++ YULE 2011
AUTUMN AND WINTER 2011
Three months bade wane and wax the wintering moon
Between two dates of death, while men were fain
Yet of the living light that all too soon
Three months bade wane.

Cold autumn, wan with wrath of wind and rain,
Saw pass a soul sweet as the sovereign tune
That death smote silent when he smote again.

First went my friend, in life's mid light of noon,
Who loved the lord of music: then the strain
Whence earth was kindled like as heaven in June
Three months bade wane.

A herald soul before its master's flying
Touched by some few moons first the darkling goal
Where shades rose up to greet the shade, espying
A herald soul;

Shades of dead lords of music, who control
Men living by the might of men undying,
With strength of strains that make delight of dole.

The deep dense dust on death's dim threshold lying
Trembled with sense of kindling sound that stole
Through darkness, and the night gave ear, descrying
A herald soul.

One went before, one after, but so fast
They seem gone hence together, from the shore
Whence we now gaze: yet ere the mightier passed
One went before;

One whose whole heart of love, being set of yore
On that high joy which music lends us, cast
Light round him forth of music's radiant store.

Then went, while earth on winter glared aghast,
The mortal god he worshipped, through the door
Wherethrough so late, his lover to the last,
One went before.

A star had set an hour before the sun
Sank from the skies wherethrough his heart's pulse yet
Thrills audibly: but few took heed, or none,
A star had set.

All heaven rings back, sonorous with regret,
The deep dirge of the sunset: how should one
Soft star be missed in all the concourse met?

But, O sweet single heart whose work is done,
Whose songs are silent, how should I forget
That ere the sunset's fiery goal was won
A star had set?

Bitter currant and dry leaves. Winter wind at dusk.


CHANUKKIYAH 2011
Baruch ata Ado-nai, Elo-heinu Melech ha'olam, Asher kid'shanu b'mitzvosav v'tzivanu l'hadlik ner shel Chanukah.

Baruch ata Ado-nai, Elo-heinu Melech ha'olam, She'asah nisim la'avoseinu, bayamim ha'hem baz'man hazeh.

Baruch ata Ado-nai, Elo-heinu Melech ha'olam, She'hecheyanu, vekiyemanu vehigi'anu laz'man hazeh.


Olive oil, beeswax, glowing amber, sweet sufganiyot, pomegranate, and fig.

Ha'Neiros halalu anachnu madlikin al hanisim ve'al hanifla'os, ve'al hat'shu'os ve'al hamilchamos, sh'asisa la'avoseinu bayamim hahem baz'man hazeh, al yedei kohaneicha hakedoshim. Vechol sh'monas yemei Chanukah, haneiros halalu kodesh hem. Ve'ein lanu reshus le'hishtamesh ba'hem, eh'la lir'osam bilvad, ke'dei le'hodos u'lehalel leshimcha hagadol al nisecha ve'al nifle'osecha ve'al yeshu'oshecha.

Ma'oz tzur yeshu'asi Lecha na'eh leshabe'ach Tikone bais tefilasi Ve'sham todah nezabe'ach Le'es Tachin Mabe'ach Mitzar ham'nabe'ach Az egmor beshir mizmor Chanukas hamizbe'ach.


CLOTH OF GOLD
Vibrant yellow petals bursting exultantly through a patch of snow.


DIABLE EN BOÎTE 2011
The crickets sing, and man's o'er-labour'd sense
Repairs itself by rest. Our Tarquin thus
Did softly press the rushes, ere he waken'd
The chastity he wounded. Cytherea,
How bravely thou becomest thy bed, fresh lily,
And whiter than the sheets! That I might touch!
But kiss; one kiss! Rubies unparagon'd,
How dearly they do't! 'Tis her breathing that
Perfumes the chamber thus: the flame o' the taper
Bows toward her, and would under-peep her lids,
To see the enclosed lights, now canopied
Under these windows, white and azure laced
With blue of heaven's own tinct. But my design,
To note the chamber: I will write all down:
Such and such pictures; there the window; such
The adornment of her bed; the arras; figures,
Why, such and such; and the contents o' the story.
Ah, but some natural notes about her body,
Above ten thousand meaner moveables
Would testify, to enrich mine inventory.
O sleep, thou ape of death, lie dull upon her!
And be her sense but as a monument,
Thus in a chapel lying! Come off, come off:
As slippery as the Gordian knot was hard!
'Tis mine; and this will witness outwardly,
As strongly as the conscience does within,
To the madding of her lord. On her left breast
A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops
I' the bottom of a cowslip: here's a voucher,
Stronger than ever law could make: this secret
Will force him think I have pick'd the lock and ta'en
The treasure of her honour. No more. To what end?
Why should I write this down, that's riveted,
Screw'd to my memory? She hath been reading late
The tale of Tereus; here the leaf's turn'd down
Where Philomel gave up. I have enough:
To the trunk again, and shut the spring of it.
Swift, swift, you dragons of the night, that dawning
May bare the raven's eye! I lodge in fear;
Though this a heavenly angel, hell is here.
One, two, three: time, time!
- Iachimo, Cymbeline Act II, Scene 2

There are few things more disturbing than a Jack in the Box. A strangely sinister, unnerving holiday scent: redwood, bitter clove, tonka, hemp accord, and tobacco with peach blossom, black currant, and red musk.


DUST OF SNOW
The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

- Robert Frost

Snowflakes and hemlock leaves with snowdrop, iris, and Peruvian lily.


EGG NOG 2011
Sweet brandy, dark rum, heavy cream, sugar, and a dash of nutmeg.


FROST AT MIDNIGHT
The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry
Came loud—and hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings: save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
'Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,
With all the numberless goings-on of life,
Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;
Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,
Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,
Making it a companionable form,
Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit
By its own moods interprets, every where
Echo or mirror seeking of itself,
And makes a toy of Thought.

          But O! how oft,
How oft, at school, with most believing mind,
Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,
To watch that fluttering stranger! and as oft
With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt
Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower,
Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang
From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,
So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me
With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear
Most like articulate sounds of things to come!
So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,
Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!
And so I brooded all the following morn,
Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye
Fixed with mock study on my swimming book:
Save if the door half opened, and I snatched
A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,
For still I hoped to see the stranger's face,
Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,
My play-mate when we both were clothed alike!

     Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,
Fill up the intersperséd vacancies
And momentary pauses of the thought!
My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart
With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,
And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,
And in far other scenes! For I was reared
In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.
Great universal Teacher! he shall mould
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.


- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The liberating glory of nature, a celebration of wildness of spirit: fierce musk and immortelle, clary sage and oud, terebinth pine and ambrette seed, ivy and tobacco, honeysuckle and orange blossom.


GELT 2011
Sevivon, sov, sov, sov
Chanukah, hu chag tov
Chanukah, hu chag tov
Sevivon, sov, sov, sov!

Chag simcha hu la-am
Nes gadol haya sham
Nes gadol haya sham
Chag simcha hu la-am.

A bounty of chocolate coins! Dry cocoa and golden amber!


HALÔA 2011
Sacred to both Demeter and Dionysus, this is a celebration of the of the pruning of the vines, the first fermentation of the year's wine, and of the consecration of the next year's planting. The service was lead by the heterai and the Eleusinian Arkhontes, and began with the preparation of a banquet that honors Demeter's bounty and the fertility aspect of Dionysus with pudenda- and phallus-shaped cakes. After the preliminary feast, the magistrates departed, and the heterai held a second rite that consisted of copious wine consumption, ritual symbolic fornication, and formal offerings of incense, grain, and cakes to sacred statues of the deities and to clay images of genitalia. Finally, the magistrates and priests were permitted to rejoin the ritual. A Priest and Priestess bore torches that symbolizes Demeter and her daughter Persephone presided over the final ceremony, which culminated in the ultimate celebration of fertility: an orgy that lasted til dawn.

Wine grapes, pomegranate, myrrh, frankincense and olive leaf, and the warm scent of offertory cakes.


JACOB’S LADDER 2011
And Jacob went out from Beersheba, and went toward Haran.

And he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set; and he took of the stones of that place, and put them for his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep.

And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.

And, behold, the Lord stood above it, and said, I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed;

And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.

And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.

And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not.

And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.

The meeting of Heaven and Earth: golden amber, galbanum, benzoin, ambrette, rockrose, costus and tonka.


JÓLASVEINAR 2011
The Jólasveinar are the seventy-some offspring of Grýla and Leppalúði, an ogre couple with a taste for chomping naughty children. This impish brood delights in causing discomfort, sowing confusion, and all-out raising hell during the Yule season. Their names are indicative of their malicious intentions — Strap Loosener, Door Slammer, Window Peeper, Sausage Snatcher, Doorway Sniffer, Icebreaker — and their creepy natures — Lamp Shadow, Smoke Gulper, Crevice Imp. The devillish Jólasveinar finally cease their mischief and head for home at Þrettándinn.

Their scent is a mishmash of snow, dirt, Icelandic moss, marsh felwort, and the smushed petals of buttercups and moorland spotted orchids, with the barest hint of the scent of pilfered Christmas pastries.


LICK IT DISCREETLY
This year's minty double ententre! A sticky, chilly peppermint candy cane with sweet vanilla and an extra jolt of sugar.


MAISON EN PAIN D'ÉPICES
This is the scent of a freshly assembled gingerbread house, with swirls of multicolored icing, spice drop lights, meringue snow, pinwheel mint accents, chocolate roof tiles, candy wafer pavers, and jelly candy stained glass. We used a French translation for ‘gingerbread house’ as the name to make it sound fancier. French adds +40% Fancy!


MIDNIGHT MASS 2011
I will wash my hands among the innocent; and will compass thy altar, O Lord: That I may hear the voice of thy praise: and tell of all thy wondrous works. I have loved, O Lord, the beauty of thy house; and the place where thy glory dwelleth. Take not away my soul, O God, with the wicked: nor my life with bloody men: In whose hands are iniquities: their right hand is filled with gifts.

But as for me, I have walked in my innocence: redeem me, and have mercy on me. My foot hath stood in the direct way: in the churches I will bless thee, O Lord.

In Roman Catholic tradition, the Christmas season begins liturgically on Christmas Eve, though it is forbidden to celebrate the Christmas Mass before midnight. The most devout attend Midnight Mass, celebrating both the Eucharist and the drama of the Nativity.

This perfume is a traditional Roman Catholic sacramental incense, most often used during a Solemn Mass. Traditionally, five tears of this incense, each encased individually in wax that has been fashioned into the shape of a nail, are inserted into the paschal candle. This is, of course, represents the Five Wounds of Our Risen Savior. Symbolically, the burning of the incense signifies spiritual fervor, the fragrance itself inspires virtue, and the rising smoke carries our prayers to God.

Credo in unum Deum, Patrem omnipotentem, factorem caeli et terrae, visibilium omnium et invisibilium.

Et in unum Dominum Iesum Christum, Filium Dei unigenitum, et ex Patre natum ante omnia saecula. Deum de Deo, Lumen de Lumine, Deum verum de Deo vero, genitum non factum, consubstantialem Patri; per quem omnia facta sunt. Qui propter nos homines et propter nostram salutem descendit de caelis. Et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria Virgine, et homo factus est. Crucifixus etiam pro nobis sub Pontio Pilato, passus et sepultus est, et resurrexit tertia die, secundum Scripturas, et ascendit in caelum, sedet ad dexteram Patris. Et iterum venturus est cum gloria, iudicare vivos et mortuos, cuius regni non erit finis.

Et in Spiritum Sanctum, Dominum et vivificantem, qui ex Patre procedit. Qui cum Patre et Filio simul adoratur et conglorificatur: qui locutus est per prophetas. Et unam, sanctam, catholicam et apostolicam Ecclesiam. Confiteor unum baptisma in remissionem peccatorum. Et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum, et vitam venturi saeculi. Amen.


MIDWINTER’S EVE 2011
A melancholy, deep scent, poignant and brimming with nostalgia. The perfume of sugared plums over a breeze of winter flowers.


NOCHA BUENA 2011
A celebration of the Nativity: the light, uplifting incense of the Misa de Noche Buena, purple sage, and a vibrant bouquet of plumeria, chrysanthemum, tuberose, Angel's Trumpet, Mexican tiger lily, dahlia, and azucenas.


ÖNDURDIS
The Ski Lady, jötunn goddess of winter, bowhunting, mountains, and skiing. The scent of winter wind blowing over snow-capped mountains.


PEACOCK QUEEN 2011
In dramatic contrast to the soft innocence of Snow White and the dew-kissed freshness of her sister, Rose Red, this is a blood red, voluptuous rose, velvet-petaled, at the height of bloom. Haughty and imperious, vain, yet incomparably lovely to the eye, but thick with thorns of jealousy, pride and hatred.


PINK SNOWBALLS 2011
A lighthearted winter scent: chilly vanilla rose snowballs! Dainty, soft, and certainly unfit for flinging!


PUMPKIN MASALA ROOIBOS
Rooibos tea with red ginger, green cardamom, fennel, peppercorns, almond, and licorice, sweetened with coconut sugar and jaggery.


ROSE RED 2011
The perfected winter rose, dew covered and freshly cut.


SNOW WHITE 2011
A chilly, bright perfume: flurries of virgin snow, crisp winter wind and the faintest breath of night-blooming flowers.


SUGAR COOKIE 2011
The Devil's Bake Sale returns!


WINTER HEAVENS
Sharp is the night, but stars with frost alive
Leap off the rim of earth across the dome.
It is a night to make the heavens our home
More than the nest whereto apace we strive.
Lengths down our road each fir-tree seems a hive,
In swarms outrushing from the golden comb.
They waken waves of thoughts that burst to foam:
The living throb in me, the dead revive.
Yon mantle clothes us: there, past mortal breath,
Life glistens on the river of the death.
It folds us, flesh and dust; and have we knelt,
Or never knelt, or eyed as kine the springs
Of radiance, the radiance enrings:
And this is the soul's haven to have felt.

- George Meredith

Black midnight winter skies glittering with points of light: chill air, champaca flower, white musk, fir needle, papyrus reeds, and grey amber.


WOODS IN WINTER 2011
When winter winds are piercing chill,
And through the hawthorn blows the gale,
With solemn feet I tread the hill,
That overbrows the lonely vale.

O'er the bare upland, and away
Through the long reach of desert woods,
The embracing sunbeams chastely play,
And gladden these deep solitudes.

Where, twisted round the barren oak,
The summer vine in beauty clung,
And summer winds the stillness broke,
The crystal icicle is hung.

Where, from their frozen urns, mute springs
Pour out the river's gradual tide,
Shrilly the skater's iron rings,
And voices fill the woodland side.

Alas! how changed from the fair scene,
When birds sang out their mellow lay,
And winds were soft, and woods were green,
And the song ceased not with the day!

But still wild music is abroad,
Pale, desert woods! within your crowd;
And gathering winds, in hoarse accord,
Amid the vocal reeds pipe loud.

Chill airs and wintry winds! my ear
Has grown familiar with your song;
I hear it in the opening year,
I listen, and it cheers me long.

Wild hemlock and juniper berries scattered in the snow beneath leafless trees bedecked with glittering icicles.


YELLOW SNOWBALLS
Because I am very, very crass this year. Slushy white mint, vanilla cream, lemon drops, grapefruit, and yuzu!


YULE 2011
It is Yule, and the Holly King has slain the Oak: blood red holly berry, mistletoe, wild thyme, verbena, cinquefoil, hemp, winter rose, evergreen, frankincense, juniper, and myrrh.




Like one who, on a lonely road,
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And, having once turned round, walks on,
And turns no more on his head;
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.

- the Rime of the Ancient Mariner


++ FRANKENSTEIN
AMIABLE AND LOVELY CREATURES
Sometimes I allowed my thoughts, unchecked by reason, to ramble in the fields of Paradise, and dared to fancy amiable and lovely creatures sympathizing with my feelings and cheering my gloom; their angelic countenances breathed smiles of consolation. But it was all a dream; no Eve soothed my sorrows nor shared my thoughts; I was alone. I remembered Adam's supplication to his Creator. But where was mine? He had abandoned me, and in the bitterness of my heart I cursed him.

Amiable and lovely creatures: honey and rosewater with fig, patchouli, night-blooming jasmine, and white almond.


BEAUTIFUL AND ADORED
They consulted their village priest, and the result was that Elizabeth Lavenza became the inmate of my parents' house--my more than sister--the beautiful and adored companion of all my occupations and my pleasures.

