Illuminated Perfume

What smells were your ancestors experiencing in their sensory world?

A scent from my ancestry is a traditional cologne, featuring citrus notes.

In the 18th century, pleasure gardens were designed for the rich in which the smells of different flowers and herbs played a significant part.

Until the late 19th century, perfumes worn by British women were made mainly from natural ingredients; mass production of synthetic perfumes came only, with advances in chemistry, in the late Victorian era.

This weekend is the Ancestral Perfume Two Day Workshop where we:

Explore how geography, ethnicity, religion, and spirituality can be experienced through scent.

Work with colors, textures, images, and landscapes that evoke your lineage, creating a visual key for your blend.
Go on a guided Journey to meet an ancient, healthy ancestral guide. Receive their wisdom, their scent, their blessing.
Using your collage, your journey, and the anatomy of the psyche, formulate a personal natural perfume that encodes your healing.

Learn how to continue your ancestral work after the weekend 👉🏻
https://www.illuminatedperfume.com/products/ancestral-perfume-two-day-workshop

My friend & colleague Cathy Skipper and I share many core traits and guiding threads, one of those is the importance of "feeling" and its relationship to scent. In both French and Spanish, the verb "to feel" and "to smell" is sentir. (Auspiciously Cathy speaks French and I Spanish.)
This tangent in language relates to physical perception of the world that heavily influences our emotions and memories. Feeling bridges the gap between physical touch and emotional states.
Join us in an immersive weekend intentionally designed as an exploration of personal archaeology via ancestry with guided journeying, collage, and the creation of a personal, embodied fragrance. The work is rooted in the deep wisdom of Jungian psychology with threads of alchemy. Read more here https://illuminatedperfume.substack.com/.../fragrance-of... then follow the link to read more and join the circle
https://illuminatedperfume.substack.com/p/fragrance-of-the-ancestors-in-santa

Fragrance of the Ancestors in Santa Fe A Transformative Two-Day Workshop Under the Full Moon

Juniper berries collected from last weekends adventure in the Galisteo Basin. The essential oil from these berries is exquisite and a reoccurring theme in the scents I create. Some examples include Sierra, Chaparral and the Green Knight, although it’s not dominate in those perfumes, it acts as a support note. 🌿🎵

Historically it has a connection with my maternal (Spain) and spiritual (Egypt) lineage.

My friend & colleague Cathy Skipper and I share many core traits and guiding threads, one of those is the importance of “feeling” and its relationship to scent. In both French and Spanish, the verb “to feel” and “to smell” is sentir. (Auspiciously Cathy speaks French and I Spanish.)

This tangent in language relates to physical perception of the world that heavily influences our emotions and memories. Feeling bridges the gap between physical touch and emotional states.

Join us in an immersive weekend intentionally designed as an exploration of personal archaeology via ancestry with guided journeying, collage, and the creation of a personal, embodied fragrance. The work is rooted in the deep wisdom of Jungian psychology with threads of alchemy.
🌿⚗️💫✨

Head over to Illuminated Perfume, then “classes”, its on the second page.
The photos are from when Cathy and husband Florian came out to the perfumery in Los Angeles to host a series of classes and presentations surrounding
their main workshop titled Alchemy & the Medicine of the Soul: The Wounded Healer, A Journey Through the Alchemical Stages & the Sacred Union. One of the related events was distilling white sage from my garden with the new cooper still up in Topanga.

On Friday, the day attributed to the Goddess of love and beauty, I was about to post a few photographs from my upstairs perfume laboratory with the words: “Wafting love, beauty, harmony, bees and bunnies from my upstairs lab at the perfumery” ….and then, and then I felt the presence a silent whisper and scented kiss. I wrote about it over at Wandering the Wonderland. While working in the studio today I realized that if I were to choose a scent to represent her, today it would be the intoxicating warm floral notes of Lyra. -> https://substack.com/

In July 2021, after seeing the film adaptation of the Green Knight story from Arthurian legend, I re-membered
the ritual done in the 90’s with the sha-womban and initiate group I was working with at the time.

And so, I decided to create my first “ritual perfume” which encouraged bravery, and also linked back to my Celtic roots.
💫
I named it the same as the legend and attached many of the Green Knights mottos, such as: “Accept the challenge that life presents, and the life beyond this life.”

The Green Knight re-minds us that we must not to fear the unknown, for we are immortal.

The fragrance is made with my own hands, n my upstairs lab with essential oils and infusions and intention. I don’t use isolates, any synthetics or a lab to
formulate my perfumes, its all 100% me, a visual artist turned plant fragrance maker who loves nature and intends you do too.

Head over to Wandering the Wonderland to read more about this scent and the ritual, samples and jars are available at the website.

The Green Knight asks you to be honorable and have integrity 🌳

Preparing for a smell session here at the perfumery, with one of my favorite human. 🌱🌸👃🏻
No, she’s not an Egyptian God, we have the feeling we were both Priestesses in Egypt during the reign of Hathor, in a previous life.

Hello from the perfumery in Santa Fe, NM. In my upstairs lab I’m orchestrating more Rosa, while downstairs the roses are blooming 💗 Wafting gratitude to for championing my work, and channeling beauty magnificently
🤗💞

Just finished hosting a workshop I developed, based on the making of Kyphi in Egypt. It’s so wonderful to observe the awareness that percolates up as I take individuals through the process of making a “plant” fragrance with intention. The class, which has evolved over time, contains tangents of alchemy, herbalism and aromatherapy, along with his and her story, geography, music and so much more! I’m realizing it encapsulates all he threads of my artistic career and explorations into consciousness.
🐍⚗️👁️💫

At the perfumery, evaluating colors for my perfume wax seals 🐝