CELESTIAL FLOWER PERFUME

Inspiration:

Ever since I can remember, the scent of Lilies has given me sensual pleasure but also the memory of being held and loved.  It has taken me years to understand why.  I would stand among the Lilies in my garden and inhale deeply trying to recall the original scent-scape. More a feeling than a thought, the memory eluded me.

Inspired by this mysterious olfactive memory, I began to plant Lily patches in clearings throughout the forest. I realized that working with different varieties of Lilies and the micro-climates in the forest, I could have Lilies blooming for at least 45 days.  Enough time to make a dual extraction.  I macerate Lilies petals in organic jojoba oil, and at the same time, suspend the blossoms, on a screen, over the jojoba oil.  Every summer, for the past five years, I go out into the night and harvest Lilies.  At night, because Lilies are pollinated by moths, it is then that the blossoms are most fragrant.  After 45 days and hundreds of Lilies, “Oil of Lilies” is ready.   “Oil of Lilies” is the authentic base for “Celestial Flower”.

During one of my many sessions of ethnobotanical research on Lilies that the memory came flooding back like a warm wave.  I realized; the fragrance of Lilies echoes the smell of nursing at my mother’s breast.  Not because my mother wore any kind of Lily perfume or there were Lilies in the environment, but because there is something in the smell of lilies that echoes the scent of my mother’s lactating breast.  I had this epiphany when I read the ancient myth of Hera and Hercules.  Hera is the Roman goddess of fertility and childbirth and Hercules is the symbol of the Greek, masculine hero. His name means “for the glory of Hera” even though he is not her child she was tricked into nursing him out of pity.  The super strong infant however, suckled so intensely that Hera pushed him away due to pain. Her milk then sprayed across the sky, forming the Milky Way while the drops that fell to earth created Lilies. This association of milk and Lilies triggered me, because I was nursed by my mother for four long years, which she often described it as one of the best times in her life.  This is where my deep associations of the fragrance of Lilies came from.  I feel I am not only in this regard, because throughout human history, the Lily flower has been associated with the Great Mothers and new life.