Oil Perfume magick

I gave myself permission to skip a few weeks to get other stuff done :) And here I am again!

There is something magickal about perfume. We all are hard-wired to love beautiful scents, and to dislike and avoid unpleasant scents. Scent is the sense that is most easily identifiable and can jettison you back to a memory quicker than any other sense (like your grandmother's perfume).

A study (from somewhere made by someone :P lol) showed that 98% of women are more confident in themselves when they wear perfume. We wear perfume for a multitude of reasons:

• to feel sexy or beautiful to ourselves
• to feel sexy or beautiful to others
• to cover up odors
• to give ourselves a little bit of indulgence
• to perk up your energy with the scent
• to relax with the scent
• to lift your mood

Perfumes can come in a variety of types: spray, powder, incense, solid dab-on, aromatic bathing waters, or oils. Oil perfumes are my favorite! One reason for this is that they are so easy to make (just mix and go!) and yet you can make them as complex and experimental as you want.

Another reason is that oil perfumes are one of the earliest known forms of perfume, rivalled only by incense and possibly water-based perfumes. Ancient women, be they Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Roman, Greek, Persian or elsewhere would massage their bodies with oil perfumes, sometimes getting as creative as to rub a different scent on each body part. (Jasmine on their necks, Rose on their breasts, Patchouli on their thighs, etc) So, using oil perfumes makes me feel like I'm doing this ancient, ages-old ritual celebrating my femininity by adorning myself with oil perfumes. It's like being an ancient Egyptian Pharoahess! It's lovely to pamper yourself with the fruits of nature and give yourself the energy of a queen.

Most oil perfumes consist of essential oils mixed in a carrier oil, since pure essential oils can overwhelm or even damage your skin undiluted (with the exception of lavender, which is fine to use 'neat' or undiluted). Essential oils are distilled aromatic essences of plants that have been extracted through a variety of methods. There are synthetic oils out there created in a chemist's lab, but they are not nearly as healthy or natural-smelling as true essential oils. You can usually tell the difference by looking at the label:

1. If it reads 'fragrance oil' or 'perfume oil' instead of essential oil, then it is probably not real.
2. If it doesn't include the scientific, botanical name (for example, Callitris intratropica for Blue Cypress) then it might not be real.
3. Some essential oils are cheaper, and some are more expensive. If all types of oil are priced the same, they're more than likely fake. Similarly, particular essential oils like jasmine and rose are extremely expensive. Aura Cacia's current price for 0.125fl oz of Rose Otto is currently going for $79.99, and the same amount of Rose Absolute for $43.50. If a price on a rare essential oil seems too good to be true, it is probably fake or at least pre-diluted. Reputable carriers will put a note on the label specifying that an oil is diluted.

Truthfully, experimenting with essential oil blends can be somewhat expensive, if you're buying 15 oils and seeing what kinds of combinations you can make. My advice is, determine your budget, then go to the website of a reputable essential oil seller, such as Aura Cacia (http://www.auracacia.com/), Ananda Apothecary (http://www.anandaapothecary.com/), Mountain Rose Herbs (http://www.mountainroseherbs.com/), etc and scroll through their sites, making a list of scents you'd like to try, and their prices. Don't forget to factor into your budget in the cost of diluting oils, such as sweet almond oil or jojoba oil, or a blend. Create an order of preference of what you'd like to try, and using that and your  judgement about their prices, perhaps buy 1-4 oils that you can test-blend small amounts.

Some usually more affordable oils include but certainly aren't limited to: Amyris, Basil, Benzoin, Cedarwood, Clary Sage, Lemongrass, Lime, Marjoram, Niaouli, Oak Moss, Sweet Orange, Patchouli, Peppermint, Pine, Rosemary, Spruce, and Tangerine.

Personally, I love a simple mixture of Patchouli and Vanilla (vanilla comes in an absolute form, or I have used vanilla extract before as well). Lime and Basil are always a fun, sparkly combination. I've been meaning to get some Benzoin and try mixing it with my sweet orange, but haven't gotten around to it.