Beautiful and adored: rose musk, white gardenia, English pear, vanilla bean, red currant, and honey.


A BLOT UPON THE EARTH
Of my creation and creator I was absolutely ignorant, but I knew that I possessed no money, no friends, no kind of property. I was, besides, endued with a figure hideously deformed and loathsome; I was not even of the same nature as man. I was more agile than they and could subsist upon coarser diet; I bore the extremes of heat and cold with less injury to my frame; my stature far exceeded theirs. When I looked around I saw and heard of none like me. Was I, then, a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled and whom all men disowned?

A blot upon the earth: black plum, Spanish moss, opoponax, davana, vetiver, and opium poppy.


BREATHLESS HORROR
I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart. Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room and continued a long time traversing my bed-chamber, unable to compose my mind to sleep. At length lassitude succeeded to the tumult I had before endured, and I threw myself on the bed in my clothes, endeavouring to seek a few moments of forgetfulness. But it was in vain; I slept, indeed, but I was disturbed by the wildest dreams. I thought I saw Elizabeth, in the bloom of health, walking in the streets of Ingolstadt. Delighted and surprised, I embraced her, but as I imprinted the first kiss on her lips, they became livid with the hue of death; her features appeared to change, and I thought that I held the corpse of my dead mother in my arms; a shroud enveloped her form, and I saw the grave-worms crawling in the folds of the flannel. I started from my sleep with horror; a cold dew covered my forehead, my teeth chattered, and every limb became convulsed; when, by the dim and yellow light of the moon, as it forced its way through the window shutters, I beheld the wretch --the miserable monster whom I had created. He held up the curtain of the bed; and his eyes, if eyes they may be called, were fixed on me. His jaws opened, and he muttered some inarticulate sounds, while a grin wrinkled his cheeks. He might have spoken, but I did not hear; one hand was stretched out, seemingly to detain me, but I escaped and rushed downstairs. I took refuge in the courtyard belonging to the house which I inhabited, where I remained during the rest of the night, walking up and down in the greatest agitation, listening attentively, catching and fearing each sound as if it were to announce the approach of the demoniacal corpse to which I had so miserably given life.

Breathless horror: icy white musk and thick olibanum with niaouli, carrot seed, white mint, and camphor.


A COMPANION OF THE SAME NATURE
"If you consent, neither you nor any other human being shall ever see us again: I will go to the vast wilds of South America. My food is not that of man; I do not destroy the lamb and the kid to glut my appetite; acorns and berries afford me sufficient nourishment. My companion will be of the same nature as myself, and will be content with the same fare. We shall make our bed of dried leaves; the sun will shine on us as on man, and will ripen our food. The picture I present to you is peaceful and human, and you must feel that you could deny it only in the wantonness of power and cruelty. Pitiless as you have been towards me, I now see compassion in your eyes; me seize the favourable moment, and persuade you to promise what. I so ardently desire."

A companion of the same nature: skin musk, red rose petals, mums, carnations, white linen, and sunlit amber on a bed of soft dry leaves.


THE COUNTRY OF ETERNAL LIGHT
I am already far north of London, and as I walk in the streets of Petersburgh, I feel a cold northern breeze play upon my cheeks, which braces my nerves and fills me with delight. Do you understand this feeling? This breeze, which has travelled from the regions towards which I am advancing, gives me a foretaste of those icy climes. Inspirited by this wind of promise, my daydreams become more fervent and vivid. I try in vain to be persuaded that the pole is the seat of frost and desolation; it ever presents itself to my imagination as the region of beauty and delight. There, Margaret, the sun is forever visible, its broad disk just skirting the horizon and diffusing a perpetual splendour. There -- for with your leave, my sister, I will put some trust in preceding navigators -- there snow and frost are banished; and, sailing over a calm sea, we may be wafted to a land surpassing in wonders and in beauty every region hitherto discovered on the habitable globe. Its productions and features may be without example, as the phenomena of the heavenly bodies undoubtedly are in those undiscovered solitudes. What may not be expected in a country of eternal light? I may there discover the wondrous power which attracts the needle and may regulate a thousand celestial observations that require only this voyage to render their seeming eccentricities consistent forever. I shall satiate my ardent curiosity with the sight of a part of the world never before visited, and may tread a land never before imprinted by the foot of man. These are my enticements, and they are sufficient to conquer all fear of danger or death and to induce me to commence this laborious voyage with the joy a child feels when he embarks in a little boat, with his holiday mates, on an expedition of discovery up his native river. But supposing all these conjectures to be false, you cannot contest the inestimable benefit which I shall confer on all mankind, to the last generation, by discovering a passage near the pole to those countries, to reach which at present so many months are requisite; or by ascertaining the secret of the magnet, which, if at all possible, can only be effected by an undertaking such as mine.

The country of eternal light: icy wind, depth hoar, and frost-limned lichen.


DAYS AND NIGHTS IN VAULTS AND CHARNEL HOUSES
Darkness had no effect upon my fancy, and a churchyard was to me merely the receptacle of bodies deprived of life, which, from being the seat of beauty and strength, had become food for the worm. Now I was led to examine the cause and progress of this decay and forced to spend days and nights in vaults and charnel-houses. My attention was fixed upon every object the most insupportable to the delicacy of the human feelings.

Days and nights in vaults and charnel houses: grave soil, necrophagous insect chitins, moss, mold, dried blood, rot, dirt-smeared wool, and sweat-drenched citrus lilac aftershave.


THE DEEPEST MYSTERIES OF CREATION
So much has been done, exclaimed the soul of Frankenstein-more, far more, will I achieve; treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation.

The deepest mysteries of creation: wild frankincense, rose otto, hyssop, and oude.


A DENSE AND FRIGHTFUL DARKNESS
The cup of life was poisoned forever; and although the sun shone upon me as upon the happy and gay of heart, I saw around me nothing but a dense and frightful darkness, penetrated by no light but the glimmer of two eyes that glared upon me. Sometimes they were the expressive eyes of Henry languishing in death, the dark orbs nearly covered by the lids, and the long black lashes that fringed them; sometimes it was the watery, clouded eyes of the monster as I first saw them in my chamber at Ingolstadt.

A dense and frightful darkness: black musk, vetiver, myrrh, opoponax, hemp, crushed sage, oakmoss, and tobacco.


A DREARY NIGHT OF NOVEMBER
It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.

How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful!--Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.

A dreary night of November: bone-white sandalwood, ink-black vetiver, Spanish moss, bitter clove, beeswax, and lotus root.


THE HORRORS OF MY SECRET TOIL
Who shall conceive the horrors of my secret toil as I dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave or tortured the living animal to animate the lifeless clay?

The horrors of my secret toil: vetiver and rose.


INEXTINGUISHABLE HATRED
"You are in the wrong," replied the fiend; "and instead of threatening, I am content to reason with you. I am malicious because I am miserable. Am I not shunned and hated by all mankind? You, my creator, would tear me to pieces and triumph; remember that, and tell me why I should pity man more than he pities me? You would not call it murder if you could precipitate me into one of those ice-rifts and destroy my frame, the work of your own hands. Shall I respect man when he condemns me? Let him live with me in the interchange of kindness, and instead of injury I would bestow every benefit upon him with tears of gratitude at his acceptance. But that cannot be; the human senses are insurmountable barriers to our union. Yet mine shall not be the submission of abject slavery. I will revenge my injuries; if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear, and chiefly towards you my archenemy, because my creator, do I swear inextinguishable hatred. Have a care; I will work at your destruction, nor finish until I desolate your heart, so that you shall curse the hour of your birth."

Inextinguishable hatred: red ginger and black opoponax with black pepper, stinging neroli, myrrh, and tobacco absolute.


INSUPPORTABLE MISERY
"Cursed, cursed creator! Why did I live? Why, in that instant, did I not extinguish the spark of existence which you had so wantonly bestowed? I know not; despair had not yet taken possession of me; my feelings were those of rage and revenge. I could with pleasure have destroyed the cottage and its inhabitants and have glutted myself with their shrieks and misery. "When night came I quitted my retreat and wandered in the wood; and now, no longer restrained by the fear of discovery, I gave vent to my anguish in fearful howlings. I was like a wild beast that had broken the toils, destroying the objects that obstructed me and ranging through the wood with a staglike swiftness. Oh! What a miserable night I passed! The cold stars shone in mockery, and the bare trees waved their branches above me; now and then the sweet voice of a bird burst forth amidst the universal stillness. All, save I, were at rest or in enjoyment; I, like the arch-fiend, bore a hell within me, and finding myself unsympathized with, wished to tear up the trees, spread havoc and destruction around me, and then to have sat down and enjoyed the ruin. "But this was a luxury of sensation that could not endure; I became fatigued with excess of bodily exertion and sank on the damp grass in the sick impotence of despair. There was none among the myriads of men that existed who would pity or assist me; and should I feel kindness towards my enemies? No; from that moment I declared everlasting war against the species, and more than all, against him who had formed me and sent me forth to this insupportable misery.

Insupportable misery: violet leaf, saffron, gunpowder tea, bruised lilac, and despairing lavender.


THE MOON GAZED ON MY MIDNIGHT LABOURS
These thoughts supported my spirits, while I pursued my undertaking with unremitting ardour. My cheek had grown pale with study, and my person had become emaciated with confinement. Sometimes, on the very brink of certainty, I failed; yet still I clung to the hope which the next day or the next hour might realise. One secret which I alone possessed was the hope to which I had dedicated myself; and the moon gazed on my midnight labours, while, with unrelaxed and breathless eagerness, I pursued nature to her hiding-places. Who shall conceive the horrors of my secret toil, as I dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave, or tortured the living animal to animate the lifeless clay? My limbs now tremble and my eyes swim with the remembrance; but then a resistless, and almost frantic, impulse urged me forward; I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit. It was indeed but a passing trance that only made me feel with renewed acuteness so soon as, the unnatural stimulus ceasing to operate, I had returned to my old habits.

The moon gazed on my midnight labours: Moroccan musk, black opium poppy, clove, and orris root.


MOCKING THE INVISIBLE WORLD WITH ITS OWN SHADOWS
After having made a few preparatory experiments, he concluded with a panegyric upon modern chemistry, the terms of which I shall never forget: "The ancient teachers of this science," said he, "promised impossibilities and performed nothing. The modern masters promise very little; they know that metals cannot be transmuted and that the elixir of life is a chimera but these philosophers, whose hands seem only made to dabble in dirt, and their eyes to pore over the microscope or crucible, have indeed performed miracles. They penetrate into the recesses of nature and show how she works in her hiding-places. They ascend into the heavens; they have discovered how the blood circulates, and the nature of the air we breathe. They have acquired new and almost unlimited powers; they can command the thunders of heaven, mimic the earthquake, and even mock the invisible world with its own shadows.

Mocking the invisible world with its own shadows: olibanum and murky ambergris accord with verbena, white sandalwood, and wisteria.


PALE STUDENT OF UNHALLOWED ARTS
I saw-with shut eyes, but acute mental vision-I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life and stir with an uneasy, half-vital motion. Frightful must it be, for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world.

A pale student of unhallowed arts: fading Georgian cologne and split O3 molecules.


PRIDE OF WISDOM
As I spoke, rage sparkled in my eyes; the magistrate was intimidated. "You are mistaken," said he. "I will exert myself, and if it is in my power to seize the monster, be assured that he shall suffer punishment proportionate to his crimes. But I fear, from what you have yourself described to be his properties, that this will prove impracticable; and thus, while every proper measure is pursued, you should make up your mind to disappointment." "That cannot be; but all that I can say will be of little avail. My revenge is of no moment to you; yet, while I allow it to be a vice, I confess that it is the devouring and only passion of my soul. My rage is unspeakable when I reflect that the murderer, whom I have turned loose upon society, still exists. You refuse my just demand; I have but one resource, and I devote myself, either in my life or death, to his destruction." I trembled with excess of agitation as I said this; there was a frenzy in my manner, and something, I doubt not, of that haughty fierceness which the martyrs of old are said to have possessed. But to a Genevan magistrate, whose mind was occupied by far other ideas than those of devotion and heroism, this elevation of mind had much the appearance of madness. He endeavoured to soothe me as a nurse does a child and reverted to my tale as the effects of delirium. "Man," I cried, "how ignorant art thou in thy pride of wisdom! Cease; you know not what it is you say."

The pride of wisdom: Roman chamomile, rosehips, ginseng, and fig.


THE REWARD OF MY BENEVOLENCE
"I was scarcely hid when a young girl came running towards the spot where I was concealed, laughing, as if she ran from someone in sport. She continued her course along the precipitous sides of the river, when suddenly her foot slipped, and she fell into the rapid stream. I rushed from my hiding-place and with extreme labour, from the force of the current, saved her and dragged her to shore. She was senseless, and I endeavoured by every means in my power to restore animation, when I was suddenly interrupted by the approach of a rustic, who was probably the person from whom she had playfully fled. On seeing me, he darted towards me, and tearing the girl from my arms, hastened towards the deeper parts of the wood. I followed speedily, I hardly knew why; but when the man saw me draw near, he aimed a gun, which he carried, at my body and fired. I sank to the ground, and my injurer, with increased swiftness, escaped into the wood. This was then the reward of my benevolence! I had saved a human being from destruction, and as a recompense I now writhed under the miserable pain of a wound which shattered the flesh and bone. The feelings of kindness and gentleness which I had entertained but a few moments before gave place to hellish rage and gnashing of teeth. Inflamed by pain, I vowed eternal hatred and vengeance to all mankind. But the agony of my wound overcame me; my pulses paused, and I fainted."

The reward of my benevolence: boneflower, olive blossom, white sandalwood, clary sage, Himalayan cedar, and oakmoss


SOLITARY AND ABHORRED
Another circumstance strengthened and confirmed these feelings. Soon after my arrival in the hovel I discovered some papers in the pocket of the dress which I had taken from your laboratory. At first I had neglected them, but now that I was able to decipher the characters in which they were written, I began to study them with diligence. It was your journal of the four months that preceded my creation. You minutely described in these papers every step you took in the progress of your work; this history was mingled with accounts of domestic occurrences. You doubtless recollect these papers. Here they are. Everything is related in them which bears reference to my accursed origin; the whole detail of that series of disgusting circumstances which produced it is set in view; the minutest description of my odious and loathsome person is given, in language which painted your own horrors and rendered mine indelible. I sickened as I read. `Hateful day when I received life!' I exclaimed in agony. `Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even YOU turned from me in disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemblance. Satan had his companions, fellow devils, to admire and encourage him, but I am solitary and abhorred.

Solitary and abhorred: carrot seed, East Indian patchouli, white tea, and peru balsam.


SORROWFUL AFFECTION
he appearance of Justine was calm. She was dressed in mourning, and her countenance, always engaging, was rendered, by the solemnity of her feelings, exquisitely beautiful. Yet she appeared confident in innocence and did not tremble, although gazed on and execrated by thousands, for all the kindness which her beauty might otherwise have excited was obliterated in the minds of the spectators by the imagination of the enormity she was supposed to have committed. She was tranquil, yet her tranquillity was evidently constrained; and as her confusion had before been adduced as a proof of her guilt, she worked up her mind to an appearance of courage. When she entered the court she threw her eyes round it and quickly discovered where we were seated. A tear seemed to dim her eye when she saw us, but she quickly recovered herself, and a look of sorrowful affection seemed to attest her utter guiltlessness.

Sorrowful affection: lily of the valley, tuberose, pink carnation, green tea absolute, orange zest, bourbon geranium, and blue musk.


TILL DEATH
Everyone loved Elizabeth. The passionate and almost reverential attachment with which all regarded her became, while I shared it, my pride and my delight. On the evening previous to her being brought to my home, my mother had said playfully, "I have a pretty present for my Victor--tomorrow he shall have it." And when, on the morrow, she presented Elizabeth to me as her promised gift, I, with childish seriousness, interpreted her words literally and looked upon Elizabeth as mine--mine to protect, love, and cherish. All praises bestowed on her I received as made to a possession of my own. We called each other familiarly by the name of cousin. No word, no expression could body forth the kind of relation in which she stood to me--my more than sister, since till death she was to be mine only.

Till death: white rose, black locust blossom, French magnolia, globe amaranth, iris root, and honeysuckle.


