Essence and Alchemy

by Mandy Aftel

  15 ml perfume alcohol

  8 drops vanilla

  5 drops benzoin

  6 drops amber

  Measure the alcohol into a beaker. Add the remaining ingredients, stirring and smelling after each addition. You will notice that the benzoin extends the vanilla note and adds a softness to it. With the addition of the amber, there is a slightly richer and deeper tone to the blend. Pour the finished chord into a bottle and label it “Base/Alchemy.”

  Here are some other suggestions for combinations to try when composing base chords. The dominant note appears first.

  Powdery (sweet, dry, musky): opoponax, blond tobacco, Peru balsam

  Woody: sandalwood, frankincense, costus

  Mossy (earthy, herbaceous, ferny): vetiver, labdanum, lavender absolute

  Sweet: cocoa, cognac, vanilla

  Sultry (sensual, voluptuous, rich): vanilla, Peru balsam, oakmoss

  4

  Aromatic Stangas Heart Notes

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

  —Colette, “Fragrance”66

  65 THE ARABS loved roses even more than we do. They preserved them by gathering the buds and placing them in earthenware jars that they sealed with clay and buried in the earth. When roses were required, they dug up the jar, sprinkled the buds with water, and left them to air until the petals opened. One sultan was so smitten with roses that he forbade anyone else to grow them. He dressed in pink in their honor and had his rugs sprinkled continually with rosewater.

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

  Still for flowers

  Not all flowers, however, can be made into ingredients for perfumery. One stem of a Casablanca lily can perfume a room with an intoxicating aroma—in fact, it is my favorite floral scent—but, alas, that smell cannot be captured in perfume; lilies, along with a number of other florals, resist any form of scent harvesting. In fact, it is a telltale sign that a perfume is made from synthetics if it contains any of the following flowers, because they cannot be rendered naturally: freesia, honeysuckle, violet, tulip, lily, gardenia, heliotrope, orchid, lilac, and lily of the valley.

  Nor can these scents be faked successfully, because floral essences are so nuanced and complex, varying dramatically even among varieties of the same species. A rose is a rose is a rose, but not to the perfumer. Russian rose is softer, Indian thinner, Egyptian richer, Turkish sweeter, Bulgarian rounder, Moroccan brighter. Jasmine sambac is sharp, while grandiflorum jasmine is more full-bodied. Deepgreen Tasmanian boronia has a rich herbal scent, whereas the bright orange kind has a sweet-tart citrusy odor. Spanish, Tunisian, and French orange flower absolute all vary in sweetness and depth.

  The heavy florals have an intensely narcotic aura. They induce a sense of receptivity and surrender, almost of being ravished. After working with them for a while, I often feel as if I have been drugged. Many of these intoxicating floral essences have a fecal undertone; indeed, that is the source of the yin-yang appeal of some of the most coveted perfumes. The magic ingredient is indol (sometimes spelled indole), a major element in jasmine, tuberose, and orange flowers, among others; it is also found in human feces. As chemist and perfume writer Paul Jellinek observes, “It is precisely67 the odor of indol, reminiscent of decay and feces, that lends orange blossom, jasmine, tuberose, lilac, and other blossoms that putrid-sweet, sultry-intoxicating nuance which has led to the sum of these flowers and of their extracts as delicate aphrodisiacs, today as in the past.”

  Indol cannot be synthesized successfully. It can be approximated, but the loss of its natural nuances extinguishes the synergistic effect they achieve. As Jellinek notes, attempts to replicate chemically the surprisingly high levels of indol that occur in natural floral essences result in an unpleasantly dominant note of indol and demonstrate the limitations of the synthetics in general. It is not that naturally occurring indol smells different than the synthetic, or that its chemical structure is different; it is that “the odor strength68 and effectiveness of natural flower absolutes is never equaled or even approximated by artificial compositions of the same complexes,” because “nature, in the composition of its odor complexes, likes to use, in addition to the quantitatively predominant and largely identified components, small or minute amounts of materials which, by virtue of their characteristic odor notes of great intensity, play a decisive role in the character of the entire complex and its delicate ‘naturalness.’ These materials are hard to identify due to the exceedingly low levels at which they occur.”

  As an isolated element, indol loses its magic, much as acting in a particular manner in an effort to be sexy often isn’t. But as an element of a natural essence entwined with other essences in an intricate fragrance, indol walks the fine line between arousal and disgust, orchestrating a genuine eroticism. As in nature itself, complexity and context are the field conditions for awakening passion. No ingredient is necessarily crucial: roses themselves do not contain indol, but their odor is unarguably sexual. Moreover, as Jellinek rhapsodizes, “The opulently rounded shapes69,70 of the petals of a rose in full bloom are suggestive of the mature female body and their rich red color evokes thoughts of lips and kisses. The austere form of the bud before blooming, which only subtly hints at the rounded abundance and fragrance of full maturity, and its opening to amorous life, exhuming a ravishing scent, are external manifestations of the flower’s life processes which man sees and senses and which stimulate his erotic fantasies.” It is no coincidence that the rose—especially the red rose—has been considered the flower of love by every culture that has known it.