So anyway, within your budgetary limitations, GO WILD!!! It won't take long until you'll find what oils resonate best with you, and find some perfect combinations for you!

Love and Shimmery Light,

<3 Sapphire Orchid <3

L is for Love

Hi. I'm Larry. The Love Chipmunk. Brr. I'm cold. I need some lovin'.

Love. When you boil right down to it, it's what everyone wants.
Love. There's something about it.
Love. It's all around us, floating and flowing and surrounding and cradling each of us, even when we can't feel it.
Love. Sure, it's all around us, and yet we all want more of it, and the more we give of it, the more there is in the entire Universe for all of us.

I was always very leery of 'love spells' throughout my first few years as a pagan. People who cast love spells seemed to me like they were either A. casting them to attract someone in particular, which just has bad idea written all over it, or B. using it as an excuse to not go out and socialize and actually DO things that would truly allow them to FIND love.

As I go on with my life, however, I'm starting to realize that however you ask for love, whether it's specific or generic or avoiding some other situation, the universe answers you. And maybe it doesn't answer you in the way that you think, but it does answer you and provide you with what you need.

For example, maybe you cast a love spell to attract a mate. The universe maybe gets your request for romantic love but sees that what you need more right now is the compassionate, unconditional love that a pet companion provides and you find a dog or cat that connects that well with you. Or maybe the universe senses that you need companionship-love more, and so it sends you an excellent friend.

Or maybe even when you send your wish for love out into the universe, maybe love is all the same deep down beneath it all, and the universe can't differentiate, it just sends us love. Then, maybe the form that it sends us love in determines how we humans categorize that love. The Universe sent me a bunny, so I interpret this bunny's love as pet love. The Universe sent my mother to visit me, so I interpret her love as a mother's love. Maybe love is all just the same and other circumstances determine how we view that love. Such as Love+Attraction = romantic love. Love+Time Spent+Similar Interests = friendship. Eh? Maybe? Just an idea.

Anyway, so it would be fun to come up with a ritual and/or energy working that holds three purposes: gratitude for the love we have in our lives, a gift of love out into the universe, and  an expression of joy and hope, and invitation for all the love that is to come in the future. It could be done by yourself, with a loved one, or maybe even in a group. How powerful would that be??!!

Always Love,

<3 Sapphire Orchid <3

Jasmine

I used to absolutely hate Jasmine until I realized I was using the fake stuff.

We ran out of sandalwood soap, and I was busy when Tim asked me what I wanted as far as soap, and I said something along the lines of *grunt* "eh? uh... yeah." And so he grabbed... a-this!:

Bee & Flower Jasmine Soap. Holy frikken moley. Yes, I just said Holy Frikken Moley. Well, typed it.

And it smells REALLY RIDICULOUSLY WONDERFUL. Granted, I know it's all natural fragrance, but I don't know if it's all only Jasmine fragrance, but since Jasmine essential oil is uber expensive, it's probably "enhanced" by some other flower. So anyway, me smelling all good after getting out the shower got me all curious in Jasmine, enough to write a short post about my findings, and other tidbits of knowledge I picked up from various places throughout the years.

According to Wikipedia, Jasmine is actually a genus, not a species. But there are specieses of Jasmine. Just, more than one like I had previously thought. Like, 200 SPECIES!!! And they're native to "the old world" (I chuckled when I saw Wiki say that) in tropical/warm places, mostly in Asia and Southeast Asia, but also popping up in the Middle-East, Africa, Europe, etc. It is also apparently related to olives, which is just weird.

Totally not an olive. Totally gorgeous photo of a blooming Jasmine by BarbaraDin on sxc.hu

You can make tea with Jasmine. I admit, I'm not a big green tea fan, and the only tea with Jasmine I can ever seem to find is green. Oh but to find some black or white tea with jasmine in it! But I digress. Apparently it's really awesome and sometimes the actual little petals are in there, not just some dumb flavoring and it's all smelly and pretty and sensuous and I really want some tea. Now.