A TORRENT OF LIGHT
When I found so astonishing a power placed within my hands, I hesitated a long time concerning the manner in which I should employ it. Although I possessed the capacity of bestowing animation, yet to prepare a frame for the reception of it, with all its intricacies of fibres, muscles, and veins, still remained a work of inconceivable difficulty and labour. I doubted at first whether I should attempt the creation of a being like myself, or one of simpler organisation; but my imagination was too much exalted by my first success to permit me to doubt of my ability to give life to an animal as complex and wonderful as man. The materials at present within my command hardly appeared adequate to so arduous an undertaking; but I doubted not that I should ultimately succeed. I prepared myself for a multitude of reverses; my operations might be incessantly baffled, and at last my work be imperfect: yet, when I considered the improvement which every day takes place in science and mechanics, I was encouraged to hope my present attempts would at least lay the foundations of future success. Nor could I consider the magnitude and complexity of my plan as any argument of its impracticability. It was with these feelings that I began the creation of a human being. As the minuteness of the parts formed a great hinderance to my speed, I resolved, contrary to my first intention, to make the being of a gigantic stature; that is to say, about eight feet in height, and proportionably large. After having formed this determination, and having spent some months in successfully collecting and arranging my materials, I began.

No one can conceive the variety of feelings which bore me onwards, like a hurricane, in the first enthusiasm of success. Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world. A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs. Pursuing these reflections, I thought, that if I could bestow animation upon lifeless matter, I might in process of time (although I now found it impossible) renew life where death had apparently devoted the body to corruption.

A torrent of light: eucalyptus petals, white mint, white amber, and ozone.


WORKSHOP OF FILTHY CREATION
I collected bones from charnel-houses and disturbed, with profane fingers, the tremendous secrets of the human frame. In a solitary chamber, or rather cell, at the top of the house, and separated from all the other apartments by a gallery and staircase, I kept my workshop of filthy creation; my eyeballs were starting from their sockets in attending to the details of my employment. The dissecting room and the slaughter-house furnished many of my materials; and often did my human nature turn with loathing from my occupation, whilst, still urged on by an eagerness which perpetually increased, I brought my work near to a conclusion.

The workshop of filthy creation: electricity-scarred cypress beams, ancient stone slabs, damp metal, the coppery tang of coagulating blood, and ozone.





++THE LITTLE MATCH GIRL
THE LAST EVENING OF THE YEAR
Most terribly cold it was; it snowed, and was nearly quite dark, and evening-- the last evening of the year. In this cold and darkness there went along the street a poor little girl, bareheaded, and with naked feet. When she left home she had slippers on, it is true; but what was the good of that? They were very large slippers, which her mother had hitherto worn; so large were they; and the poor little thing lost them as she scuffled away across the street, because of two carriages that rolled by dreadfully fast.

Snow settling on cold skin, tea rose petals, and dusty, threadbare linen.


COLDER AND COLDER
In a corner formed by two houses, of which one advanced more than the other, she seated herself down and cowered together. Her little feet she had drawn close up to her, but she grew colder and colder, and to go home she did not venture, for she had not sold any matches and could not bring a farthing of money: from her father she would certainly get blows, and at home it was cold too, for above her she had only the roof, through which the wind whistled, even though the largest cracks were stopped up with straw and rags.

Peppermint, spearmint, white musk, and elemi settling into a deepening darkness.


A WONDERFUL LIGHT
Her little hands were almost numbed with cold. Oh! a match might afford her a world of comfort, if she only dared take a single one out of the bundle, draw it against the wall, and warm her fingers by it. She drew one out. "Rischt!" how it blazed, how it burnt! It was a warm, bright flame, like a candle, as she held her hands over it: it was a wonderful light. It seemed really to the little maiden as though she were sitting before a large iron stove, with burnished brass feet and a brass ornament at top. The fire burned with such blessed influence; it warmed so delightfully.

Three radiant ambers with honey, linden blossom, bourbon vanilla, and orange zest.


THE MOST MAGNIFICENT CHRISTMAS TREE
She lighted another match. Now there she was sitting under the most magnificent Christmas tree: it was still larger, and more decorated than the one which she had seen through the glass door in the rich merchant's house.

Spruce pine with hints of silver birch and warm, dark woods.


THOUSANDS OF LIGHTS
Thousands of lights were burning on the green branches, and gaily-colored pictures, such as she had seen in the shop-windows, looked down upon her. The little maiden stretched out her hands towards them when--the match went out. The lights of the Christmas tree rose higher and higher, she saw them now as stars in heaven; one fell down and formed a long trail of fire.

Indian ambrette seed, beeswax, champaca flower, saffron, Italian bergamot, frankincense, oak bark, and vanilla orchid.


IN BRIGHTNESS AND IN JOY
"Grandmother!" cried the little one. "Oh, take me with you! You go away when the match burns out; you vanish like the warm stove, like the delicious roast goose, and like the magnificent Christmas tree!" And she rubbed the whole bundle of matches quickly against the wall, for she wanted to be quite sure of keeping her grandmother near her. And the matches gave such a brilliant light that it was brighter than at noon-day: never formerly had the grandmother been so beautiful and so tall. She took the little maiden, on her arm, and both flew in brightness and in joy so high, so very high, and then above was neither cold, nor hunger, nor anxiety--they were with God.

Divine mercy: sweet winter berry, orange blossom, frankincense, golden sandalwood, angel's trumpet, and red rose.


THE COLD HOUR OF DAWN
But in the corner, at the cold hour of dawn, sat the poor girl, with rosy cheeks and with a smiling mouth, leaning against the wall--frozen to death on the last evening of the old year.

Esprit de eucalyptus, blue musk, davana, frosty iris, and tagetes.

Halloweenies at both the Lab and the Trading Post have been extended another month. Yules will hang around until February 2012.

Joyous Holidays to you all!





Beaver Moon is rising at Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab and Black Phoenix Trading Post!

Also new this month —

++ LIMITED EDITION
LOI KRATHONG
วัน เพ็ญ เดือน สิบสอง
น้ำ ก็ นอง เต็ม ตลิ่ง
เรา ทั้ง หลาย ชาย หญิง สนุก กัน จริง วัน ลอย กระทง
ลอย ลอย กระทง, ลอย ลอย กระทง
ลอย ลอย กระทง กัน แล้ว ขอ เชิญ น้อง แก้ว ออก มา รำวง
รำวง วัน ลอย กระทง, รำวง วัน ลอย กระทง
บุญ จะ ส่ง ให้ เรา สุข ใจ, บุญ จะ ส่ง ให้ เรา สุข ใจ

The Festival of Lights! On the evening of the twelfth full moon of the Dai calendar, small lotus-shaped offering boats are released out to the rivers and canals of Thailand, carrying prayers and wishes out into the waters. It is a preparation for renewal, and a time for releasing and banishing the darker parts of ourselves.

Banana leaves, betel nuts, coconut bark, spider lilies, candle wax, and incense.


The first incarnation of Lady Death comes to Black Phoenix!

++ LADY DEATH
Set in medieval times, Lady Death is the story of Hope, a woman who renounces her humanity to save her mother’s soul from evil forces in the darkest domain. Through insurmountable trials, she’s forged into Lady Death: a brutal, rebel warrior who rallies the downtrodden and topples once unstoppable kings.

LADY DEATH: SAVAGE
Lady Death in all her savage glory: an unrelenting supernatural warrior witch!

White musk, grey amber, Calabrian bergamot, vanilla absolute, French labdanum, styrax, wormwood, caraway, and bois de jasmin.


Batty is coming to Dark Delicacies!
++ DARK DELICACIES

BATTY
This year’s Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab Halloween scent for Dark Delicacies! Dark and fuzzy, yet also dapper and debonair! If Fred Astaire was a werebat, he’d totally smell like this: dark chocolate, black oudh, tonka absolute, cassia, white oleander, sandalwood, and free-tailed bat musk. Artwork by Manda Lander!

Batty will be available on the Dark Delicacies site. If you purchase Batty at Dark Del’s brick and mortar shop in-person, you will receive a free aristobat holiday ornament while supplies last!


Halloween: Montreal is available at Pretty Indulgent!
++ PRETTY INDULGENT
HALLOWEEN: MONTREAL
When Halloween comes to Montreal, winter doesn’t lag far behind. Trick–or–treating is done in mad, giddy dashes between houses, an exhilarated rush in the darkness. The air is crisp, sometimes biting, and more than one toddler waddles through the eve, bundled in a snowsuit beneath their inevitably rotund costumes. Chimney smoke and woodstove fires, and all the classic scents of Halloween – loads of candy, leaves, cold earth, smashed pumpkins left over from Mat Night’s debauchery – are sharp and clear in the frosty air.
– Maggie Stepien

La fumée de cheminée et toutes les odeurs de l’Halloween – bonbons en masse, feuilles mortes, terre gelée, citrouilles écrasées – parfument l’air glacial.

http://www.prettyindulgent.com/products/halloween-montreal-perfume



And that’s that while we prep for Yule!




Updated 1 October 2011:

Gloriously ghoulish artwork by Julie Dillon!

• The Harpy Celaeno
• Elli's Song
• Captain Cully
• Magic, Do As You Will
• The Amorous Tree
• Schmendrick
• Molly Grue

Coming soon!

Artwork by Julie Dillon.


And also --
WINTER SOLSTICE LUNAR ECLIPSE
Thy shadow, Earth, from Pole to Central Sea,
Now steals along upon the Moon's meek shine
In even monochrome and curving line
Of imperturbable serenity.

How shall I link such sun-cast symmetry
With the torn troubled form I know as thine,
That profile, placid as a brow divine,
With continents of moil and misery?

And can immense Mortality but throw
So small a shade, and Heaven's high human scheme
Be hemmed within the coasts yon arc implies?

Is such the stellar gauge of earthly show,
Nation at war with nation, brains that teem,
Heroes, and women fairer than the skies?

On December 21st, the longest night of 2010, a total lunar eclipse will occur. There will be seventy-two minutes of glorious totality while the moon is enveloped in a cloak of luminous, blood-tinged amber. Totality will begin at 11:41 pm Black Phoenix Standard Time.

If this isn't a magical night, I don't know what is.

A voluptuous and brittle blend of lunar oils and white chypre shimmering with darkly glowing red musk, golden amber, black currant, patchouli, rose peppercorn, blackberry, ylang ylang, and daemonorops astride Yuletide's holly berry, white pine, winter rose, and myrrh.



Plus, a little something for bpal.org forum members -

WILF
…because vampires aren't the only supernatural beings worthy of our amorous attentions.

Warm fur coupled with red and black musk, vanilla bean, patchouli, champaca flower, juniper berry, chocolate peppermint, frangipani, browned sandalwood, ferntop ash resin, and massoia bark.

Love and gratitude to Stephen Huang for the inspiration and for blessing us with his adorable, whimsical artwork!

- - -

Some recaps of recent announcements —

A KISS FROM KRAMPUS!
Ein Kuss Von Krampus and a few other seasonally-appropriate spooky Black Phoenix Yule scents are still available on the Dark Delicacies web site!

EIN KUSS VON KRAMPUS SCENT
Ein Kuss Von Krampus - A kiss from Krampus! Willow and beechwood branches, Austrian chocolate, fresh Alpine milk, with paprika, horseradish, black pepper, juniper, mustard seed, and caraway. Goes on like candy, but morphs into a reedy, bittersweet spiced cocoa.

CRIMSON CHRISTMAS
Have you been bad or good? Santa has sharpened his candy canes, and he's got his eye on you! Gore-splattered snow, chimney smoke, and bloody, broken peppermint sweets.

INVASION OF THE FLESH-EATING REINDEER FROM URANUS
Trampled gingerbread cookies, scattered rum balls, and indestructible, rock-hard fruitcake and a gargantuan squirt of musk.


Dark Delicacies will be offering 10% off of all of their in-house items during the night of BPAL's December Will Call!

- - -

* The Miller's Daughter (Marchen) and VILF (Vampires Don't Sleep Alone) have been discontinued, effective immediately. Pending orders will still be filled, but we do not have enough stock to accept new orders for these scents. We are hopeful that The Miller's Daughter will be able to return in early 2011.

* Happy Mercury Retrograde! Twilight Alchemy Lab's email is currently down. If you need to order, have a question, or have placed an order in the past few days that hasn't shipped yet, please email wickedgoddess @ blackphoenixalchemylab.com and she will take care of you over there.

* Friday (December 10th) was the last day to submit domestic orders for Christmas delivery. We will get orders placed after December 10th out as quickly as possible.

- - -

On December 21, we will have our last Will Call of 2010, and it feature the return of themed Will Calls!

The theme for this Will Call is Santa vs. Krampus. Dress up if you are feeling festive!

Just in time for your holiday celebrations we will have five exclusive scents available only at the three Will Call events!

* Champagne and Party Hats
* Champagne and Absinthe
* Champagne and Opium
* Pink Champagne
* Sparkling Apple Cider

Champagne scents are $20 each and only available at Will Call, while supplies last. Supplies are limited and no preorders will be accepted for these items.

- - -

All three Will Call locations will also be hosting a toy drive for Toys for Tots. Everyone who brings a toy ($10 value or higher, please) will receive a 5ml of Mitzvah Goreret Mitzvah.

MITZVAH GORERET MITZVAH
Kindness begets kindness. Holy hyssop, red apple, massoia bark, and pomegranate with eight different types of honey that represent the sweetness of life and new beginnings.

Additionally, at West Coast Will Call only, Black Phoenix Trading Post will be hosting a soap drive for Clean the World. Bring in soap and get a small spritzer bottle of Hispaniola Extrait.

HISPANIOLA
Brilliant in thy grand hemisphere
The marshaled host of Heaven appear,
Whence evening's star, unclouded and serene,
Emits afar her sparkling rays
Where e'er the nightly traveller strays,
And on his pathway sheds her silvery sheen.

Though silent when all creatures shun
The fierce blaze of the mid-day sun,
Myriads of insects walk abroad at night;
And when cool dews from Heaven descend,
The air with gladsome voices rend,
And hail the star-bright beams of milder light.

Bay rum, coconut, wild olive, avocado, bitterwood, sugar cane syrup, muskwood, Creolean pine, lime rind, cacao, and West Indian cedar.

Black Phoenix Trading Post will also donate the cost of shipping the soaps to the Clean the World headquarters in Orlando, Florida.

- - -

The west coast will call event will be held on Tuesday, December 21st, from 7 to 10pm at Dark Delicacies.

Dark Delicacies
3512 W. Magnolia Blvd
(1 block east of Hollywood Way)
Burbank, CA 91505

- - -

GA Will Call will be at Whole Foods Market, aka Harry's Farmer's Market, in Roswell, GA, on Tuesday, December 21st, from 5:30 to 8:30pm, inside Salud (which is inside the store.)

Whole Foods Market is located at 1180 Upper Hembree Road, Roswell, GA, 30076.

Whole Foods accepts Visa, Master Card, Discover, American Express and cash. They will not be able to accept any preorders.

- - -

Seattle Will Call will be held on Tuesday, December 21st from 7:30 to 10:30pm at Knows Perfume.

knows perfume
4536 California Ave, SW
Seattle, WA 98116
(206) 397-3141

- - -

The blends that will be available for purchase include those that went live on the Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab website up to and including the Cold Moon update. Forum only scents will not be available at Will Call.

We will no longer be accepting preorders at West Coast Will Call, with the exception of orders paid with Paypal, and orders for Twilight Alchemy Lab oils. We will do our best to accommodate all orders, but sales will be based on availability. At this time, Twilight Alchemy Lab oils will only be available at Dark Delicacies via preorder. Items from Black Phoenix Trading Post will be available at Dark Delicacies, subject to stock on hand.

If you have any questions, please email us at willcall @ blackphoenixalchemylab . com.

- - -

The beginning of 2011 will see a handful of d20's, the building blocks of the universe, tarot cards both old and new, smoke and mirrors, madness in the Salon, ancient alchemists, bewitching bath brews, a game of love and lust, a sojourn to the Miskatonic Valley, February Filth, another installation of Last Unicorn scents, and so very much more. Also in the early months of 2011 - a new Will Call location! Please check the Black Phoenix Gazette often for details. Other ways of staying in touch:

" Join our mailing list.
" Participate in the bpal.org forum.
" Follow us on Twitter.
" Say hello on Facebook.

- - -

Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab and Black Phoenix Trading Post wish all of our beloved clients, friends, and loved ones a new year free from grief, care, and melancholy. Here's to 2011 bringing bright blessings and limitless light to us all.