  Collecting tuberose at Grasse

  Almost all floral essences are middle notes, or heart notes, and almost all middle notes are florals, although there is a smattering of herbs and spices as well—clary sage, verbena, cloves, and cinnamon bark. Heart notes give body to blends, imparting warmth and fullness. In their boldness, sexiness, sincerity, and dearness, they are the perfect metaphor for—no, embodiment of—passion. When you put them into a blend, you’re literally putting the heart into it; they are the tie that binds.

  In J. K. Huysmans’s classic novel of aesthetic excess, À Rebours, the protagonist describes the creation of a heart chord: “First he made himself a tea with a compound of cassia and iris; then, completely sure of himself, he resolved to go ahead, to strike a reverberating chord whose majestic thunder would drown down the whisper of that artful frangipani which was stealing stealthily into the room.”

  Floral heart notes can be combined into voluptuous chords that are sultry, sophisticated, radiant, narcotic, exotic. They bridge the distance between the deep, heavy base notes and the light, sharp top notes, rounding
off the rough edges and making the perfume cohere as a whole. This requires an almost alchemical transformation: idiosyncratic and intense as they are on their own, they are smoothly integrated into the evolving fragrance, enlarging it not by imposing their will but by allowing their singular personalities to be subsumed into a greater whole.

  In this they mirror the alchemical phenomenon known as the mystic marriage, in which opposite elements are combined and an entirely new substance emerges. The material, the prima materia, becomes spirit, and spirit in turn becomes concrete. This process of joining matter and spirit, or coniunctio, is a recurrent theme in alchemical writing, in which the dualities are conceived as masculine and feminine forces. As in perfumery, the transformation requires a medium, the soul. The resulting union, the mystic marriage of opposites, is often represented as a joining of sun and moon, sol and luna, frequently portrayed as king and queen.

  As always in these writings, alchemical symbols are susceptible71 to multiple interpretations—sun and moon can represent dual powers in the soul, soul and spirit, creativity and receptivity, and so on. But the representation of the mystic marriage in the ancient text is also overtly sexual, depicted in recurrent fanciful and mysterious images of sexual union. As Mark Haeffner observes in A Dictionary of Alchemy, “Graphic images of Coniunctio72 in alchemy books are frank portrayals of sexual intercourse by a crowned couple. No mere chemical combination but an archetypal copulation of the reigning principles of nature at that time … Sol is the masculine sun: fiery, active, fixed, symbol of sulfur. Luna is the volatile, feminine, liquid principle of the moon.”

  This is not a surprise. The alchemists saw sexuality as an integral aspect of transformation and ascribed a sexuality to all forces, incorporating it into much of their symbolic imagery. And coniunctio is a joining of opposites; it is inherently sexual and lusty. At the same time, “the concept of harmonizing73 and unifying, integrating opposites, clearly has an esoteric, mystical significance.” Woman is represented as dissolving man, and man as making woman solid, just as spirit was believed to dissolve the body and the body to fix the spirit.

  Learning to combine the precious flower essences in a perfume composition is a direct experience of all the levels of meaning bound up in the integration of opposites. Working with such intense and polarized elements is exhilarating and scary, with the potential either to create something unique and beautiful in the right synthesis of matter and spirit or to destroy it altogether.

  The heart notes lend themselves to being grouped in the following ways:

  Light heart notes are florals that have a buoyant and airy quality, such as linden blossom, magnolia, and neroli.

  Neroli is an essential oil that is water-distilled from the flowers of the bitter orange tree, which was introduced to the Mediterranean by the conquering Arabs in the tenth and eleven centuries. In fact, for the next five centuries the bitter orange was the only orange known to Europeans. The name neroli has been attributed to a princess of Neroli, a member of the distinguished Italian Orsini family, who introduced it to the courts of Europe toward the close of the seventeenth century.

  The flowers require delicate handling. To obtain the highest quality oil, they must be picked on a warm, sunny day when the blossoms are just beginning to open; closed buds render an inferior oil with a somewhat “green” odor, while flowers open too far are apt to fade and spoil during transportation and storage. They must be distilled quickly, before incipient decay introduces unpleasant off-notes. The essence itself should be kept in the refrigerator in a dark bottle, or it will lose its freshness very quickly.

  With its fresh, citrusy scent, neroli was historically used in cologne mixtures. It is easily overwhelmed by an intense base chord and should be used where its light, dry nature can shine. It has high odor strength and blends well with all the citruses and all the florals.

  Spicy fragrances include actual spices as well as florals that possess sharp, spicy notes; they simultaneously stimulate the sense of smell and the sense of taste. They include allspice, ginger absolute, black pepper absolute, clove absolute, and kewda, a large Indian flower that smells like a combination of pepper and tuberose.