Multiple sources cite Jasmine as an aphrodisiac, and I think I've heard about it as a really good remedy for menstrual cramps as well, both of which I have yet to try. All I know is when I shower with the jasmine soap I feel all soft and feminine and it makes me wanna put on harem pants.

Ok that's all for today. I'm not gonna lie, I didn't put much effort into that. :)

Love,

<3 Sapphire Orchid <3

Om Shanti Naturals Salt & Sugar Scrub Review

Last birthday, my sister completely broke character and told me in advance what she was going to buy me in advance. The reason she told me was because she wasn't sure what SCENT to get me.

I've been on this green beauty kick for a little over a year now, thanks to Julie Gabriel's Green Beauty Guide, which has become my bible for avoiding the noxious, harmful chemicals that cosmetics, hair products, body and facial care products dump into our delicate systems every day. (Yeah, pretty much anything you can pick up in your local grocery store beauty aisles contains petrochemicals, harsh irritants, carcinogenic compounds, and other lovely things that support your un-health.)

Anyway, Jenni was aware of this, and she did her homework. She found this company called Om Shanti Naturals, and got me a Patchouli Vanilla Sugar and Salt Scrub. The company is run by this wonderful, creative lady named Kate, who I met in person at the Collegeville Winter Farmers Market after having already used all of the Patchouli Vanilla scrub and loving it to death. Sadly, I did not get the opportunity to meet her Vice President of Marketing, an orange cat named Loiosh, but here's to staying hopeful!

The company logo. And it IS all crap-free. Not a single bad ingredient, it's all pure.

The stuff is amazing. I love it. It's basically a scrub made of sea salt, sugar, moisturizing oils and essential oils to make you soft and smelling delicious. It comes in this cute, re-usable wide-mouthed jar with a screw top, and when you're in the shower, after you've washed, you take a handful of this stuff and rub it all over your body. The result is that you get a REALLY awesome exfoliation, and it leaves the oil on your skin.

I know what you're thinking, OIL on my SKIN?? But don't panic. It's not greasy at all. The oils are natural, like grapeseed and apricot kernel oil -- these are the kinds of oils massage therapists use, the kinds that glide over your skin and feed it moisture and trace vitamins and wonderfulness.

So here's the thing, when you rinse the scrub off, the salt and sugar will go down your drain (it's ok, it won't do any clogging, I promise, but it will make your shower floor slippery, so be careful) and the oil will remain on your skin. When you dry off, it will transfer to your towel. Again, these are massage-therapist quality oils, they will not harm your towels at all. The towels will take off the excess oil that your skin doesn't need, leaving a slight amount still on your skin. Stay in the bathroom for another minute or five, and it will soak into your skin leaving you lightly scented, soft, supple, and simply lovely to touch. And you will stay SMOOTH all day long.

The other thing is, if you've never had a bathing experience with essential oils, you're in for a real treat. We're so used to synthetic fragrances in our lives, that essential oils can be a little overwhelming if you aren't expecting them. They truly are, however, a lesson in luxuriousness, and to boot, each essential oil has its own physical and emotional health benefits. When you take a bath with essential oils, they work into the steam in the room, swirl all around you, and envelop you. For me, I always have a keener, more vibrant sense of smell whenever I'm through showering with essential oil-infused body oils.

There are more scents than just the Patchouli Vanilla one, though. Personally, that one is my favorite so far, with its earthy, sweet scent-hue. I close my eyes and I'm standing under a sparkling waterfall in a magical forest with vanilla beans hanging from the lush greenery, and the smell of clean, pure soil below, nourishing the sky-high trees.

However, my boyfriend is not so fond of Patchouli. Right now, I have the Kyphi scrub, and it too is delightful; she uses a simplified, delicately beautiful balance of the main scents that make Kyphi smell like Kyphi: frankincense, myrrh, cinnamon, and spearmint. It too is delicious, but I do love the Patchouli Vanilla.