From the 8 December 2010 update:

The Miller's Daughter (Marchen) and VILF (Vampires Don't Sleep Alone) have been discontinued, effective immediately. Pending orders will still be filled, but we do not have enough stock to accept new orders for these scents.

Updated 24 November 2010:

For both Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab and Black Phoenix Trading Post, the cutoff dates for Christmas shipping are as follows:

Domestic: December 10
International: December 5

Please do not wait until the last minute to place your orders. We will do everything we can to get every order placed by these dates out in time for Christmas Eve delivery, but we cannot make any guarantees.

Our etsy shop will be going on hiatus starting on December 1.

Thanks everyone, and happy holidays!



Updated 17 November 2010:

Happy birthday, BPAL! Every year I attempt to put my gratitude into words, and it never seems to be enough. It's almost impossible to convey how thankful I am for everyone that makes Black Phoenix possible, from our customers to my coworkers and business associates, but I will try…

Thank you to my brother and partner, Brian, the mastermind behind Black Phoenix's Production Department. I love you, dearest brother. Your dedication and compassion helped to form the company's foundation, and your strength and clarity of purpose propel us forward. Without you, Black Phoenix is idea without form. You are the greatest of brothers, and I love you.

Thank you to my husband, Ted. You are my love and my inspiration. Lord, how I love you. Thank you for everything you do… for your kindness, your wit, and your dedication to your work. You are a truly great man, and I am honored beyond words to be your wife and your business associate. I adore you.

Thank you, Kathy, my right hand woman. Thank you for being a wonderful friend, and thank you for always being there for me. You handle every bump in the road with dignity, strength, and grace, and I am eternally grateful for your friendship. I love you!

Thank you, Jacquelynn, BPAL's General Manager. You are phenomenal, and we adore you!

Thank you to Bill, our patron saint of customer service. You are an amazing man, and I love you!

Thank you to Will, Piolet, and Norman, our production staff, for their dedication, perseverance, and hard work. You guys enable us to share our creations, and I am truly grateful for everything you do.

Thank you to the mods and administrators of bpal.org for being the most amazing, wonderful friends I could imagine. Modding the forum is no small task, and it is often a thankless one. I cannot thank you all enough for the hard work and love that you put into the forum. Thank you for being my dearest sisters, and for lending me strength during difficult times. You are all fuckin' amazing people, and I love you.

Thank you to Sue and Del at Dark Delicacies for giving BPAL a home away from home, for always being there for us, and for being the best goddamn grandparents a Little Demoness could ask for. We love you!

Thank you to the artists that work with us — Adam Hughes, Jennifer Williamson, Alicia Dabney, Julie Dillon, Madame Talbot, Quique Alcatena, Jennifer Rodgers, Manda Lander, and Sarah Coleman, for bringing our scents to life!

A huge thank you to Lisa and the crew at Whole Foods in Roswell, GA and Christen Cottam at knows perfume for giving their all to make the Dirty South and Pacific Northwest will calls happen!

Thank you to the Mütter Museum, knows perfume, Whole Foods, Urban Outfitters, Pretty Indulgent, and Healthy Living for giving our products a home in your stores!

Thank you to the bloggers, journalists, magazines, and other media outlets that have shown interest in Black Phoenix, and have taken the time to do writeups on our shops! Thank you for your time and energy; it means the world to us!

Thank you to Neil Gaiman for affecting me like no other author, for being such a supportive friend, and for allowing me the pleasure of interpreting your beautiful, witty, soul-moving stories through scent.

Thank you to Peter S Beagle, Amanda Palmer, Terry Pratchett, Terry Moore, Mike and Christine Mignola, George Perez, Peter David, Molly Crabapple, Mark Waid, Storm Constantine, Ross Ritchie, Jill Thompson, Brian Pulido, Joseph Michael Linsner, Eva Hopkins, and Gris Grimly for giving us such all such joy through the beauty of your art, and for giving Black Phoenix the opportunity to interpret your work.

Thank you to the kind people at the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and the Hero Initiative. You help those who cannot help themselves, and you are an inspiration to us all.

Many thanks to Mark Waid, Ross Richie, Chip Mosher, and Kate the Shark for inviting us to participate in the Irredeemable 1st birthday party at Challenger Comics in Chicago.

Much love and thanks to Charles Brownstein for inviting us to be a part of "An Evening with Neil Gaiman" at C2E2.

Much thanks to Pop Culture 2 and Reggie's Rock Club for hosting our meet n sniff in Chicago!

Huge thanks to Geek Girl Diva, Connor Cochran, Susan Auger, Filip Sablik and the rest of the crew at Top Cow, and Mariah Huehner and Chris Ryall at IDW for helping us get new projects moving!

And finally...

Thank you to our extended family: our clients. Thank you for being there with us and for us throughout these past eight years. Thank you for sharing our joy and for standing with us during difficult times. The family that has grown around BPAL is like no other in the world. Every time I wander into the forum, I see people supporting one another in times of need, showing selfless kindness and offering support to one another… to me, you all are models of emotional generosity and true friendship, and it is truly an honor to be a part of your lives. I cannot express my gratitude enough. Thank you for celebrating the beauty of living with us, and for holding our hands during times of stress and sorrow. This year has been turbulent for just about everyone we know. It's been a hard year filled with challenges and hidden lessons, but none of it is insurmountable because we all have this tremendous, genuinely loving family. Thank you.

Somehow making our anniversary post always makes me cry. Without further ado… the new shit:

COLD MOON 2010
The Full Moon that shines over the frost-rimed heart of winter. Traditional lunar oils combined with glittering snow flowers, soft breezes and frozen ferns.

Artwork by Julie Dillon.

The Cold Moon perfume and tee will be live until Tuesday, November 23, 2010.



The world is in tumult, and we are all experiencing a time of transformative change. For our anniversary this year, we are exploring the phoenix as it moves through the seasons, through its cycle of death and rebirth.

++THE SEASONAL PHOENIXES
THE PHOENIX IN SPRING
Newborn, with flecks of myrrh still dusting its wings, the Phoenix emerges: dandelion florets, cherry blossom, spring wildflowers, and myrrh.

THE PHOENIX IN SUMMER
The Phoenix soars through a summer thunderstorm: Nepalese amber, galangal, red musk, saffron, ozone, and the scent of hot rain striking pavement.

THE PHOENIX IN AUTUMN
Through swirling winds, the Phoenix restlessly wanders: dry leaves, Indonesian patchouli, coffee bean, twining ivy, teak, hyssop, and tonka.

THE PHOENIX IN WINTER
Blood and fire illuminate the darkness of winter: daemonorops, holly berries, and juniper berries in a snowdrift.



++THE NUTCRACKER: ACT 3
THE KINGDOM OF SWEETS
An empire of jellybeans, rock candy, sours, lollipops, gumdrops, peppermint sticks, held together by taffy mortar.

SUGAR PLUM FAIRY
Queen of the Kingdom of Sweets: sugar plums, vanilla-infused sugar, tiare, amber musk, apricot peel, and a light dusting of cacao.

MOTHER GINGER
From beneath her skirts emerge eight gingerbread children: gingerbread, French vanilla, sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, and marshmallow cream.

+ Divertissment
THE SPANISH DANCE
Chocolate, orange blossom honey, and pomegranate.

THE ARABIAN DANCE
Leather, coffee, hazelnut, tobacco, and Middle Eastern spices.

THE CHINESE DANCE
Green and black tea, King mandarin, violet, blackcurrant, and wormwood.

THE RUSSIAN DANCE
Florentine iris, black tea, labdanum, patchouli, champaca flower, benzoin, and ambergris.

DANCE OF THE MIRLITONS
Marzipan, Burmese rosewood, white sandalwood, Somalian rose, tonka bean, rum accord, and white musk.

THE WALTZ OF THE FLOWERS
White musk, Madonna lily, jasmine sambac, ylang ylang, bourbon vanilla, and clove.

VALSE FINALE ET APOTHÉOSE
The return journey: three honeys, white mint, and apple blossom.



++YULE
MIDWINTER'S EVE 2010
A melancholy, deep scent, poignant and brimming with nostalgia. The perfume of sugared plums over a breeze of winter flowers.



And last but not least, Black Phoenix presents Heroine, the first scent created specifically for the Hero Initiative, with label art by the fabulous Adam Hughes!

HEROINE
Nepalese amber, East African patchouli, dark musk, apple blossom, petitgrain, aged leather, skin musk, and rhubarb.

Proceeds from every bottle of Heroine sold go to the Hero Initiative, the first federally recognized not-for-profit organization dedicated to helping comic book creators, writers and artists in need. Founded in late 2000 by a consortium of comic book and trade publishers including Marvel Comics, Image Comics, Dark Horse Comics, Wizard Entertainment, CrossGen Comics and Dynamic Forces Inc., the 501(c)(3) charity aims to assist comic creators with health, medical, and quality-of-life assistance.



Things are stirring over at the Trading Post as well!

+ IMP BAGS $16
* SACK OF SWITCHES
Fern Frost
Strawberry Lemon Drop Candy Cane
Sweet Winter Berry Ale

* BAG OF COAL
Chocolate Espresso Gingerbread
Kourabiedes
Shortbread Snowflakes


+ MASSAGE OIL
4oz $20.00

HOLIDAY JOY
Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough. — Emily Dickinson

Clary sage, peppermint, blood orange, lavender, geranium, juniper berry, bay laurel, King mandarin, and opoponax.

Almond oil, refined rice bran oil, fractionated coconut, rosehip seed oil, Citrus aurantium subspecies amara, Pelargonium graveolens, Lavandula angustifolia, Salvia sclarea, Juniperus communis, evening primrose, vitamin E, and our Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab perfume blend.


HOLIDAY STRESS RELIEF
Relax, revive, restore.

Peppermint, spearmint, geranium bourbon, lavender, clary sage, white amber, juniper berry, laurel leaf, coriander, opoponax, and mandarin.

Almond oil, refined rice bran oil, fractionated coconut, rosehip seed oil, Lavandula angustifolia, Juniperus communis, Salvia sclarea, Pelargonium graveolens, evening primrose, vitamin E, and our Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab perfume blend.



+ BATH OIL
8oz $30 for all except for F&M which is $35

CRANBERRY COOKIE BARK
Shortbread, white and dark chocolate, dried cranberries, and a smattering of crushed candy cane.


FRANKINCENSE & MYRRH
O Sanctissima, O Piissima
Dulcis Virgo Maria
Mater amata, Intemerata
Ora, Ora Pro Nobis

Somalian frankincense and Ethiopian myrrh.


POLAR BEAR PLUNGE
Dive into an invigorating icy vanilla mint bath!


SNOW WHITE
A chilly, bright perfume: flurries of virgin snow, crisp winter wind and the faintest breath of night-blooming flowers.


Black Phoenix is thrilled to present our first Salon bath oil.
Inspired by Albert Beck Wenzell's painting.
VICTORIAN VIRGIN WITH CHERUBS
Ángelus Dómini nuntiávit Maríæ.
Et concépit de Spíritu Sancto.
Ecce ancílla Dómini.
Fiat mihi secúndum verbum tuum.
Et Verbum caro factum est.
Et habitávit in nobis.
Ora pro nobis, sancta Dei génetrix.
Ut digni efficiámur promissiónibus Christi.

Gilded amber, white mint, white chocolate, Christmas rose, and honeysuckle.



+ ROOM SPRAY
4oz $25

BLOC NA NOLLAIG
Nollaig faoi shéan is faoi shonas duit!

A fresh-chopped Yule log glowing in a holly wreath-festooned hearth, with snow-dappled evergreens, bay leaf, bittersweet winter berries, and apple beer.


HOLIDAY ARGUMENT DIFFUSING SPRAY
Soothe the tensions of the holidays with a kerfuffle-quelling blend of carnation, white sandalwood, vanilla bean, Roman chamomile, ylang ylang, bergamot, and lemon peel! Spray around your home or office to take the edge off of Yuletime gatherings.

(Please do not spray this in anyone's face, or near anyone's body at all. It isn't a very nice thing to do, and in addition to being unsafe, it will likely escalate whatever drama you're attempting to diffuse.)


MR. FEZZIWIG'S BALL
"Yo ho, my boys!" said Fezziwig. "No more work to-night. Christmas Eve, Dick. Christmas, Ebenezer! Let's have the shutters up," cried old Fezziwig, with a sharp clap of his hands, "before a man can say Jack Robinson!"

You wouldn't believe how those two fellows went at it! They charged into the street with the shutters—one, two, three—had ’em up in their places—four, five, six—barred ’em and pinned ’em—seven, eight, nine—and came back before you could have got to twelve, panting like race-horses.

“Hilli-ho!” cried old Fezziwig, skipping down from the high desk, with wonderful agility. "Clear away, my lads, and let's have lots of room here! Hilli-ho, Dick! Chirrup, Ebenezer!"

Clear away! There was nothing they wouldn’t have cleared away, or couldn’t have cleared away, with old Fezziwig looking on. It was done in a minute. Every movable was packed off, as if it were dismissed from public life for evermore; the floor was swept and watered, the lamps were trimmed, fuel was heaped upon the fire; and the warehouse was as snug, and warm, and dry, and bright a ball-room, as you would desire to see upon a winter’s night.

In came a fiddler with a music-book, and went up to the lofty desk, and made an orchestra of it, and tuned like fifty stomach-aches. In came Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile. In came the three Miss Fezziwigs, beaming and lovable. In came the six young followers whose hearts they broke. In came all the young men and women employed in the business. In came the housemaid, with her cousin, the baker. In came the cook, with her brother’s particular friend, the milkman. In came the boy from over the way, who was suspected of not having board enough from his master; trying to hide himself behind the girl from next door but one, who was proved to have had her ears pulled by her mistress. In they all came, one after another; some shyly, some boldly, some gracefully, some awkwardly, some pushing, some pulling; in they all came, anyhow and everyhow. Away they all went, twenty couple at once; hands half round and back again the other way; down the middle and up again; round and round in various stages of affectionate grouping; old top couple always turning up in the wrong place; new top couple starting off again, as soon as they got there; all top couples at last, and not a bottom one to help them! When this result was brought about, old Fezziwig, clapping his hands to stop the dance, cried out, “Well done!” and the fiddler plunged his hot face into a pot of porter, especially provided for that purpose. But scorning rest, upon his reappearance, he instantly began again, though there were no dancers yet, as if the other fiddler had been carried home, exhausted, on a shutter, and he were a bran-new man resolved to beat him out of sight, or perish.

There were more dances, and there were forfeits, and more dances, and there was cake, and there was negus, and there was a great piece of Cold Roast, and there was a great piece of Cold Boiled, and there were mince-pies, and plenty of beer. But the great effect of the evening came after the Roast and Boiled, when the fiddler (an artful dog, mind! The sort of man who knew his business better than you or I could have told it him!) struck up “Sir Roger de Coverley.” Then old Fezziwig stood out to dance with Mrs. Fezziwig. Top couple, too; with a good stiff piece of work cut out for them; three or four and twenty pair of partners; people who were not to be trifled with; people who would dance, and had no notion of walking.

But if they had been twice as many—ah, four times—old Fezziwig would have been a match for them, and so would Mrs. Fezziwig. As to her, she was worthy to be his partner in every sense of the term. If that’s not high praise, tell me higher, and I’ll use it. A positive light appeared to issue from Fezziwig’s calves. They shone in every part of the dance like moons. You couldn’t have predicted, at any given time, what would have become of them next. And when old Fezziwig and Mrs. Fezziwig had gone all through the dance; advance and retire, both hands to your partner, bow and curtsey, corkscrew, thread-the-needle, and back again to your place; Fezziwig “cut”—cut so deftly, that he appeared to wink with his legs, and came upon his feet again without a stagger.

Mince pie, dark beer, a well-loved spruce wood fiddle, and bow resin.


SNOW WHITE
A chilly, bright perfume: flurries of virgin snow, crisp winter wind and the faintest breath of night-blooming flowers.


VESPERS
Alma Redemptoris Mater,
quae pervia caeli porta manes,
et stella maris, succurre cadenti,
surgere qui curat, populo: tu quae genuisti,
natura mirante, tuum sanctum Genitorem,
Virgo prius ac posterius, Gabrielis ab ore,
sumens illud Ave, peccatorum miserere.

