SCIBLR

Azavath, Poland, 27 | B.A. in philosophy, M.A. in criminology, psychology student | criminology, psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, biology, medicine, cultural studies

[bluebeardsbride-archive]

“Base notes are the deepest, most mysterious, and oldest of all perfume ingredients. Every ancient culture used them—indeed, for centuries they were the essence of perfume—so when you work with them, you literally have ancient history in your hands. You hold the ingredients that camels carried along the spice routes and that Cleopatra mixed in her workshop. Sandalwood, for example, has been in continuous use for four thousand years; its soft, soothing scent made it an obvious choice for spiritual practices. Distilled sandalwood is said to have been used in Ceylon for embalming the corpses of native princes since the ninth century.”

—

Mandy Aftel, Essence and Alchemy: A Natural History of Perfume

[funeral]

Emil Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born

[michaelnordeman]

European Robin, rödhake, juvenile. Värmland, Sweden (22 June 2025).

[safije]

Skulls of men, women and children killed in Aztec ritual human sacrifice found in Mexico City.

[givemearmstopraywith]

Dorothee Sölle, "Mysticism, Liberation, and the Names of God: A Feminist Reflection"

[charnel-grounds]

“Hæresis dea”

— Anton Eisenhoit, 1589

[anxeious]

source

[bluebeardsbride-archive]

“As we know, flowers stand for passion and romance. The very word deflowered connotes initiation into sexual experience. Not only in their heady aromas—dramatic, intense, sweet (sometimes sickly sweet), even narcotic—but in their very form and coloration, flowers are sexy. I like an Indian poet’s description of a rose as like a “book of a hundred leaves unfolding,” but most comparisons are decidedly more erotic. A full-blown rose is like a voluptuous woman; orchids recall the vulva; flowers open and close like receptive female genitalia. So, not surprisingly, when people think of perfume, they think of flowers. And indeed, floral essences are among the most important perfume ingredients—and by far the most expensive. Flower absolutes are priced at up to eight thousand dollars a kilo—not that you would ever need so much.”

—

Mandy Aftel, Essence and Alchemy: A Natural History of Perfume

[for-science-sake]

[it-swims]

Butterfly snail (Limacina helicina)

[bluebeardsbride-archive]

“Fragrance, with your inexplicable way of making a flower’s essence as palpable as an animal’s by bombarding us with molecules more astonishing than electric ions, are you perhaps a function more of our minds than our bodies? The hypersensitive, exposed to your power, stagger, swoon as if from an illness. Though a lover cured of love may be able to confront his now harmless “ex” face-to-face without a qualm, let him breathe one whiff of the old familiar perfume and be blanches, eyes filling with tears. Because Asmodeus, god of lechery, enlists fragrance as his assistant, filling the night with lethal honeysuckle, unfailing acacia, wanton lime-blossom, to ravage hearts that remember and shatter ones that resist.”

— Collette, as quoted by Mandy Aftel in Essence and Alchemy: A Natural History of Perfume

[lux-tenebrae]

Stefan Zweig, Nietzsche, trans. Will Stone (Pushkin Press, 2021), 88.

[bluebeardsbride-archive]

“Our olfactory experiences thus institute a more or less continuous series of by-sensations accompanying us through life, of no great practical significance, but of considerable emotional significance from their variety, their intimacy, their associational facility, their remote ancestral reverberations, through our brains … It is the existence of these characteristics—at once so vague and so specific, so useless and so intimate—which led various writers to describe the sense of smell as, above all others, the sense of imagination. No sense has so strong a power of suggestion, the power of calling up ancient memories with a wider and deeper emotional reverberation, while at the same time no sense furnishes impressions which so easily change emotional color and tone, in harmony with the recipient’s general attitude. Odors are thus specially apt both to control the emotional life and to become its slaves.”

— Havelock Ellis, quoted by Mandy Aftel in Essence and Alchemy: A Natural History of Perfume

[ducissatenebrarum]

[xphaiea]

Khambala shamanistic mask, Udege tribe

[bluebeardsbride-archive]

“Frankincense is found in the bark of various small trees of the Boswellia species. In ancient times it was, without a doubt, the most important perfume substance. Pliny, whose Natural History contained much information about perfume and perfume materials, stated that it could be found only in Saba, a remote part of Arabia that was rendered almost inaccessible by mountains. Gathering it was a hereditary privilege limited to the men of certain families, who were considered sacred and were restricted by certain prohibitions. While making incisions in the trees and gathering the frankincense, the men were prohibited from having intercourse with women or attending funerals. The collected frankincense was brought by camel to the town of Sabota, where one gate was open for its reception; to turn from the road was prohibited under penalty of death. Until the priests had taken one-tenth of the lot for the god Sabin, sales were not allowed.”

—

Mandy Aftel, Essence and Alchemy: A Natural History of Perfume

[perpetualicontiger]

Warsaw Uprising, August 28, 1944: The Prudential Building stands amid the fighting after being struck by a massive 2-ton mortar shell. This photograph was taken from the roof of a building at Kopernika Street 28, capturing the devastation in the heart of Warsaw during the uprising.

[portalibis]

Bodleian Library MS. Ash. Rolls 52, George Ripley's alchemical roll, 16th century or 17th century

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