So, long story short, you need to try this stuff. And her other stuff. Up next on my list of Om Shanti products to try? I'm particularly keen on trying the Tangerine Vanilla Lip Balm, Cinnamon Vanilla Massage and Bath Oil, and the Spearmint Calendula Soap.

You can find her website here: http://www.omshantinaturals.com/ and she's on Etsy too.

Love,

<3 Sapphire Orchid <3

Totally skipping last week. J is for Jacuzzi Magick!!

Seriously. Who doesn't love jacuzzis??!

It is a pure crying shame that there is a jacuzzi in my own bathroom and yet I rarely use it, mostly because of the sheer amount of water required to fill it up. And I was brushing my teeth this morning, thinking these thoughts along with the fact that I hadn't done a PBP post for the past two weeks (oops) and I suddenly realized, I'd never really heard anything about jacuzzi magick or lore or anything.

A jacuzzi is basically a modernized version of a hot springs with lots of mini geysers. Most people would automatically tag an elemental association as water, however, the jacuzzi is uniquely poised to be associated with all elements: water fills it, air bubbles flow through it to make it jacuzzi-y and awesome, heat is applied (fire?) and of course, the jacuzzi itself is the vessel that holds it all together. So if you're doing any sort of elemental workings, it would suit particularly for water, or for a balance of all four elements.

I'm not big on spell-writing, nor too good at ritual writing, but I am decent at offering suggestions on what to do with things! So here are some ideas for using a jacuzzi in your magickal workings:
--Cleansing energy work, since jacuzzis are essentially a bath and baths are for cleaning
--Relaxation, meditation
--Beauty energy work, particularly if you also indulge in a facial and hair mask, and really let the steam set in and open everything up :)
--For energy working that may involve a hot spring of any sort, a jacuzzi is a more accessible (and sometimes safer) way of working with these energies.
--Love and sex energy work, to heat things up a little ;D
--Releasing and banishing. If you sit in the water and meditate upon shedding all of your cares into the water, then pull the plug, everything will release down the drain.

Pretty much any bath magick can be performed in a jacuzzi, except for one warning: any herbs, spicies, oils, or any form of additive to the water might gunk up or harm the motors in your jacuzzi. Don't ruin your jacuzzi. It's probably super expensive.

Love,

<3 Sapphire Orchid <3

Pagan Blog Project: I is for Imagination!

This was my most fun post to do so far. :)

When my friends and I were about middle school age, we discovered Wicca. This led us into a whole slew of experimental things: spells, rituals, scrying, meditation, but the most vivid, fond memory I have of this point in our lives was past life regressions.

We would sit there in the dark at sleepovers, bathed in candlelight, and Person A would lay her head on a pillow, Person B would sit and stroke the forehead of Person A, and Person C would hold her hand, helping to ground Person A. B would then talk A down into a trance, open doors, and ask questions about who the person is, what's going on around them, etc.

The friends who thought it would be dumb were always the ones who got really into it, and pulled past lives out of their psyche that they simply could not have made up. They always wowed themselves. Others would be skeptical, and say, "Well, how do you know I'm not just making this up?"

This is where the notion of imagination comes in. When you are past-life regressing, scrying, divining, astral-projecting, are you just making it up, even if you think or worry that you might just be making it up? I know I have a hard time quelling the skeptic in me. You may just think you're imagining things and that what you're experiencing isn't truly real.

I have two approaches to answer this issue, based on the same principle, however, to bridge the gap between imagination and reality. First: are they so different? If you are imagining something, who is to say that the thing you are "imagining" is not real? Define real. Define imagination. You probably said something like, well, real things are tangible things you can feel. Desks are real because you can feel them. Smells are real because you can smell them. The problem with this is that reality doesn't equal tangible, necessarily. Emotions aren't primary physical (even though they induce physical responses) but they are real. Ideals are real, such as beauty, justice, truth, even though the definition thereof may vary from person to person. Just because something isn't tangible doesn't mean it isn't real.

