Rivkele

This is genuinely like liquid Xanax. I feel intoxicated and a little bit swoony—having just got my bottle and not being able to resist trying it out immediately. I tend to use ritual oils with intention but… well, not much ritual, admittedly. Being made with powerful botanicals, I mostly want their own energy to alter and/or amplify mine. So I just dabbed it on. I’ve been going through it physically and mentally for the last week or so, with the end rather far in the distance, and a lot of my usual coping mechanisms or, tbh, a nice edible, are not options for me at the moment. I didn’t know I’d be in this place when I ordered my bottle, but maybe the universe knew! I figured it was generally a good idea to snag a bottle because I’m a generally anxious and depressed person. What a gift this is going to be. The power of this is tremendous and it needs to be used carefully, I think, not casually, but I’m so glad I’m going to have this absolutely magical potion by my side. If it also helps with money stuff, that would be wonderful, honestly. But the mood effects alone are astonishing. Scent-wise, it truly is everything all at once, and hard to describe. It smells like flowers (definitely like the carnation note in Morocco), but also spices (again, a bit like Morocco), but also herbs I can’t identify, and something gourmand, maybe—a bit of vanilla candy? A hint of a really herbal, leafy eucalyptus in there? Like the way actual eucalyptus leaves smell, not the essential oil. It’s wonderful. I don’t know that this is a scent I would have picked if I simply saw a description of it. I’m generally an incense/resin/wood/spice person, with a deep fear of florals being too strong for me, and candy or gourmand smells being annoyingly edible at best or nauseating at worst. But somehow, this works. Maybe that’s part of the magic too?

I grabbed a bottle on the logic that I like pretty much everything listed, and it turned out that was a pretty good bet. In the bottle, I get a strong ATTACK LAVENDER smell, which is also how it goes on. However, at least on my skin, the lavender calms down pretty quickly and florals (the orchid?) and a spicy, resiny smell both blend in pretty evenly. As it dries down, it takes on an almost amber-ish quality (that’ll be the labdanum), and it’s both relaxing and invigorating at once thanks to the resin/floral combo. I’m often wary of florals, but orchids are usually good on me [ETA: although champaca is actually a magnolia and not an orchid], and here the floral notes are dark and restrained and sensuous rather than overpowering, or too bright, or high femme in a way I’m not. It probably helps that I’m absolutely obsessed with resins and classical incense scents, and also that they tend to do well on my skin. This feels like a dressed-up, modern, darkly feminine incense to me and it’s ~perfect~.