Aromatic woods, frankincense, saffron, pine pitch, black amber, and balsam.



+ SOAPS
$9
FRANKINCENSE & MYRRH
O Sanctissima, O Piissima
Dulcis Virgo Maria
Mater amata, Intemerata
Ora, Ora Pro Nobis

Somalian frankincense and Ethiopian myrrh.


GINGERBREAD POPPET
And he ran till he came across a fox, and to him he called out:

I've run away from a little old woman,
A little old man,
A barn full of threshers,
A field full of mowers,
A cow and a horse,
And I can run away from you, I can!

Then the fox set out to run. Now foxes can run very fast, and so the fox soon caught the gingerbread boy and began to eat him up. Presently the gingerbread boy said, "Oh dear! I'm quarter gone!" And then, "Oh, I'm half gone!" And soon, "I'm three-quarters gone!" And at last, "I'm all gone!" and never spoke again.

Brown sugar, molassass, ginger, cinnamon, clove, raisin, orange zest, and a little frosting.


PEACOCK QUEEN
In dramatic contrast to the soft innocence of Snow White and the dew-kissed freshness of her sister, Rose Red, this is a blood red, voluptuous rose, velvet-petaled, at the height of bloom. Haughty and imperious, vain, yet incomparably lovely to the eye, but thick with thorns of jealousy, pride and hatred.


SNOW WHITE
A chilly, bright perfume: flurries of virgin snow, crisp winter wind and the faintest breath of night-blooming flowers.



On a less festive note, due to the increased cost of components, the price of Snake Oil Bath Oil is now $35.



***

Updated 12 November 2010:

We do have a bit of bad news: several scents have been discontinued immediately due to component issues. We apologize sincerely for the lack of warning; it hit us suddenly.

The following scents are no longer available, effective immediately:

• Midnight on the Midway (Carnaval Diabolique)
• Gluttony (Sin and Salvation)
• Fairy Market (Stardust)
• The Great Red Dragon (Salon)
• Phantom Queen (Diablous)
• Regan (Illyria)
• Suspiro (Ars Amatoria)
• Sophia (Excolo)
• Shadow Witch Orchid (Rappaccini's Garden)
• Pais de la Canela (Wanderlust)
• March Hare (Mad Tea Party)
• The Coil (Phoenix Steamworks)
• Midnight (Ars Amatoria)
• Moon Rose (Rappaccini's Garden)
• Niflheim (Wanderlust)
• Nuit (Excolo)
• Silence (Salon)
• Flora (The District)
• Szepasszony (Diabolus)
• Violet Ray (Phoenix Steamworks)

• Black Dahlia (Sin and Salvation)
• Ile de la Tortuga (Wanderlust)
• Magdalene (Sin and Salvation)
• Psyche (Ars Amatoria)
• Sundew (Rappaccini's Garden)

BEAVER MOON 2010
Here we go with the double entendres again! Strawberry and peach cheesecake, heavy on the sticky glaze.

Artwork by Julie Dillon.

The Beaver Moon perfume and tee will be live until Monday, October 25, 2010.

++THE NUTCRACKER
KLARA
Honey dusting powder, mandarin, iris, ylang ylang, tea rose, and carnation.

HERR DROSSELMEYER 2010
Magus, toymaker, and Godfather to Klara. An enigmatic man, seemingly somewhat sinister, but bearing a gentle air and a sincere love for children. This scent is dignified, refined, but dark, and hints towards esoteric mysteries and the secrets that tie mechanics to magick. Pipe smoke, sweet leather, woods and linen.

+ Brought to life by the Master Toymaker, they dance:
HARLEQUIN AND COLUMBINE
French vanilla, red currant, sage, balsam, rosewood, mandarin, lemon peel, pomegranate, and cedar.

THE SOLDIER
Red musk, vanilla cream, black tea, black pepper, leather, and pie.

GROßVATER TANZ
The evening’s celebration winds down with a traditional German folk song: rice porridge, candied fruits, heavy cream, powdered clove, and Lebkuchen.

THE NUTCRACKER
Klara’s most prized Christmas gift. Broken by Fritz in a fit of jealousy, repaired by Drosselmeyer’s magic: frankincense, black mission fig, and galbanum.

THE CLOCK STRIKES MIDNIGHT
The moment of passage between the waking world and the swirling mist of dreams: black currant, frankincense, blue musk, mugwort, and wisteria.

THE RAT KING 2010
The Nine-Headed nemesis of the Nutcracker Prince. Dust, wood and feral musk with a fang-sharp undertone.

THE WALTZ OF THE SNOWFLAKES
The Snow Queen and Snow King greet Klara and the Nutcracker Prince as they journey through the Enchanted Forest: vanilla-laced snow, graceful and sweet, with fir needle and black pine bark.



++A CHRISTMAS CAROL
EBENEZER SCROOGE
Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.

External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn’t know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often “came down” handsomely, and Scrooge never did.

Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, “My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me?” No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o’clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the blind men’s dogs appeared to know him; and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they said, “No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!”

A dry, dusty, soulless scent, flinty with greed, sour with ill-temper: neglected leather, oakmoss, tonka bean, black pepper, cumin, and vetiver.

CHRISTMAS EVE IN THE COUNTING HOUSE
It was cold, bleak, biting weather: foggy withal: and he could hear the people in the court outside, go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts, and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm them. The city clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already—it had not been light all day—and candles were flaring in the windows of the neighbouring offices, like ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air. The fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was so dense without, that although the court was of the narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms. To see the dingy cloud come drooping down, obscuring everything, one might have thought that Nature lived hard by, and was brewing on a large scale.

Creaky wood, thick fog, and dying embers.

A WORLD OF FOOLS
“A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!” cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge’s nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation he had of his approach.

“Bah!” said Scrooge, “Humbug!”

He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, this nephew of Scrooge’s, that he was all in a glow; his face was ruddy and handsome; his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again.

“Christmas a humbug, uncle!” said Scrooge’s nephew. “You don’t mean that, I am sure?”

“I do,” said Scrooge. “Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You’re poor enough.”

“Come, then,” returned the nephew gaily. “What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You’re rich enough.”

Scrooge having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment, said, “Bah!” again; and followed it up with “Humbug.”

“Don’t be cross, uncle!” said the nephew.

“What else can I be,” returned the uncle, “when I live in such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas! What’s Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in ’em through a round dozen of months presented dead against you? If I could work my will,” said Scrooge indignantly, “every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!”

“Uncle!” pleaded the nephew.

“Nephew!” returned the uncle, sternly, “keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine.”

Figgy pudding with a stake of holly through its heart.

MARLEY'S GHOST
The same face: the very same. Marley in his pigtail, usual waistcoat, tights and boots; the tassels on the latter bristling, like his pigtail, and his coat-skirts, and the hair upon his head. The chain he drew was clasped about his middle. It was long, and wound about him like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge observed it closely) of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel. His body was transparent; so that Scrooge, observing him, and looking through his waistcoat, could see the two buttons on his coat behind.

Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no bowels, but he had never believed it until now.

No, nor did he believe it even now. Though he looked the phantom through and through, and saw it standing before him; though he felt the chilling influence of its death-cold eyes; and marked the very texture of the folded kerchief bound about its head and chin, which wrapper he had not observed before; he was still incredulous, and fought against his senses.

“How now!” said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever. “What do you want with me?”

“Much!”—Marley’s voice, no doubt about it.

“Who are you?”

“Ask me who I was.”

“Who were you then?” said Scrooge, raising his voice. “You’re particular, for a shade.” He was going to say “to a shade,” but substituted this, as more appropriate.

“In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley.”

“Can you—can you sit down?” asked Scrooge, looking doubtfully at him.

“I can.”

“Do it, then.”

Scrooge asked the question, because he didn’t know whether a ghost so transparent might find himself in a condition to take a chair; and felt that in the event of its being impossible, it might involve the necessity of an embarrassing explanation. But the ghost sat down on the opposite side of the fireplace, as if he were quite used to it.

“You don’t believe in me,” observed the Ghost.

“I don’t,” said Scrooge.

“What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your senses?”

“I don’t know,” said Scrooge.

“Why do you doubt your senses?”

“Because,” said Scrooge, “a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!”

Scrooge was not much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel, in his heart, by any means waggish then. The truth is, that he tried to be smart, as a means of distracting his own attention, and keeping down his terror; for the spectre’s voice disturbed the very marrow in his bones.

To sit, staring at those fixed glazed eyes, in silence for a moment, would play, Scrooge felt, the very deuce with him. There was something very awful, too, in the spectre’s being provided with an infernal atmosphere of its own. Scrooge could not feel it himself, but this was clearly the case; for though the Ghost sat perfectly motionless, its hair, and skirts, and tassels, were still agitated as by the hot vapour from an oven.

“You see this toothpick?” said Scrooge, returning quickly to the charge, for the reason just assigned; and wishing, though it were only for a second, to divert the vision’s stony gaze from himself.

“I do,” replied the Ghost.

“You are not looking at it,” said Scrooge.

“But I see it,” said the Ghost, “notwithstanding.”

“Well!” returned Scrooge, “I have but to swallow this, and be for the rest of my days persecuted by a legion of goblins, all of my own creation. Humbug, I tell you! humbug!”

At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook its chain with such a dismal and appalling noise, that Scrooge held on tight to his chair, to save himself from falling in a swoon. But how much greater was his horror, when the phantom taking off the bandage round its head, as if it were too warm to wear in-doors, its lower jaw dropped down upon its breast!

Scrooge fell upon his knees, and clasped his hands before his face.

“Mercy!” he said. “Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?”

“Man of the worldly mind!” replied the Ghost, “do you believe in me or not?”

“I do,” said Scrooge. “I must. But why do spirits walk the earth, and why do they come to me?”

Chains of avarice binding an unquiet spirit: grave-cold phantasmal iron links.

INCESSANT TORTURE OF REMORSE
“You are fettered,” said Scrooge, trembling. “Tell me why?”

“I wear the chain I forged in life,” replied the Ghost. “I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?”

Scrooge trembled more and more.

“Or would you know,” pursued the Ghost, “the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. You have laboured on it, since. It is a ponderous chain!”

Scrooge glanced about him on the floor, in the expectation of finding himself surrounded by some fifty or sixty fathoms of iron cable: but he could see nothing.

“Jacob,” he said, imploringly. “Old Jacob Marley, tell me more. Speak comfort to me, Jacob!”

“I have none to give,” the Ghost replied. “It comes from other regions, Ebenezer Scrooge, and is conveyed by other ministers, to other kinds of men. Nor can I tell you what I would. A very little more is all permitted to me. I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere. My spirit never walked beyond our counting-house—mark me!—in life my spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole; and weary journeys lie before me!”

It was a habit with Scrooge, whenever he became thoughtful, to put his hands in his breeches pockets. Pondering on what the Ghost had said, he did so now, but without lifting up his eyes, or getting off his knees.

“You must have been very slow about it, Jacob,” Scrooge observed, in a business-like manner, though with humility and deference.

“Slow!” the Ghost repeated.

“Seven years dead,” mused Scrooge. “And travelling all the time!”

“The whole time,” said the Ghost. “No rest, no peace. Incessant torture of remorse.”

“You travel fast?” said Scrooge.

“On the wings of the wind,” replied the Ghost.

“You might have got over a great quantity of ground in seven years,” said Scrooge.

The Ghost, on hearing this, set up another cry, and clanked its chain so hideously in the dead silence of the night, that the Ward would have been justified in indicting it for a nuisance.

“Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed,” cried the phantom, “not to know, that ages of incessant labour by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed. Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!”

Life’s opportunity misused: opopponax, lavender, blackberry, patchouli, olive leaf, myrtle, and white cognac.

THE CHAINED PHANTOMS
The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley’s Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free. Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a doorstep. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever.

Purgatorial wretchedness and despair: ice-limned white wine grape, balsam of peru, and chamomile

THE FIRST OF THE THREE SPIRITS
It was a strange figure—like a child: yet not so like a child as like an old man, viewed through some supernatural medium, which gave him the appearance of having receded from the view, and being diminished to a child’s proportions. Its hair, which hung about its neck and down its back, was white as if with age; and yet the face had not a wrinkle in it, and the tenderest bloom was on the skin. The arms were very long and muscular; the hands the same, as if its hold were of uncommon strength. Its legs and feet, most delicately formed, were, like those upper members, bare. It wore a tunic of the purest white; and round its waist was bound a lustrous belt, the sheen of which was beautiful. It held a branch of fresh green holly in its hand; and, in singular contradiction of that wintry emblem, had its dress trimmed with summer flowers. But the strangest thing about it was, that from the crown of its head there sprung a bright clear jet of light, by which all this was visible; and which was doubtless the occasion of its using, in its duller moments, a great extinguisher for a cap, which it now held under its arm.

Even this, though, when Scrooge looked at it with increasing steadiness, was not its strangest quality. For as its belt sparkled and glittered now in one part and now in another, and what was light one instant, at another time was dark, so the figure itself fluctuated in its distinctness: being now a thing with one arm, now with one leg, now with twenty legs, now a pair of legs without a head, now a head without a body: of which dissolving parts, no outline would be visible in the dense gloom wherein they melted away. And in the very wonder of this, it would be itself again; distinct and clear as ever.

“Are you the Spirit, sir, whose coming was foretold to me?” asked Scrooge.

“I am!”

The voice was soft and gentle. Singularly low, as if instead of being so close beside him, it were at a distance.

“Who, and what are you?” Scrooge demanded.

“I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.”

“Long Past?” inquired Scrooge: observant of its dwarfish stature.

“No. Your past.”

Shimmering white amber, voluminous vanilla, white musk, zdravetz, and summer flowers.

A COLD, CLEAR WINTER DAY
“Good Heaven!” said Scrooge, clasping his hands together, as he looked about him. “I was bred in this place. I was a boy here!”

The Spirit gazed upon him mildly. Its gentle touch, though it had been light and instantaneous, appeared still present to the old man’s sense of feeling. He was conscious of a thousand odours floating in the air, each one connected with a thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys, and cares long, long, forgotten!

“Your lip is trembling,” said the Ghost. “And what is that upon your cheek?”

Scrooge muttered, with an unusual catching in his voice, that it was a pimple; and begged the Ghost to lead him where he would.

“You recollect the way?” inquired the Spirit.

“Remember it!” cried Scrooge with fervour; “I could walk it blindfold.”

“Strange to have forgotten it for so many years!” observed the Ghost. “Let us go on.”

They walked along the road, Scrooge recognising every gate, and post, and tree; until a little market-town appeared in the distance, with its bridge, its church, and winding river. Some shaggy ponies now were seen trotting towards them with boys upon their backs, who called to other boys in country gigs and carts, driven by farmers. All these boys were in great spirits, and shouted to each other, until the broad fields were so full of merry music, that the crisp air laughed to hear it!

Winter tuberoses bending gently in a crisp, cold breeze.

THE SCHOOL
“The school is not quite deserted,” said the Ghost. “A solitary child, neglected by his friends, is left there still.”

Scrooge said he knew it. And he sobbed.

They left the high-road, by a well-remembered lane, and soon approached a mansion of dull red brick, with a little weathercock-surmounted cupola, on the roof, and a bell hanging in it. It was a large house, but one of broken fortunes; for the spacious offices were little used, their walls were damp and mossy, their windows broken, and their gates decayed. Fowls clucked and strutted in the stables; and the coach-houses and sheds were over-run with grass. Nor was it more retentive of its ancient state, within; for entering the dreary hall, and glancing through the open doors of many rooms, they found them poorly furnished, cold, and vast. There was an earthy savour in the air, a chilly bareness in the place, which associated itself somehow with too much getting up by candle-light, and not too much to eat.

They went, the Ghost and Scrooge, across the hall, to a door at the back of the house. It opened before them, and disclosed a long, bare, melancholy room, made barer still by lines of plain deal forms and desks. At one of these a lonely boy was reading near a feeble fire; and Scrooge sat down upon a form, and wept to see his poor forgotten self as he used to be.

Not a latent echo in the house, not a squeak and scuffle from the mice behind the panelling, not a drip from the half-thawed water-spout in the dull yard behind, not a sigh among the leafless boughs of one despondent poplar, not the idle swinging of an empty store-house door, no, not a clicking in the fire, but fell upon the heart of Scrooge with a softening influence, and gave a freer passage to his tears.