Everything that happens to you happens in your mind. Tangible things are really inside your head: your hand physically touches the desk, but your mind is what feels the desk, through the conduit of your brain. Shoot some Novocaine into your hand, and you can touch the desk all you want, but you can't feel it because it's not making its way to your mind.

Therefore: what is in your mind is real to you. Your mind defines your own reality. Some realities are shared: you can touch a desk together with someone else. Other realities aren't shared: perhaps you don't like desks and the other person loves desks; how you feel about things is a part of what defines reality. This is a different reality for you, but each reality is equally valid.

Therefore, again: anything you imagine is real... possibly only to you, albeit, but still real.

Second argument: Let's say you spend some time on the Astral plane and hanging out with some faeries, and you come back to the physical plane and disbelieve the entire thing, dismissing it as, "Oh, that wasn't real, I just must have made it all up inside my head."

BUT who is to say that reality does not impress itself upon your memory and imagination? Who is to say that you have that much control to make up such a rich environment yourself? Is your imagination really yours? Or do you draw the things you imagine from things that already exist, that already happened? Is it even possible to imagine something that doesn't exist? Imagine a color that doesn't exist. Imagine a shape that doesn't exist. It's almost like you can't imagine something without it existing, or at least with the idea of it existing.

So next time you're imagining something wishing it were real, who knows? Maybe it is, somewhere.

Love,

<3 Sapphire Orchid <3

H is for Herbal Healing

So, I've been reading a lot lately about Herbal Healing. Part of this is because of the fact that I'm starting to synthesize my An Leabhar Súilíneach (working title for my Book of Shadows, since I didn't like the shadow part, so I went with a light theme... Book of Shimmers! Except in Irish Gaelic since it sounds cooler, which, by the way, I absolutely do not speak a lick of, so if this is incorrectly translated/adjective-conjugated/whatever please let me know :D it's a work in process.) and I really wanted to have something sort of guide on how to use the fruits of nature to heal what ails you. Modern medicine worries the crap out of me sometimes, particularly with things like antibiotics, blood pressure meds (which I was prescribed at... 23??!) and other such drastic measures that are really having a slippery slope effect on our health, when things can be treated in natural ways.

So anyway. I've been gathering information from several different places. I'm loving the Medicine Woman's Roots Blog (http://bearmedicineherbals.com/), and the following two books, both of which interest me but I am somewhat taking with a grain of salt until I can actually see some of these things in action:

Heinerman's Encyclopedia of Healing Herbs & Spices by John Heinerman

and Indian Herbalogy of North America by Alma R. Hutchens



I guess what weirds me out about it is that one herb can have a whole slew of problems that it helps to correct. Goldenseal, for example, Heineman lists as being useful in healing eye inflammations, candida, mouth sores, drug addiction, poison ivy, insulin dependency in diabetics, sinus relief, and preventing blood clots.

And I'm sitting there, reading all that, going, "...what?" and trying to figure out if it's a miracle plant or just completely and utterly overstated and overinflated.

I also like to try and look for different sources giving the same information. For example, both books list the entire blackberry plant (roots, leaves and berries) as being useful in treating diarrhea. Both books also refer to cotton root as being helpful in delayed/obstructed menstruation.

Some of the claims are a little bit tall-tale-seeming. For example, Heineman lists a magical headache cure as making a tea with water and dried basil, cooling it and adding a little witch hazel and dabbing it on the forehead. I believe it a little more now that that medication you put on your forehead, with the annoying commercials on the Weather Channel, Head on (Head on! Apply directly to the forehead! Head on! Apply directly to the forehead! Head on! Apply directly to the forehead), exists, but I still have yet to try that one.

I'm also curious about learning the Bach Flower Remedies. Those sound interesting.

So, without further ado, some cures for what ails you:

Heartburn? Boil 5-7 tablespoons in a quart of water, add honey to taste and sip.

Hypertension? Evening Primrose.

Hangover? Barberry.

Sexual frigidity? Damiana!!!

Enjoy!

<3 Sapphire Orchid <3