  Cleve derives its name from the French clou, in an allusion to the clove bud’s nail-like shape. It grows on a tree that may have originated in tropical Asia, perhaps in the Moluccas, where early Portuguese explorers encountered it. It became an important part of the spice trade and the accompanying sea battles among the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, French, and English.

  Clove

  Every part of the clove tree contains the aromatic essential oil, but its greatest concentration is in the bud, which is dried and crushed to render the essence. Clove bud oil moves from a fresh, fruity, spicy note to a warm, woody, spicy one. It can be combined with vanilla to produce a “carnation” note, and it is a frequent constituent of “Oriental” blends. Combined with rose, ylang ylang, and other sweet florals, it produces a unique note of natural richness and body. It can be used, in small doses, in almost any perfume.

  Cinnamon has an ancient history, picturesquely recounted by Ernest Guenther: “Flotillas of sturdy vessels74, their sails bulging in the steady monsoon winds, winged their way across the Indian Ocean’s blue billows and along Arabia’s barren shores toward Egypt, where the precious spice could by conveyed to sharp-faced dealers from Phoenicia who supplied the Greek and Roman trade. Or the spice was carried on camel back across Mesopotamia’s timeless caravan trails, now buried in sand and forgotten, from the Persian Gulf to Babylon, and finally to Sidon and Tyre on the Mediterranean.”

  The cinnamon tree yields essential oils from its leaves, bark, and root, each differing in composition and value. The most valuable comes from the bark. It is of a golden color when fresh and becomes red with age. Cinnamon possesses a powerful, warm, spicy, sweet character, both diffusive and tenacious. Its top note is very fresh, fruity, and candylike, followed at some distance by a dry, dusty, powdery dryout note. Because of its intensity, it should be used very sparingly, and its strong association with baked goods and potpourri is a challenge to the ingenuity of the perfumer.

  Cinnamon

  Green essences recall the smells of spring: freshly cut grass and dewy leaves. They include clary sage, lavender absolute, lovage, and violet leaf

  Lavender absolute, from the flowers and stalks of the lavender plant, is a beautiful dark green liquid with a pronounced herbaceous odor that dries down to a woody, spicy pungency like that of the flowering herb itself. It is a much more interesting substance than the ubiquitous lavender oil, which by comparison seems thin and astringent. It is particularly useful when you want a more full-bodied lavender odor in the middle of a perfume, perhaps to lend an herbal note to a flowery middle chord. As a bonus, it lends a lovely hue to the finished perfume. It blends well with labdanum, patchouli, vetiver, pine needle, and clary sage.

  Clary sage was first employed commercially by German wine merchants as Muskateller sallier (muscatel sage) for its distinctive flavor, reminiscent of muscatel grapes. In the past century it has been cultivated in Italy’s Piedmont district, the powdered flowers being used in the manufacture of vermouth. Its name derives from the Latin clarus, meaning clear, and it was commonly known as “clear eye75” for its function in a decoction used to cleanse the eye of foreign bodies. The green parts of the plant, especially the flowering tops, contain an essential oil with a delightful, somewhat winelike odor that is said to be reminiscent of ambergris.

  Reaping English lavender

  Clary sage has a sweet, ambery, herbaceous top note that progresses to a warm, balsamic dryout note. It imparts a mellowness, sweetness, and persistence to almost any perfume blend and marries especially well with labdanum, coriander, cardamom, geranium, lavender, cedarwood, and sandalwood. It is the sweetheart of aromatherapy oils for its calming, revitalizing, and balancing properties.

  Rosy scents are a self-evident group. They include rose geranium, geranium, rose concrete, rose absolute, and
rose attar.

  Rose is the ultimate heart note. As Colette effused, “All is permitted76 the rose—splendor, a conspiracy of perfumes, petalous flesh that tempts the nose, the lips, the teeth … And all is said, all is born in the year the moment it arrives; the first rose merely heralds all other roses. How confident it is, and how easy to love! It is riper than fruit, more sensual than cheek or breast.”

  As noted, roses and their essences possess infinite variation. Just as there are avid gardeners who can distinguish many varieties of rose in the dark, an experienced perfumer can differentiate among rose absolutes from India, Egypt, Morocco, France, Bulgaria, and Russia. It has even been noted that the roses on a given bush smell different at different times of day, and that the intensity of the scent increases before a storm. Therefore, the blossoms are gathered before they open, a little before sunrise. Were they gathered later in the day, in full flower, the perfume would be stronger but not so sweet.

  Rose

  Rose absolute, like jasmine, mixes well with any other oil. It forgives all indiscretions and brings out the best in the other notes with its full-bodied, unthreatening beauty. If you have made a mistake in your blending, sometimes adding a bit more rose will remedy the problem. My favorite of all the rose absolutes is currently Moroccan rose, with its complex but soft and sweet scent. Rose concrete, which has a softer, less powerful character, can be used in conjunction with the absolute to extend the rose note more economically.