Doctor Who. The episode was “the Girl Who Died”, and we watched it in a hotel room in Seattle. Lilith has given many other Doctors a spin since that day, but by far her favorite is the Twelfth. This is the scent of room service vanilla ice cream and leftover cake with a little bit of banana.

 

 

VAMPIRE NIGHT AT THE MOVIES

An odd mix of salted popcorn, butter, clove, and a few drops of stage blood.

 

 

WAITING

Lilith at the window, waiting for her father. Raindrops and asphalt, lavender, pale musk, and white oudh.

 

 

THE WOLF AND THE RATTLESNAKE

When Lilith started becoming scared of monsters under the bed and shadows in the closet, we’d talk. I’d tell her that yes, there are monsters in the closet, but they’re there to watch over you. And yes, there are monsters under the bed, but they’re there to make sure you’re safe while you sleep. The stories grew and expanded, and at night, we’d say goodnight to the ghosts in the attic, the werewolves in the backyard, and the vampires in the basement. Sometimes, I’d forget our zombie friends, and Lilith would take offense on their behalf. We say good night to the bats in the trees, and we say goodnight to the ghost rats in the walls, and we tell stories about what they do during the day when she’s at school and I’m at work. So, at night, she’s snug in her bed, safe with all her monster friends.

 

But then she’d have nightmares about rattlesnakes or volcanos, and while I try to comfort her when she calls out, I know that there will always be something hiding -- for her, for all of us -- in darkened corners.. All we can do sometimes is reach out to one another and hold hands in the dark.

 

Lilith, there’s so much in the world that’s gloomy and thick with shadows. I can’t protect you from all of it, but the gods know I will try. I will do whatever I can to help you navigate the darkness, and I will be there holding whatever torches I can muster. You are brave and you are strong: you are the wolf, my werewolf, and I know with all my heart that you will always conquer your rattlesnakes.

 

Featured in this image: blood milk’s rattlesnake spine ring.

 

 

And at Black Phoenix Trading Post, a few words from Teddy -

Lilith’s seventh year was full of magic - some tragedy - and went by way too fast.

 

We shared the magic of London, Stonehenge, and Shakespeare, and grieved together over losing Pinkie the Tarantula and Bloop the Fish but though it all, we were together… and isn’t that all life is about?

 

Whether we were drinking a big blueberry slushie after her drama class, eating some pasta in London, or goofing around some big stones, it was one of the best years, and my heart is full of love for my little Beanz.

 

Lilith inspired me to be a better father by being the sweetest and funniest child I know.

 

I love her infinity.

 

My adventure with Lilith is just starting, and I can’t wait to see what comes next.

 

++ FATHERHOOD 2016

POISONED APPLE MARTINI

Which teetotaler dad ordered a martini just so his daughter could get the light up ice cube that came with it? Luckily, it was tasty and I didn’t fall into the Sleeping Death.

 

I would do almost anything to bring a smile to my Lilith.

 

Sour apple martinis!

 

 

THE SERPENTINE

Photographs, videos… they don't do justice to the love that I feel for my girl. The quiet of this moment was special. We weren't speaking; it was just a dad and his daughter together, enjoying the fleeting time of youth, and all was right in the world. I hope she remembers these special times when she looks back on her childhood. I know that I will never forget them.

 

Dorian, Lilith’s lavender, snowdrops, and soft vanilla.

 

 

THE GREAT LONDON SPAGHETTI HUNT

After a long day at the museum, Lilith was hungry and begging for pasta with butter. As her loving father, I searched and searched until I found a place that would stay open a wee bit longer so we could get some. This is the photo of her thanking me. I believe it is the best photo of us, and it makes me so happy.

 

Tiramisu and black coffee.

 

 

TAG-UPON-AVON

Doubt thou the stars are fire;

Doubt that the sun doth move;

Doubt truth to be a liar;

But never doubt I love.

 

Tag! Thou Art 't! Playing tag with Lilith on the banks of the Avon before taking her to see Hamlet was such a wonderful experience. She loved the play, and still talks about it to this day.

 

A distant whiff of clove smoke and pipe tobacco, black tea, and crumbs from tiny cakes.

 

 

GOOFIN’ AT STONEHENGE

We visit one of the most ancient sacred sites in the world and what do we do? We play tag among the stones and make silly faces. Why? Because we’re Barrials.

 

The chilly air of Wiltshire’s twilight in late winter, crushed grass, white musk, and Lilith’s lavender.

 

 

PLACES, EVERYONE

Watching Lilith light up on stage makes me so proud and happy that I have trouble not crying. I believe that I will fall over dead when she collects her Tony Award and thanks me for carrying her backpack all those days.

 

Icy berry slushie, bubblegum, and blue lollipops.

 

 

And also –

 

LIILTH’S HAIR GLOSS

Lavender, white musk, sweet hops, and a little French vanilla.


Lilith, we love you. Thank you for choosing us to be your parents.