The Spirit touched him on the arm, and pointed to his younger self, intent upon his reading. Suddenly a man, in foreign garments: wonderfully real and distinct to look at: stood outside the window, with an axe stuck in his belt, and leading by the bridle an ass laden with wood.

“Why, it’s Ali Baba!” Scrooge exclaimed in ecstasy. “It’s dear old honest Ali Baba! Yes, yes, I know! One Christmas time, when yonder solitary child was left here all alone, he did come, for the first time, just like that. Poor boy! And Valentine,” said Scrooge, “and his wild brother, Orson; there they go! And what’s his name, who was put down in his drawers, asleep, at the Gate of Damascus; don’t you see him! And the Sultan’s Groom turned upside down by the Genii; there he is upon his head! Serve him right. I’m glad of it. What business had he to be married to the Princess!”

To hear Scrooge expending all the earnestness of his nature on such subjects, in a most extraordinary voice between laughing and crying; and to see his heightened and excited face; would have been a surprise to his business friends in the city, indeed.

“There’s the Parrot!” cried Scrooge. “Green body and yellow tail, with a thing like a lettuce growing out of the top of his head; there he is! Poor Robin Crusoe, he called him, when he came home again after sailing round the island. ‘Poor Robin Crusoe, where have you been, Robin Crusoe?’ The man thought he was dreaming, but he wasn’t. It was the Parrot, you know. There goes Friday, running for his life to the little creek! Halloa! Hoop! Halloo!”

In the corner of a desolate, dismal schoolhouse, all lonely stone walls, beeswax, and dusty wooden writing desks, stirs the scent of gold coins hidden in forest outside Baghdad, waves crashing against the hull of a Salé pirate ship, the lofty halls of Pépin le Bossu’s court, and a wild child’s home in the woods.

MR. FEZZIWIG'S BALL
“Yo ho, my boys!” said Fezziwig. “No more work to-night. Christmas Eve, Dick. Christmas, Ebenezer! Let’s have the shutters up,” cried old Fezziwig, with a sharp clap of his hands, “before a man can say Jack Robinson!”

You wouldn’t believe how those two fellows went at it! They charged into the street with the shutters—one, two, three—had ’em up in their places—four, five, six—barred ’em and pinned ’em—seven, eight, nine—and came back before you could have got to twelve, panting like race-horses.

“Hilli-ho!” cried old Fezziwig, skipping down from the high desk, with wonderful agility. “Clear away, my lads, and let’s have lots of room here! Hilli-ho, Dick! Chirrup, Ebenezer!”

Clear away! There was nothing they wouldn’t have cleared away, or couldn’t have cleared away, with old Fezziwig looking on. It was done in a minute. Every movable was packed off, as if it were dismissed from public life for evermore; the floor was swept and watered, the lamps were trimmed, fuel was heaped upon the fire; and the warehouse was as snug, and warm, and dry, and bright a ball-room, as you would desire to see upon a winter’s night.

In came a fiddler with a music-book, and went up to the lofty desk, and made an orchestra of it, and tuned like fifty stomach-aches. In came Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile. In came the three Miss Fezziwigs, beaming and lovable. In came the six young followers whose hearts they broke. In came all the young men and women employed in the business. In came the housemaid, with her cousin, the baker. In came the cook, with her brother’s particular friend, the milkman. In came the boy from over the way, who was suspected of not having board enough from his master; trying to hide himself behind the girl from next door but one, who was proved to have had her ears pulled by her mistress. In they all came, one after another; some shyly, some boldly, some gracefully, some awkwardly, some pushing, some pulling; in they all came, anyhow and everyhow. Away they all went, twenty couple at once; hands half round and back again the other way; down the middle and up again; round and round in various stages of affectionate grouping; old top couple always turning up in the wrong place; new top couple starting off again, as soon as they got there; all top couples at last, and not a bottom one to help them! When this result was brought about, old Fezziwig, clapping his hands to stop the dance, cried out, “Well done!” and the fiddler plunged his hot face into a pot of porter, especially provided for that purpose. But scorning rest, upon his reappearance, he instantly began again, though there were no dancers yet, as if the other fiddler had been carried home, exhausted, on a shutter, and he were a bran-new man resolved to beat him out of sight, or perish.

There were more dances, and there were forfeits, and more dances, and there was cake, and there was negus, and there was a great piece of Cold Roast, and there was a great piece of Cold Boiled, and there were mince-pies, and plenty of beer. But the great effect of the evening came after the Roast and Boiled, when the fiddler (an artful dog, mind! The sort of man who knew his business better than you or I could have told it him!) struck up “Sir Roger de Coverley.” Then old Fezziwig stood out to dance with Mrs. Fezziwig. Top couple, too; with a good stiff piece of work cut out for them; three or four and twenty pair of partners; people who were not to be trifled with; people who would dance, and had no notion of walking.

But if they had been twice as many—ah, four times—old Fezziwig would have been a match for them, and so would Mrs. Fezziwig. As to her, she was worthy to be his partner in every sense of the term. If that’s not high praise, tell me higher, and I’ll use it. A positive light appeared to issue from Fezziwig’s calves. They shone in every part of the dance like moons. You couldn’t have predicted, at any given time, what would have become of them next. And when old Fezziwig and Mrs. Fezziwig had gone all through the dance; advance and retire, both hands to your partner, bow and curtsey, corkscrew, thread-the-needle, and back again to your place; Fezziwig “cut”—cut so deftly, that he appeared to wink with his legs, and came upon his feet again without a stagger.

Mince pie, dark beer, a well-loved spruce wood fiddle, and bow resin.

A GOLDEN IDOL
For again Scrooge saw himself. He was older now; a man in the prime of life. His face had not the harsh and rigid lines of later years; but it had begun to wear the signs of care and avarice. There was an eager, greedy, restless motion in the eye, which showed the passion that had taken root, and where the shadow of the growing tree would fall.

He was not alone, but sat by the side of a fair young girl in a mourning-dress: in whose eyes there were tears, which sparkled in the light that shone out of the Ghost of Christmas Past.

“It matters little,” she said, softly. “To you, very little. Another idol has displaced me; and if it can cheer and comfort you in time to come, as I would have tried to do, I have no just cause to grieve.”

“What Idol has displaced you?” he rejoined.

“A golden one.”

“This is the even-handed dealing of the world!” he said. “There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it professes to condemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth!”

“You fear the world too much,” she answered, gently. “All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master-passion, Gain, engrosses you. Have I not?”

“What then?” he retorted. “Even if I have grown so much wiser, what then? I am not changed towards you.”

She shook her head.

“Am I?”

“Our contract is an old one. It was made when we were both poor and content to be so, until, in good season, we could improve our worldly fortune by our patient industry. You are changed. When it was made, you were another man.”

“I was a boy,” he said impatiently.

“Your own feeling tells you that you were not what you are,” she returned. “I am. That which promised happiness when we were one in heart, is fraught with misery now that we are two. How often and how keenly I have thought of this, I will not say. It is enough that I have thought of it, and can release you.”

“Have I ever sought release?”

“In words. No. Never.”

“In what, then?”

“In a changed nature; in an altered spirit; in another atmosphere of life; another Hope as its great end. In everything that made my love of any worth or value in your sight. If this had never been between us,” said the girl, looking mildly, but with steadiness, upon him; “tell me, would you seek me out and try to win me now? Ah, no!”

He seemed to yield to the justice of this supposition, in spite of himself. But he said with a struggle, “You think not.”

“I would gladly think otherwise if I could,” she answered, “Heaven knows! When I have learned a Truth like this, I know how strong and irresistible it must be. But if you were free to-day, to-morrow, yesterday, can even I believe that you would choose a dowerless girl—you who, in your very confidence with her, weigh everything by Gain: or, choosing her, if for a moment you were false enough to your one guiding principle to do so, do I not know that your repentance and regret would surely follow? I do; and I release you. With a full heart, for the love of him you once were.”

Glittering gold and loss beyond understanding: antiqued amber, English lavender, vetiver, and tea rose.

THE SECOND OF THE THREE SPIRITS
The moment Scrooge’s hand was on the lock, a strange voice called him by his name, and bade him enter. He obeyed.

It was his own room. There was no doubt about that. But it had undergone a surprising transformation. The walls and ceiling were so hung with living green, that it looked a perfect grove; from every part of which, bright gleaming berries glistened. The crisp leaves of holly, mistletoe, and ivy reflected back the light, as if so many little mirrors had been scattered there; and such a mighty blaze went roaring up the chimney, as that dull petrification of a hearth had never known in Scrooge’s time, or Marley’s, or for many and many a winter season gone. Heaped up on the floor, to form a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch, that made the chamber dim with their delicious steam. In easy state upon this couch, there sat a jolly Giant, glorious to see; who bore a glowing torch, in shape not unlike Plenty’s horn, and held it up, high up, to shed its light on Scrooge, as he came peeping round the door.

“Come in!” exclaimed the Ghost. “Come in! and know me better, man!”

Scrooge entered timidly, and hung his head before this Spirit. He was not the dogged Scrooge he had been; and though the Spirit’s eyes were clear and kind, he did not like to meet them.

“I am the Ghost of Christmas Present,” said the Spirit. “Look upon me!”

Scrooge reverently did so. It was clothed in one simple green robe, or mantle, bordered with white fur. This garment hung so loosely on the figure, that its capacious breast was bare, as if disdaining to be warded or concealed by any artifice. Its feet, observable beneath the ample folds of the garment, were also bare; and on its head it wore no other covering than a holly wreath, set here and there with shining icicles. Its dark brown curls were long and free; free as its genial face, its sparkling eye, its open hand, its cheery voice, its unconstrained demeanour, and its joyful air. Girded round its middle was an antique scabbard; but no sword was in it, and the ancient sheath was eaten up with rust.

Pine boughs, plum pudding, spiced pears, sugared chestnuts, punch floated with oranges, boughs of holly, and myrica berries.

BOB CRATCHIT'S HEARTH
At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the hearth swept, and the fire made up. The compound in the jug being tasted, and considered perfect, apples and oranges were put upon the table, and a shovel-full of chestnuts on the fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew round the hearth, in what Bob Cratchit called a circle, meaning half a one; and at Bob Cratchit’s elbow stood the family display of glass. Two tumblers, and a custard-cup without a handle.

These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well as golden goblets would have done; and Bob served it out with beaming looks, while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and cracked noisily. Then Bob proposed:

“A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!”

Which all the family re-echoed.

“God bless us every one!” said Tiny Tim, the last of all.

Glowing firewood and sherry-cobbler.

CHRISTMAS EVE ON THE MOOR
And now, without a word of warning from the Ghost, they stood upon a bleak and desert moor, where monstrous masses of rude stone were cast about, as though it were the burial-place of giants; and water spread itself wheresoever it listed, or would have done so, but for the frost that held it prisoner; and nothing grew but moss and furze, and coarse rank grass. Down in the west the setting sun had left a streak of fiery red, which glared upon the desolation for an instant, like a sullen eye, and frowning lower, lower, lower yet, was lost in the thick gloom of darkest night.

“What place is this?” asked Scrooge.

“A place where Miners live, who labour in the bowels of the earth,” returned the Spirit. “But they know me. See!”

A light shone from the window of a hut, and swiftly they advanced towards it. Passing through the wall of mud and stone, they found a cheerful company assembled round a glowing fire. An old, old man and woman, with their children and their children’s children, and another generation beyond that, all decked out gaily in their holiday attire. The old man, in a voice that seldom rose above the howling of the wind upon the barren waste, was singing them a Christmas song—it had been a very old song when he was a boy—and from time to time they all joined in the chorus. So surely as they raised their voices, the old man got quite blithe and loud; and so surely as they stopped, his vigour sank again.

Windswept moor grass, grey moss, mud, and stone warmed by a small, comfortable fire.

IGNORANCE AND WANT
From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.

“Oh, Man! look here. Look, look, down here!” exclaimed the Ghost.

They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.

Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.

“Spirit! are they yours?” Scrooge could say no more.

“They are Man’s,” said the Spirit, looking down upon them. “And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!” cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. “Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And abide the end!”

“Have they no refuge or resource?” cried Scrooge.

“Are there no prisons?” said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. “Are there no workhouses?”

The bell struck twelve.

Bog myrtle, wormwood accord, carrot seed, lovage, Roman chamomile, orris root, myrrh, and patchouli.

A GAME CALLED YES & NO
“Here is a new game,” said Scrooge. “One half hour, Spirit, only one!”

It was a Game called Yes and No, where Scrooge’s nephew had to think of something, and the rest must find out what; he only answering to their questions yes or no, as the case was. The brisk fire of questioning to which he was exposed, elicited from him that he was thinking of an animal, a live animal, rather a disagreeable animal, a savage animal, an animal that growled and grunted sometimes, and talked sometimes, and lived in London, and walked about the streets, and wasn’t made a show of, and wasn’t led by anybody, and didn’t live in a menagerie, and was never killed in a market, and was not a horse, or an ass, or a cow, or a bull, or a tiger, or a dog, or a pig, or a cat, or a bear. At every fresh question that was put to him, this nephew burst into a fresh roar of laughter; and was so inexpressibly tickled, that he was obliged to get up off the sofa and stamp. At last the plump sister, falling into a similar state, cried out:

“I have found it out! I know what it is, Fred! I know what it is!”

“What is it?” cried Fred.

“It’s your Uncle Scro-o-o-o-oge!”

Which it certainly was. Admiration was the universal sentiment, though some objected that the reply to “Is it a bear?” ought to have been “Yes;” inasmuch as an answer in the negative was sufficient to have diverted their thoughts from Mr. Scrooge, supposing they had ever had any tendency that way.

“He has given us plenty of merriment, I am sure,” said Fred, “and it would be ungrateful not to drink his health. Here is a glass of mulled wine ready to our hand at the moment; and I say, ‘Uncle Scrooge!’ ”

“Well! Uncle Scrooge!” they cried.

“A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to the old man, whatever he is!” said Scrooge’s nephew. “He wouldn’t take it from me, but may he have it, nevertheless. Uncle Scrooge!”

Mulled wine and marzipan.

THE LAST OF THE SPIRITS
The Phantom slowly, gravely, silently approached. When it came near him, Scrooge bent down upon his knee; for in the very air through which this Spirit moved it seemed to scatter gloom and mystery.

It was shrouded in a deep black garment, which concealed its head, its face, its form, and left nothing of it visible save one outstretched hand. But for this it would have been difficult to detach its figure from the night, and separate it from the darkness by which it was surrounded.

He felt that it was tall and stately when it came beside him, and that its mysterious presence filled him with a solemn dread. He knew no more, for the Spirit neither spoke nor moved.

“I am in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come?” said Scrooge.

The Spirit answered not, but pointed onward with its hand.

“You are about to show me shadows of the things that have not happened, but will happen in the time before us,” Scrooge pursued. “Is that so, Spirit?”

The upper portion of the garment was contracted for an instant in its folds, as if the Spirit had inclined its head. That was the only answer he received.

Although well used to ghostly company by this time, Scrooge feared the silent shape so much that his legs trembled beneath him, and he found that he could hardly stand when he prepared to follow it. The 70 Spirit paused a moment, as observing his condition, and giving him time to recover.

But Scrooge was all the worse for this. It thrilled him with a vague uncertain horror, to know that behind the dusky shroud, there were ghostly eyes intently fixed upon him, while he, though he stretched his own to the utmost, could see nothing but a spectral hand and one great heap of black.

“Ghost of the Future!” he exclaimed, “I fear you more than any spectre I have seen. But as I know your purpose is to do me good, and as I hope to live to be another man from what I was, I am prepared to bear you company, and do it with a thankful heart. Will you not speak to me?”

It gave him no reply. The hand was pointed straight before them.

“Lead on!” said Scrooge. “Lead on! The night is waning fast, and it is precious time to me, I know. Lead on, Spirit!”

Blackcurrant, myrrh, and vetiver.

AN ALTAR TO COLD, RIGID, DREADFUL DEATH
He recoiled in terror, for the scene had changed, and now he almost touched a bed: a bare, uncurtained bed: on which, beneath a ragged sheet, there lay a something covered up, which, though it was dumb, announced itself in awful language.

The room was very dark, too dark to be observed with any accuracy, though Scrooge glanced round it in obedience to a secret impulse, anxious to know what kind of room it was. A pale light, rising in the outer air, fell straight upon the bed; and on it, plundered and bereft, unwatched, unwept, uncared for, was the body of this man.

