I Love Demeter

From the people who brought you Dirt:

Awesome. Demeter's scents are all amazing. Apparently Holy Water came out in '09 with Rain and Thunderstorm (<3), but I didn't notice it at the time.

Best Demeter fragrances? Snow, Thunderstorm, Pure Soap, Lavender Martini, Poison Ivy, Baby Powder, Condensed Milk, Cannabis Flower, Red Poppies... ok, pretty much everything they make. Even Dirt smells good, just like real, fertile gardening soil. I just wish Demeter's formula lasted more than two hours.

Bay Rum (Stop Putting Bay Laurel in It!)

Forget all those nasty, medicinal aftershaves: a good bay rum is spicy, herbal, and refreshing. This is on my "classic male scents" list, along with Creed Green Irish Tweed, Creed Silver Mountain Water, and 4711/other eau de colognes. When your grandpop came home from from the barbershop, he probably smelled like either bay rum or EDC.

The "bay" in bay rum does not refer to bay laurel, so you can ignore all the ridiculous recipes you'll find online calling for bay leaves as an ingredient. Instead it refers to Jamaican bayberry (allspice). Also, you can't substitute allspice berries for allspice leaves. It really is better and cheaper to just buy a bottle of the real deal rather than to whip up a batch of boozy spices from a fake recipe. Although, if anyone were to procure the proper ingredients and mix me up a batch made with Sailor Jerry.... oooh.

Bay rum is used for cleansing and healing. You can cleanse candles and workspaces with it, add it to baths, add it to washes/scrubs. Roots and herbs are sometimes soaked in it to make special formulas. Sometimes for healing it is rubbed on the body, downwards from head to toe, to cleanse away and pull the illness off the person. For example: To draw out a fever, mix it with cool/ice water and rub the person downwards with a clean rag while praying. Repeat every so often until the fever breaks.*

If you mostly use Florida Water to cleanse, consider switching to bay rum. It's, at least in my experience, more traditional to conjure, and the prices are stable. Florida Water keeps getting more and more expensive for no good reason. Well, I think I know why. "Hoodoo" has been a fad (ugh) for the past few years, and all the internet crowd wants is Florida Water. I mean, I got turned onto Florida Water too, it smells nice and it used to be cheap. But I refuse to pay $7-$14 per bottle when I can get bay rum for $3-$7.

The easiest brands to locate in brick and mortar stores are Superior 70 and Clubman Virgin Island Bay Rum. Burt's Bees used to make a good one, but I'm pretty sure it's discontinued. Try pharmacies (especially Walgreens), Dollar General, and Sally Beauty Supply.

Don't let the light shade fool you, it's pretty good.

*all my standard disclaimers apply... healing should always be a partnership with your medical doctor

4711 - The Original Eau De Cologne

I must confess: I am OBSESSED with perfumes and perfumery. Scent is our strongest memory and emotional trigger. Whenever I'm not feeling well, I dig into my perfume collection for something to perk me up. (Right now I've got the flu, but I'm awash in Chanel no. 5) Andy Warhol once said that perfume is a way to take up more space, and indeed, various spirits are associated with filling rooms with unexplainable scents. Since Andy Warhol loved perfume so much, he requested to be buried with a bottle of Estee Lauder's Beautiful... I imagine that's what his spirit would smell like. Anyway, the point is, perfume is special.

4711 has such a wonderful, nostalgic scent. Produced in Cologne, Germany for over 200 years, this is the original echt kölnisch wasser. 4711 is responsible for "cologne" becoming a generic term in perfumery. Hoyt's and Florida Water are less-expensive stateside interpretations of this fragrance, to give you an idea of the scent. Several members of my family have owned this, it's such a classic. When I think of conjure perfume, this is the first one to jump to my mind, followed by Hoyt's, and then Bay Rum. Florida Water is honestly at the bottom of the list. Like I've said before, FW is something I picked up later in life.

4711 is used just like Hoyt's. You can wear it for luck (especially gambling), anoint hands/mojos with it, add it to baths/washes/scrub water, soak herbs/roots in it (such as High John) to make special formulations.

 I once read that Pete Townshend used to snort 4711. I think that's fabulous.

