Have you wondered what's an Alchemic Perfume? What benefits does it bring to you? Why is it so different from others?
An Alchemic Perfume is a slow-made product; a melody performed by flowers and herbs. The architecture of a perfume consists of three groups of olfactory notes: head notes, heart notes and base notes. The head notes are captured first but they’re also the most volatile. The heart notes will remain a little bit longer and you will keep the base notes for several hours.
Essential oils are divided into these three groups – which explains why we call a full set a ‘piano’. When we create a slow made aroma or perfume we take time to recreate the musicality of how these notes will sound together once the new scent is born. The result will differ from simply adding and blending the different essences. If you listen, you will hear a new melody. We listen to this melody every day because the scent of the blend evolves as the components (‘alive notes’) keep tuning until they reach perfect pitch and play a beautiful symphony. Slow-made creations require observation, synchronisation of the elements and harmonisation processes to transform the mix of several individual ingredients into a new unique essence; a new melody – a dance where flowers and herbs merge with and into each other creating a melody that will make you flight far away.
In addition to the method used for creating the aroma -and unlike another natural perfume- it is not diluted with natural ethanol (alcohol). An Alchemic Perfume is made with a very unique and slow-made base: an spagyric.
The term spagyric etymology is Greek: from spao that means I collect and ageiro meaning I extract, a term probably first coined by Paracelsus*.
It’s a medicinal perfume produced by alchemical procedures. These procedures involve fermentation, distillation and the extraction of mineral components from the ash of the plant.
At its origins, the word spagyric was commonly used synonymous with the word alchemy, however, in more recent times it has often been adopted by alternative medicine theorists and various techniques of holistic medicine. Spagyric most commonly refers to a plant tincture to which has also been added the ash of the calcined plant. The original foundation behind these special herbal tinctures have been that an extract using alcohol could not be expected to contain all the medicinal properties from a living plant, and so the ash or mineral component does.
The roots of the word therefore refer first to the extraction or separation process and then to the recombining process. These herbal spagyric tinctures are alleged to have superior medicinal properties to simple alcohol tinctures, due the formation of soap-like compounds from the essential oils and the basic salts contained within the ash. The final spagyric should be a re-blending of all such extracts into one 'essence.'
The concept of the spagyric in turn relies upon the three cardinal principles of alchemy, termed as salt, sulphur and mercury. "The basis of matter was the alchemical trinity of principles – salt, sulfur and mercury.
The three primal alchemical properties and their correspondence in spagyric are:
Mercury as water elements, representing the life essence of the plant, the very alcohol extract of the plant is the carrier of the life essence.
Salt as earth element, representing the vegetable salts extracted from calcined ashes of plant body.
Sulphur as fire element, virtue of plant, representing the volatile oil essence of the plant.
(*)Paracelsus stated that the true purpose of Alchemy was not for the vulgar purpose of gold making, but rather for the production of medicines. The term 'Spagyria' has been used by Paracelsus in his book Liber Paragranum (1530).
As a conclusion, combining all these elements means that the quality of an Alchemic Perfume is outstanding; it is a living product and evolves like an excellent wine.
Although the purpose of a perfume is quintessentially to envelop you up in a delightful fragrance, an Alchemic Perfume will take you beyond. It is an exquisite holistic perfume made by not just blending ingredients, it goes further than that; it has the ability of inspiring poets, writers and film makers. It holds the creator’s journey within and owns a story. It's a whole new experience beyond the fragrance.
Discover my first Alchemic Perfume N 1 by clicking here, and expect soon the upcoming launch of two new Alchemic Perfumes: N 2 and N 3
Fill your days with natural scents!
Sonia x