Scrooge glanced towards the Phantom. Its steady hand was pointed to the head. The cover was so carelessly adjusted that the slightest raising of it, the motion of a finger upon Scrooge’s part, would have disclosed the face. He thought of it, felt how easy it would be to do, and longed to do it; but had no more power to withdraw the veil than to dismiss the spectre at his side.

Oh cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up thine altar here, and dress it with such terrors as thou hast at thy command: for this is thy dominion! But of the loved, revered, and honoured head, thou canst not turn one hair to thy dread purposes, or make one feature odious. It is not that the hand is heavy and will fall down when released; it is not that the heart and pulse are still; but that the hand was open, generous, and true; the heart brave, warm, and tender; and the pulse a man’s. Strike, Shadow, strike! And see his good deeds springing from the wound, to sow the world with life immortal!

No voice pronounced these words in Scrooge’s ears, and yet he heard them when he looked upon the bed. He thought, if this man could be raised up now, what would be his foremost thoughts? Avarice, hard-dealing, griping cares? They have brought him to a rich end, truly!

He lay, in the dark empty house, with not a man, a woman, or a child, to say that he was kind to me in this or that, and for the memory of one kind word I will be kind to him. A cat was tearing at the door, and there was a sound of gnawing rats beneath the hearth-stone. What they wanted in the room of death, and why they were so restless and disturbed, Scrooge did not dare to think.

Black cedar, frankincense, and dust.

SHADOWS OF WHAT MAY BE
The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come conveyed him, as before—though at a different time, he thought: indeed, there seemed no order in these latter visions, save that they were in the Future—into the resorts of business men, but showed him not himself. Indeed, the Spirit 82did not stay for anything, but went straight on, as to the end just now desired, until besought by Scrooge to tarry for a moment.

“This court,” said Scrooge, “through which we hurry now, is where my place of occupation is, and has been for a length of time. I see the house. Let me behold what I shall be, in days to come!”

The Spirit stopped; the hand was pointed elsewhere.

“The house is yonder,” Scrooge exclaimed. “Why do you point away?”

The inexorable finger underwent no change.

Scrooge hastened to the window of his office, and looked in. It was an office still, but not his. The furniture was not the same, and the figure in the chair was not himself. The Phantom pointed as before.

He joined it once again, and wondering why and whither he had gone, accompanied it until they reached an iron gate. He paused to look round before entering.

A churchyard. Here, then; the wretched man whose name he had now to learn, lay underneath the ground. It was a worthy place. Walled in by houses; overrun by grass and weeds, the growth of vegetation’s death, not life; choked up with too much burying; fat with repleted appetite. A worthy place!

The Spirit stood among the graves, and pointed down to One. He advanced towards it trembling. The Phantom was exactly as it had been, but he dreaded that he saw new meaning in its solemn shape.

“Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point,” said Scrooge, “answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, only?”

Still the Ghost pointed downward to the grave by which it stood.

“Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead,” said Scrooge. “But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me!”

The Spirit was immovable as ever.

Scrooge crept towards it, trembling as he went; and following the finger, read upon the stone of the neglected grave his own name, Ebenezer Scrooge.

A deserted, dismal grave: upturned earth, overgrown grass, and dead weeds.

CHANGING THE SHADOWS
“Am I that man who lay upon the bed?” he cried, upon his knees.

The finger pointed from the grave to him, and back again.

“No, Spirit! Oh no, no!”

The finger still was there.

“Spirit!” he cried, tight clutching at its robe, “hear me! I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been but for this intercourse. Why show me this, if I am past all hope!”

For the first time the hand appeared to shake.

“Good Spirit,” he pursued, as down upon the ground he fell before it: “Your nature intercedes for me, and pities me. Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you have shown me, by an altered life!”

The kind hand trembled.

“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!”

In his agony, he caught the spectral hand. It sought to free itself, but he was strong in his entreaty, and detained it. The Spirit, stronger yet, repulsed him.

Holding up his hands in a last prayer to have his fate reversed, he saw an alteration in the Phantom’s hood and dress. It shrunk, collapsed, and dwindled down into a bedpost.

The dawning of hope and the blossoming of charity: vanilla, orange blossom, white sandalwood, mate, red tea, and carnation.

WHOOP
“I don’t know what to do!” cried Scrooge, laughing and crying in the same breath; and making a perfect Laocoön of himself with his stockings. “I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to everybody! A happy New Year to all the world. Hallo here! Whoop! Hallo!”

He had frisked into the sitting-room, and was now standing there: perfectly winded.

“There’s the saucepan that the gruel was in!” cried Scrooge, starting off again, and going round the fireplace. “There’s the door, by which the Ghost of Jacob Marley entered! There’s the corner where the Ghost of Christmas Present, sat! There’s the window where I saw the wandering Spirits! It’s all right, it’s all true, it all happened. Ha ha ha!”

Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so many years, it was a splendid laugh, a most illustrious laugh. The father of a long, long line of brilliant laughs!

“I don’t know what day of the month it is!” said Scrooge. “I don’t know how long I’ve been among the Spirits. I don’t know anything. I’m quite a baby. Never mind. I don’t care. I’d rather be a baby. Hallo! Whoop! Hallo here!”

He was checked in his transports by the churches ringing out the lustiest peals he had ever heard. Clash, clang, hammer; ding, dong, bell. Bell, dong, ding; hammer, clang, clash! Oh, glorious, glorious!

Running to the window, he opened it, and put out his head. No fog, no mist; clear, bright, jovial, stirring, cold; cold, piping for the blood to dance to; Golden sunlight; Heavenly sky; sweet fresh air; merry bells. Oh, glorious! Glorious!

“What’s to-day!” cried Scrooge, calling downward to a boy in Sunday clothes, who perhaps had loitered in to look about him.

“Eh?” returned the boy, with all his might of wonder.

“What’s to-day, my fine fellow?” said Scrooge.

“To-day!” replied the boy. “Why, Christmas Day.”

Golden sunlight and sweet fresh air brightening a Heavenly sky on Christmas Day: crisp winter air, shimmering amber, sweet honey, with a touch of pumpkin pie, pine cone, cranberry, and bayberry.



++YULETIME
AUTUMN AND WINTER
Three months bade wane and wax the wintering moon
Between two dates of death, while men were fain
Yet of the living light that all too soon
Three months bade wane.

Cold autumn, wan with wrath of wind and rain,
Saw pass a soul sweet as the sovereign tune
That death smote silent when he smote again.

First went my friend, in life's mid light of noon,
Who loved the lord of music: then the strain
Whence earth was kindled like as heaven in June
Three months bade wane.

A herald soul before its master's flying
Touched by some few moons first the darkling goal
Where shades rose up to greet the shade, espying
A herald soul;

Shades of dead lords of music, who control
Men living by the might of men undying,
With strength of strains that make delight of dole.

The deep dense dust on death's dim threshold lying
Trembled with sense of kindling sound that stole
Through darkness, and the night gave ear, descrying
A herald soul.

One went before, one after, but so fast
They seem gone hence together, from the shore
Whence we now gaze: yet ere the mightier passed
One went before;

One whose whole heart of love, being set of yore
On that high joy which music lends us, cast
Light round him forth of music's radiant store.

Then went, while earth on winter glared aghast,
The mortal god he worshipped, through the door
Wherethrough so late, his lover to the last,
One went before.

A star had set an hour before the sun
Sank from the skies wherethrough his heart's pulse yet
Thrills audibly: but few took heed, or none,
A star had set.

All heaven rings back, sonorous with regret,
The deep dirge of the sunset: how should one
Soft star be missed in all the concourse met?

But, O sweet single heart whose work is done,
Whose songs are silent, how should I forget
That ere the sunset's fiery goal was won
A star had set?

Bitter currant and dry leaves. Winter wind at dusk.

CHANUKKIYAH 2010
Baruch ata Ado-nai, Elo-heinu Melech ha'olam, Asher kid'shanu b'mitzvosav v'tzivanu l'hadlik ner shel Chanukah.

Baruch ata Ado-nai, Elo-heinu Melech ha'olam, She'asah nisim la'avoseinu, bayamim ha'hem baz'man hazeh.

Baruch ata Ado-nai, Elo-heinu Melech ha'olam, She'hecheyanu, vekiyemanu vehigi'anu laz'man hazeh.

Olive oil, beeswax, glowing amber, sweet sufganiyot, pomegranate, and fig.

Ha'Neiros halalu anachnu madlikin al hanisim ve'al hanifla'os, ve'al hat'shu'os ve'al hamilchamos, sh'asisa la'avoseinu bayamim hahem baz'man hazeh, al yedei kohaneicha hakedoshim. Vechol sh'monas yemei Chanukah, haneiros halalu kodesh hem. Ve'ein lanu reshus le'hishtamesh ba'hem, eh'la lir'osam bilvad, ke'dei le'hodos u'lehalel leshimcha hagadol al nisecha ve'al nifle'osecha ve'al yeshu'oshecha.

Ma'oz tzur yeshu'asi
Lecha na'eh leshabe'ach
Tikone bais tefilasi
Ve'sham todah nezabe'ach
Le'es Tachin Mabe'ach
Mitzar ham'nabe'ach
Az egmor beshir mizmor
Chanukas hamizbe'ach.

EGG NOG 2010
Sweet brandy, dark rum, heavy cream, sugar, and a dash of nutmeg.

GELT 2010
Sevivon, sov, sov, sov
Chanukah, hu chag tov
Chanukah, hu chag tov
Sevivon, sov, sov, sov!

Chag simcha hu la-am
Nes gadol haya sham
Nes gadol haya sham
Chag simcha hu la-am.

A bounty of chocolate coins! Dry cocoa and golden amber!

GINGERBREAD POPPET 2010
Warm, cozy gingerbread spiced with nutmeg, clove and cinnamon.

HALOA 2010
Sacred to both Demeter and Dionysus, this is a celebration of the of the pruning of the vines, the first fermentation of the year's wine, and of the consecration of the next year's planting. The service was lead by the heterai and the Eleusinian Arkhontes, and began with the preparation of a banquet that honors Demeter's bounty and the fertility aspect of Dionysus with pudenda- and phallus-shaped cakes. After the preliminary feast, the magistrates departed, and the heterai held a second rite that consisted of copious wine consumption, ritual symbolic fornication, and formal offerings of incense, grain, and cakes to sacred statues of the deities and to clay images of genitalia. Finally, the magistrates and priests were permitted to rejoin the ritual. A Priest and Priestess bore torches that symbolizes Demeter and her daughter Persephone presided over the final ceremony, which culminated in the ultimate celebration of fertility: an orgy that lasted til dawn.

Wine grapes, pomegranate, myrrh, frankincense and olive leaf, and the warm scent of offertory cakes.

JACOB'S LADDER 2010
And Jacob went out from Beersheba, and went toward Haran.

And he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set; and he took of the stones of that place, and put them for his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep.

And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.

And, behold, the Lord stood above it, and said, I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed;

And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.

And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.

And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not.

And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.

The meeting of Heaven and Earth: golden amber, galbanum, benzoin, ambrette, rockrose, costus and tonka.

JÓLASVEINAR 2010
The Jólasveinar are the seventy-some offspring of Grýla and Leppalúði, an ogre couple with a taste for chomping naughty children. This impish brood delights in causing discomfort, sowing confusion, and all-out raising hell during the Yule season. Their names are indicative of their malicious intentions -- Strap Loosener, Door Slammer, Window Peeper, Sausage Snatcher, Doorway Sniffer, Icebreaker -- and their creepy natures -- Lamp Shadow, Smoke Gulper, Crevice Imp. The devillish Jólasveinar finally cease their mischief and head for home at Þrettándinn.

Their scent is a mishmash of snow, dirt, Icelandic moss, marsh felwort, and the smushed petals of buttercups and moorland spotted orchids, with the barest hint of the scent of pilfered Christmas pastries.

LICK IT VIGOROUSLY
What else could possibly be more lickable at Yuletide? This is a candy cane perfume, minty, sweet and sugared.

[Please don’t literally Lick It. I need no cheerful holiday lawsuits, thank you!]

MIDNIGHT MASS 2010
I will wash my hands among the innocent; and will compass thy altar, O Lord: That I may hear the voice of thy praise: and tell of all thy wondrous works. I have loved, O Lord, the beauty of thy house; and the place where thy glory dwelleth. Take not away my soul, O God, with the wicked: nor my life with bloody men: In whose hands are iniquities: their right hand is filled with gifts.

But as for me, I have walked in my innocence: redeem me, and have mercy on me. My foot hath stood in the direct way: in the churches I will bless thee, O Lord.

In Roman Catholic tradition, the Christmas season begins liturgically on Christmas Eve, though it is forbidden to celebrate the Christmas Mass before midnight. The most devout attend Midnight Mass, celebrating both the Eucharist and the drama of the Nativity.

This perfume is a traditional Roman Catholic sacramental incense, most often used during a Solemn Mass. Traditionally, five tears of this incense, each encased individually in wax that has been fashioned into the shape of a nail, are inserted into the paschal candle. This is, of course, represents the Five Wounds of Our Risen Savior. Symbolically, the burning of the incense signifies spiritual fervor, the fragrance itself inspires virtue, and the rising smoke carries our prayers to God.

Credo in unum Deum, Patrem omnipotentem, factorem caeli et terrae, visibilium omnium et invisibilium.

Et in unum Dominum Iesum Christum, Filium Dei unigenitum, et ex Patre natum ante omnia saecula. Deum de Deo, Lumen de Lumine, Deum verum de Deo vero, genitum non factum, consubstantialem Patri; per quem omnia facta sunt. Qui propter nos homines et propter nostram salutem descendit de caelis. Et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria Virgine, et homo factus est. Crucifixus etiam pro nobis sub Pontio Pilato, passus et sepultus est, et resurrexit tertia die, secundum Scripturas, et ascendit in caelum, sedet ad dexteram Patris. Et iterum venturus est cum gloria, iudicare vivos et mortuos, cuius regni non erit finis.

Et in Spiritum Sanctum, Dominum et vivificantem, qui ex Patre procedit. Qui cum Patre et Filio simul adoratur et conglorificatur: qui locutus est per prophetas. Et unam, sanctam, catholicam et apostolicam Ecclesiam. Confiteor unum baptisma in remissionem peccatorum. Et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum, et vitam venturi saeculi. Amen.

NOCHE BUENA 2010
A celebration of the Nativity: the light, uplifting incense of the Misa de Noche Buena, purple sage, and a vibrant bouquet of plumeria, chrysanthemum, tuberose, Angel's Trumpet, Mexican tiger lily, dahlia, and azucenas.

PEACOCK QUEEN 2010
In dramatic contrast to the soft innocence of Snow White and the dew-kissed freshness of her sister, Rose Red, this is a blood red, voluptuous rose, velvet-petaled, at the height of bloom. Haughty and imperious, vain, yet incomparably lovely to the eye, but thick with thorns of jealousy, pride and hatred.

ROSE RED 2010
The perfected winter rose, dew covered and freshly cut.

SNOW WHITE 2010
A chilly, bright perfume: flurries of virgin snow, crisp winter wind and the faintest breath of night-blooming flowers.

WINTER-TIME
Late lies the wintry sun a-bed, A frosty, fiery sleepy-head;
Blinks but an hour or two; and then,
A blood-red orange, sets again.

Before the stars have left the skies,
At morning in the dark I rise;
And shivering in my nakedness,
By the cold candle, bathe and dress.

Close by the jolly fire I sit
To warm my frozen bones a bit;
Or with a reindeer-sled, explore
The colder countries round the door.

When to go out, my nurse doth wrap
Me in my comforter and cap;
The cold wind burns my face, and blows
Its frosty pepper up my nose.

Black are my steps on silver sod;
Thick blows my frosty breath abroad;
And tree and house, and hill and lake,
Are frosted like a wedding cake.

Sweet, soft snow.

WOODS IN WINTER
When winter winds are piercing chill,
And through the hawthorn blows the gale,
With solemn feet I tread the hill,
That overbrows the lonely vale.

O'er the bare upland, and away
Through the long reach of desert woods,
The embracing sunbeams chastely play,
And gladden these deep solitudes.

Where, twisted round the barren oak,
The summer vine in beauty clung,
And summer winds the stillness broke,
The crystal icicle is hung.

Where, from their frozen urns, mute springs
Pour out the river's gradual tide,
Shrilly the skater's iron rings,
And voices fill the woodland side.