If you can get your hands on a vintage bottle (pre-1980's) the scent is superior, but the new formula is still pretty good. Though not traditionally used in conjure, Roger&Gallet's Farina Eau de Cologne is closer to the original smell. In the "Most Expensive" category is Chanel's Eau de Cologne, which outlasts any other cologne I've tried. Guerlain's Eau de Cologne Imperiale is another classic cologne you can check out. (I only list all these for any die-hard cologne fans)

If you love 4711, they've been putting out several variations of it in recent years with their Acqua Colonia line:

White Florals

From top to bottom: Osmanthus, gardenia, orange blossom, jasmine, magnolia, white rose, tuberose.

"White floral", especially in the perfume industry, refers specifically to heavily perfumed white flowers. While they each have specialized uses, as a group they have a lot in common. While florals are associated with love, purity, fidelity, attraction, and marriage. Because of their purity, they can be added to any type of cleansing/uncrossing bath or oil.

Osmanthus- Because of it's fruity apricot tones, and the fact that it grows on an evergreen, I like to incorporate it in marriage and fertility works. Remember: fertility doesn't just mean physical female fertility, it can mean monetary fertility and, in this case, emotional fertility.

Gardenia- Ugh, I really need to plant myself some gardenia this spring! Gardenia is great for peace and bonding.

Orange blossom- The marriage flower. Because of it's associations with purity, it is used in wedding ceremonies to represent chastity and fidelity. Use for marriage, fidelity, and faithful love.

Jasmine- I've written about jasmine before. It's seductive, but not raunchy... though you can certainly make it very naughty just by combining it with a few things ;) It is also used for psychic work.

Magnolia- Magnolia in general is used for fidelity, and the blossoms are great for keeping the love strong even during hard times.

White Rose- The purest of pure. Because roses have thorns, which repel evil, white rose is an ingredient in many uncrossing formulas. White roses are also protective and they represent pure love.

Tuberose- Velvety and sensual, tuberose draws attention in a physical way, you know where you suddenly just really want to touch someone's arm or brush their hair back. Great for when you want physical affection.


If you are a fan of white florals, I cannot recommend enough one of my favorite perfumes of all time, Fracas by Robert Piguet

EDIT: Fracas has a bit of a cult following and it's been worn by many awesome ladies. Marlene Dietrich, Marilyn Monroe, Edie Sedgewick, Courtney Love, Madonna, Sophia Coppola, Dita Von Teese, and Iman are just the ones I can name off the top of my head!

I'm not sure how many newcomers know this, but you can work with your personal perfumes/colognes, you're not limited to Hoyt's/Florida Water/Jockey Club/whatever. You can pray over them for whatever it is you wish for them to do (look for ingredients that match up to your intent, of course). You can offer a spray or two of them in a glass of water to spirits. Even better if you can get scents your ancestors wore when they were alive. You can use them to feed hands/"mojos". The only thing I would caution is to look for fragrances made with real essential oils as opposed to synthetics.

Florida Water

When I first created this blog, I had decided that I didn't want to cover things that were already pretty well-covered elsewhere online. Now, though, I'm thinking that I still have things to contribute, so I might as well still cover them.

Florida Water is the name for a type of cologne that has been produced for over 200 years. There are and have been other brands, but Murray&Lanman's (formerly Lanman&Kemp) is the most ubiquitous. If you've ever smelled Hoyt's Cologne or 4711 (a true Eau de Cologne, which both this and Hoyt's are based on), Florida Water is similar but much lighter and less concentrated. If you like Hoyt's, 4711, Bay Rum, and other "old-timey" scents, you will love Florida Water.

Florida Water is used for purification and cleansing, spiritual work, and also drawing in good fortune. It's used in several ways. It can be used in baths and floor washes/scrub water or put in a spray bottle and misted about the home. It can be used to cleanse tools and work spaces between use. It can be used to cleanse candles (let dry before using!) and other store-bought things before you use them. It is frequently offered to ancestors and spirits and, if you work with them, saints and angels. It can be used to feed hands, packets, and also roots and bones and anything else you'd feed. It can also be worn as a personal scent. I know, "duh" on that last one, but I mean a magical scent. There is even a bar soap version of it.

I want to make something clear: not everyone uses it. I know it's traditional, especially in certain areas, but I personally never used the stuff until I lived in a primarily Hispanic neighborhood and was introduced to it. I've never seen anyone in my family use it either. I've known a few to own 4711, that's as close as it gets. Before, I'd always used whiskey, vodka, or even salt water to cleanse things, maybe a little incense smoke.

A few little tips: Florida Water is GREAT for mosquito bites, it numbs and soothes them (thanks to its clove and lavender oils) and helps them to heal. It also makes a great toner for oily or acne prone skin. To keep nice and cool in the summer, mix some into ice water and soak a rag in the mix to wipe yourself down and drape around your neck. This mix is also awesome for a migraine.

I have used Florida Water in healing work to great success. My boyfriend is diabetic and gets these little sores which don't heal for months, and when they do, they scar over. He has been to the doctor about them, and his doctor didn't know what they were but ruled out anything really serious, surmising that they must be, indeed, related to his diabetes. I asked him if, next time any cropped up, I could try to help heal them. Using Florida Water on them twice a day, along with prayer and power, I got them to heal up and leave with almost no scarring. He was shocked and amazed. He'd been using rubbing alcohol on them for a long time, so I know it wasn't just the alcohol content. Florida Water contains actual essential oils as opposed to synthetic fragrance, so there is real power in it.

Please take note: the above healing work did include a visit to a medical doctor. This is one example of using healing work in conjunction with medical doctors, which you should always do.

Incense and Goodies

I picked up some incense at the farmer's market yesterday, and today a few things I ordered online arrived early. Yay!

First up, the incense.

I picked up some of the house-brand incense sticks in opium and jasmine.

Opium poppies and jasmine share something in common: they're both flowers that can be used for psychic work and love work.

The opium poppy, aka bread poppy, (papaver somniferum) is my favorite flower. It's power rests in its alkaloids, such as codeine and morphine. If you've ever used prescription opiates or heroin, then you know exactly how powerful poppy's effects are. Poppy seeds are frequently used to cause confusion, especially in court cases where you want witnesses all confused and unable to give a good testimony or you want the other side to get confused and slip up. Both poppy seeds and flowers are used to stuff pillows for restful sleep and/or psychic dreams. When one is really high or heavily sedated on opiates, it's not uncommon to go into frequent catnaps which are filled with incredibly vivid dreams. This is where we get the term "pipe dream" from. I used to keep a large dried poppy pod for use as a natural rattle. It's use in love work is also heavily tied to it's psychoactive nature. If your goal is to have someone who's doped up, dreamy, and easily led, poppies are the way to go. Think of the one witch in Four Rooms (played by Ione Skye) who entrances Tim Roth's character.

Yeah, I use "love work" a bit broadly.

Now if you really want to seduce, look to jasmine. Jasmine has been prized for centuries for it's gorgeous scent. Indeed, one of my two favorite perfumes, Fracas, is full of jasmine and other captivating white florals. One thing about jasmine that makes it especially great for seduction (and this is directly tied in to its association with psychic work) is that it releases its fragrance at night. Yes, jasmine is another great choice for dream work and other psychic endeavors.

There's one more flower that I know of which is used for both love and dreams, and that's hibiscus. Try combining the three.

Next up is a little obsession of mine: Incense matches.

These are AWESOME. I can light my candles and have incense going and not even need to look for a lighter or matches because the incense IS a match? WHAT? Genius.

I got jasmine and patchouli, and I already own frankincense, cinnamon, french vanilla, "Egyptian Goddess", and musk.

Everyone either loves or hates patchouli. I blame the people who don't wear deodorant and just drown themselves in the stuff for the strong hatred many claim to have. More than once someone has ranted about patchouli, how even a whiff of it makes them sick, only to be surprised that the perfume they'd complimented me on contains patchouli. Then again, it's impossible not to love Fresh's Cannabis Santal, my other favorite perfume.

Patchouli is a powerhouse, it can be used for almost everything. It can be used for seduction, money, uncrossing, and domination. It has a very commanding, even overpowering, nature.

I'm going to have to do proper posts on these items, but I also received in the mail: more Florida Water, more aloeswood power, and both frankincense and myrrh essential oils. I have the latter two in resin form, but I wanted these for oils and skincare.

As you can guess, my room smells incredible right now. Funny, I can be surrounded by all this but all it takes is a tiny bit of Glade to send me into a crazy painful, aura-accompanied migraine.