Alas! how changed from the fair scene,
When birds sang out their mellow lay,
And winds were soft, and woods were green,
And the song ceased not with the day!

But still wild music is abroad,
Pale, desert woods! within your crowd;
And gathering winds, in hoarse accord,
Amid the vocal reeds pipe loud.

Chill airs and wintry winds! my ear
Has grown familiar with your song;
I hear it in the opening year,
I listen, and it cheers me long.

Wild hemlock and juniper berries scattered in the snow beneath leafless trees bedecked with glittering icicles.

YULE 2010
The Holly King and Oak King each hold sway for half of the year, and engage in an epic, eternal battle at Litha and Yule. In truth, they are each a half of the whole -- known by many names: Pashupati, Caerwiden, Herne, Pan, Puck, Cernunnos, the Green Man, the Horned God -- and as the Holly and Oak Kings represent the light and dark halves of the year, thus do they also represent the light and dark halves of the deity, and thereby, of ourselves.

During the darkness of the year, though it seems cold, barren, and bleak, the earth holds the warmth of life deep within itself, and in the depth of its shadows is the eternal promise of renewal and rebirth.

It is Yule, and the Holly King has slain the Oak: blood red holly berry, mistletoe, wild thyme, verbena, cinquefoil, hemp, winter rose, evergreen, frankincense, juniper, and myrrh.



++THE LAST UNICORN
THE LILAC WOOD
It was always spring in her forest, because she lived there, and she wandered all day among the great beech trees, keeping watch over the animals that lived in the ground and under bushes, in nests and caves, earths and treetops. Generation after generation, wolves and rabbits alike, they hunted and loved and had children and died, and as the unicorn did none of these things, she never grew tired of watching them.

Ageless trees, everblooming flowers, brilliant grass, and soft shadows.

THE LAST UNICORN
The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone. She was very old, though she did not know it, and she was no longer the careless color of sea foam, but rather the color of snow falling on a moonlit night. But her eyes were still clear and unwearied, and she still moved like a shadow on the sea.

Frosty lilac petals, iris pallida root, orris, violet leaf, white chocolate, coconut, wild lettuce, white sandalwood, and oakmoss.

THE BUTTERFLY
Then one afternoon the butterfly wobbled out of a breeze and lit on the tip of her horn. He was velvet all over, dark and dusty, with golden spots on his wings, and he was as thin as a flower petal. Dancing along her horn, he saluted her with his curling feelers. “I am a roving gambler. How do you do?”

Fuzzy brown tonka bean, golden amber, bergamot, and petitgrain.

THE MIDNIGHT CARNIVAL
There were nine wagons, each draped in black, each drawn by a lean black horse, and each baring barred sides like teeth when the wind blew through the black hangings. The lead wagon was driven by a squat old woman, and it bore signs on its shrouded sides that said in big letters: MOMMY FORTUNA’S MIDNIGHT CARNIVAL. And below, in smaller print: Creatures of night, brought to light.

Cruelty and confinement, small magics and penny illusions: galbanum, teak, myrrh, narcissus, patchouli, cacao, labdanum, agarwood, lavender, neroli, and black moss.

THE NINTH CAGE
The unicorn hardly heard him. She turned and turned in her prison, her body shrinking from the touch of the iron bars all around her. No creature of man’s night loves cold iron, and while the unicorn could endure its presence, the murderous smell of it seemed to turn her bones to sand and her blood to rain. The bars of her cage must have had some sort of spell on them, for they never stopped whispering evilly to one another in clawed, pattering voices.

A claustrophobic blend of iron and oak.

ARACHNE OF LYDIA
Rukh was standing before a cage that contained nothing but a small brown spider weaving a modest web across the bars. “Arachne of Lydia,” he told the crowd. “Guaranteed the greatest weaver in the world — her fate’s the proof of it. She had the bad luck to defeat the goddess Athena in a weaving contest. Athena was a sore loser, and Arachne is now a spider, creating only for Mommy Fortuna’s Midnight Carnival, by special arrangement. Warp of snow and woof of flame, and never any two the same. Arachne.”

Strung on the loom of iron bars, the web was very simple and almost colorless, except for an occasional rainbow shiver when the spider scuttled out on it to put a thread right. But it drew the onlookers’ eyes — and the unicorn’s eyes as well — back and forth and steadily deeper, until they seemed to be looking down into great rifts in the world, black fissures that widened remorselessly and yet would not fall into pieces as long as Arachne’s web held the world together. The unicorn shook herself free with a sigh, and saw the real web again. It was very simple, and almost colorless.

“It isn’t like the others,” she said. “No,” Schmendrick agreed grudgingly. “But there’s no credit due to Mommy Fortuna for that. You see, the spider believes. She sees those cat’s-cradles herself and thinks them her own work. Belief makes all the difference to magic like Mommy Fortuna’s. Why, if that troop of witlings withdrew their wonder, there’d be nothing left of all her witchery but the sound of a spider weeping. And no one would hear it.”

Soft brown and Tyrian purple: dusty clove and blackcurrant.

MOMMY FORTUNA
When the first wagon drew even with the place where the unicorn lay asleep, the old woman suddenly pulled her black horse to a stop. All the other wagons stopped too and waited silently as the old woman swung herself to the ground with an ugly grace. Gliding close to the unicorn, she peered down at her for a long time, and then said, “Well. Well, bless my old husk of a heart. And here I thought I’d seen the last of them.” Her voice left a flavor of honey and gunpowder on the air. “If he knew,” she said and she showed pebbly teeth as she smiled. “But I don’t think I’ll tell him.”

Honey, gunpowder, and pleonectic, twopenny magics.

UNICORN HORN: PACK OF SERIES I IMP'S EARS
Imp's ears are not sold individually for this series.
They must be purchased in a set.
This set contains 7 imps for $38.50US, and contains samples of:

• The Lilac Wood
• The Last Unicorn
• The Butterfly
• The Midnight Carnival
• The Ninth Cage
• Arachne of Lydia
• Mommy Fortuna

BLOOD MOON 2010
In October, the crop harvest has past, and all hands turn to the Hunt:
the third and final harvest before winter. Blood Moon shines over huntsmen as they ride over reaped grain in pursuit of their prey.

In Christian mythology, Blood Moon may have a darker significance:

"And I looked when He broke the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth made of hair, and the whole moon became like blood; and the stars of the sky fell to the earth, as a fig tree casts its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind." -- Revelation 6:12-13

The feral scent of throbbing musks and the heat of the chase through a shadowed, moonlit wood, swirled in the incense of the anointed cherub that covereth, and touched by blood-dimmed lunar oils.

Artwork by Jennifer Williamson.

The Blood Moon perfume and tee will be live until Monday, September 27, 2010.


***

Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab and Black Phoenix Trading Post will be vending at the West Hollywood Book Fair this Sunday, September 26th from 10am to 6pm.

We will be vending at Booth D20, alongside Dark Delicacies. Also at the Book Fair, Beth will be appearing on the FOOD FOR THOUGHT: VAMPIRES, WEREWOLVES & WHY WE LOVE TO BE BITTEN panel in the SciFi, Fantasy, and Horror Pavilion, along with Del Howison, Amber Benson (Among the Ghosts), VMK Fewings (Orpheus: A Vampire’s Rise), and S.S. Wilson (Tucker’s Monsters). There will be a signing following the panel in the Dark Delicacies booth, D17-19.

We will be bringing along our literary scents (Gaiman's, Lovecraft, Alice in Wonderland, Illyria, the comic book scents, etc.) and will also be bringing along the last of the hardcover Unknown sets, to benefit Heroes Initiative.

West Hollywood Park
647 N. San Vicente Blvd.
West Hollywood, CA
Sunday, September 26th, 10:00am to 6:00pm


+ WEST HOLLYWOOD BOOK FAIR LIMITED EDITION SCENT
SIBYL
$20
This play was good enough for us, Harry. It was Romeo and Juliet. I must admit that I was rather annoyed at the idea of seeing Shakespeare done in such a wretched hole of a place. Still, I felt interested, in a sort of way. At any rate, I determined to wait for the first act. There was a dreadful orchestra, presided over by a young Hebrew who sat at a cracked piano, that nearly drove me away, but at last the drop-scene was drawn up and the play began. Romeo was a stout elderly gentleman, with corked eyebrows, a husky tragedy voice, and a figure like a beer-barrel. Mercutio was almost as bad. He was played by the low-comedian, who had introduced gags of his own and was on most friendly terms with the pit. They were both as grotesque as the scenery, and that looked as if it had come out of a country-booth. But Juliet! Harry, imagine a girl, hardly seventeen years of age, with a little, flowerlike face, a small Greek head with plaited coils of dark-brown hair, eyes that were violet wells of passion, lips that were like the petals of a rose. She was the loveliest thing I had ever seen in my life. You said to me once that pathos left you unmoved, but that beauty, mere beauty, could fill your eyes with tears. I tell you, Harry, I could hardly see this girl for the mist of tears that came across me. And her voice--I never heard such a voice. It was very low at first, with deep mellow notes that seemed to fall singly upon one's ear. Then it became a little louder, and sounded like a flute or a distant hautboy. In the garden-scene it had all the tremulous ecstasy that one hears just before dawn when nightingales are singing. There were moments, later on, when it had the wild passion of violins. You know how a voice can stir one. Your voice and the voice of Sibyl Vane are two things that I shall never forget. When I close my eyes, I hear them, and each of them says something different. I don't know which to follow. Why should I not love her? Harry, I do love her. She is everything to me in life. Night after night I go to see her play. One evening she is Rosalind, and the next evening she is Imogen. I have seen her die in the gloom of an Italian tomb, sucking the poison from her lover's lips. I have watched her wandering through the forest of Arden, disguised as a pretty boy in hose and doublet and dainty cap. She has been mad, and has come into the presence of a guilty king, and given him rue to wear and bitter herbs to taste of. She has been innocent, and the black hands of jealousy have crushed her reedlike throat. I have seen her in every age and in every costume. Ordinary women never appeal to one's imagination. They are limited to their century. No glamour ever transfigures them. One knows their minds as easily as one knows their bonnets. One can always find them. There is no mystery in any of them. They ride in the park in the morning and chatter at tea-parties in the afternoon. They have their stereotyped smile and their fashionable manner. They are quite obvious. But an actress! How different an actress is! Harry! why didn't you tell me that the only thing worth loving is an actress?

Bourbon vanilla, Egyptian musk, olibanum, summer honey, white tea, Spanish mandarin, tea rose, cognac, and a faint trace of prussic acid.

Sibyl, part of our Dorian Gray series, will be available exclusively at our booth at the West Hollywood Book Fair.


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Black Phoenix will also be making an appearance at the New York Comic Con, October 8 - 10th at the Javits Center in New York City. Black Phoenix will be pitching a tent in booth 2851.

+ NYCC LIMITED EDITION SCENTS
$20
THE ELEPHANTINE COLOSSUS
Perfect for a Victorian Seaside Fornicatress! The Elephant Hotel, or Elephantine Colossus, was a 122 foot high elephant-shaped hotel that opened on Coney Island in 1885. Though it was a marvel of its time, it was also sullied by it’s proximity to the Gut, a particularly seedy section of West Brighton that seethed with persons of ill repute, and the Elephantine Colossus soon became as famous for its prostitutes as it was for its unusual architecture. Seaside hanky panky: a strumpet's red musk with a merry splash of root beer, a swirl of exotic pipeweed, and a whiff of sweets carrying over from the boardwalk.

THE LADY OF LAKE RONKONKOMA
Lake Ronkonkoma is rumored to be a bottomless lake and conduit to the netherworld. The gods of the Lake demand an annual sacrifice, using the restless spirit of a long-dead Seatauket maiden to lure unsuspecting men to their doom. Balsamic, reedy water, sweetgrass, algae, loosestrife, and lady’s slipper.

THE LINCOLN TUNNEL VORTEX
Not merely a pathway between Manhattan and Weehawken, the Lincoln Tunnel is also a site of mystery. Cars have been reported missing in mid-voyage as they passed through the tunnel, and individuals have claimed that they have exited the tunnel disoriented, with strange gaps in their memories. Are these accounts a side-effect of sanity-shattering traffic or is this a genuine highway to an alternate dimension? Swirls of discordant, high-pitched notes, pavement, and a thin coating of sweet, green-glowing radiator fluid.

MOUNT MISERY AND SWEET HOLLOW ROADS
Both Mount Misery and Sweet Hollow Roads are believed to be intensely haunted, and are pathways of misfortune and sorrow whose history of horrors descends deep into pre-Colonial American folklore. Black spruce boughs, packed dirt, gravel, brush, fallen chestnuts, wild tuberose, galbanum, and dead leaves.

THE WHITE LADY OF DURAND-EASTMAN PARK
In the early nineteenth century, a woman and her daughter took up residence in Rochester, where the Durand Eastman Park now stands. The woman was fleeing an abusive husband, and fled to Rochester to in an attempt to find solitude and safety for herself and her child. One terrible day, her daughter went missing. The grief-stricken mother searched the area frantically, but her daughter had disappeared without a trace. Over many weeks of searching, the woman became convinced that her daughter had been a victim of foul play at the hands of a local farmer. Unable to find her child, mad with sorrow, she flung herself into the chilly waters of Lake Ontario. Her spirit haunts Durand Eastman Park now, accompanied by a pair of phantom hounds. She is believed to be a protectress of women in peril, and exacts vengeance on any man that she encounters that have done any woman harm. Bittersweet and ethereal: bergamot, cacao, white tea, jasmine bud, narcissus, and tobacco flower.


+ BPTP NYCC ATMOSPHERIC SPRAYS
$25
THE BRITISH BLONDES
In 1868, Lydia Thompson’s British Blondes took New York City by storm, introducing burlesque to the Americas. A cluster of hothouse orchids with smoky vanilla-touched skin musk and burnished golden amber.

CONEY ISLAND CREEK
The scent of silty, thick water, mud flats, and rusted ancient shipwrecks.

STEEPLECHASE PARK
A celebration of Gilded Age amusement parks. Sweet, sticky concessions against a backdrop of gold-leafed rickety wood.


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And last but not least, we are proud to introduce the Black Phoenix Gazette...all the news that's fit to print!

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Updated 7 September 2010



Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, in conjunction with J.M. Linsner and the Hero Initiative, is debuting a new line of scents inspired by Dawn

Proceeds from every bottle sold in the Dawn line goes to the Hero Initiative, the first federally recognized not-for-profit organization dedicated to helping comic book creators, writers and artists in need. Founded in late 2000 by a consortium of comic book and trade publishers including Marvel Comics, Image Comics, Dark Horse Comics, Wizard Entertainment, CrossGen Comics and Dynamic Forces Inc., the 501(c)(3) charity aims to assist comic creators with health, medical, and quality-of-life assistance.

DAWN: MAIDEN
Tea roses, honeysuckle, heliotrope, olive blossom, milk, and honey.

DAWN: MOTHER
Red roses, saffron, honey, and frankincense.

DAWN: PRIESTESS
Damascus rose, jasmine, myrrh, opoponax, white sage, and patchouli.

DAWN: CERNUNNOS
Terebinth pine, basil, green sandalwood, fig leaf, armoise, lemon balm, cypress, myrrh, black cedar, and juniper.


Updated 22 August 2010:

The Harvest Moon update is live at BPAL & BPTP!

Last year, Del Howison and I were hired to write a tongue-in-cheek guide to dating vampires. Essentially, the premise of the book assumes that vampires are real and that they have recently come out of the crypt, so to speak. It explores the potential challenges found in actually dating vampires, and touches on the anthropology and science of vampires. We shelved most of the supernatural tropes, and concentrated on painting as “realistic” a picture as possible. I wrote the deadpan pseudoscience and false history, Del added warmth, contemporary advice, and wit. The project went through many iterations. It was initially supposed to be geared towards teen readers, and then the concept morphed to appeal to a more mature audience. I’m really, really happy with the way that we tweaked the vampire mythos.

In the end, after months of research, innumerable conversations, eleventybillion rewrites, and much love and tears, the book went to the editor and here we are.

This is my first time writing in this capacity, with publishers and all that snazzy stuff, and it was a nerve-wracking, wonderful, educational, and exciting experience. I want to thank Del (from the bottom of my heart!) and the people at Ulysses Press for this opportunity, and I hope that our book does them proud!