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Showing results for tags 'Lupercalia 2026'.
Found 136 results
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Wisteria incense, oakmoss, and sandalwood cream.
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Sweet ruby chocolate with pink cherry sugar and strawberry mochi concealing a satisfying crunch.
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Silky white chocolate folded around electric purple taro root.
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Creamy white chocolate stirred into warm rice pudding with condensed milk and a dusting of cardamom sugar and saffron.
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Cardamom, bourbon cream, white sandalwood, and incense.
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Russet Honey, Patchouli, and Tobacco Absolute.
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Scarlet silk, sweetened rice milk, ube, peony petals, candied ginger, persimmon, red dates, red carnation, lavender, and red amber.
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Courtly love that becomes cosmology, a spiritual ascent, a ladder to heaven. In The Divine Comedy, Beatrice is not simply muse or lover, but a guide. She is radiant Sophia, living wisdom, the luminous intelligence that draws the soul upward through ever-widening spheres of divine light. Beatrice’s eyes are mirrors that reflect the radiance of Heaven itself, “with eyes of light more bright than any star.” Her gaze does not return to the pilgrim but lifts him upward, directing his sight beyond her to the splendor of the Eternal. “Then to the eyes of beauty my eyes turned,” Dante says, and the beauty he sees there is “far more beautiful than the vast universe beneath his feet.” The beloved is not held but beheld, and in that gaze the soul is altered. Though she is one of the Lovers, she also rises above them, not to inflame desire but to purify it. Through her presence, longing is refined from appetite into ascent. The earthly self, heavy with burdens, is gradually transmuted. L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle. In these Lovers exists adoration that moves the sun and stars. Longing clarifies, burns, and rises, and the anima lifts the earthly self toward its red perfection, where desire is no longer hunger but illumination. Love that is hope, love that is divine, love that reflects the radiance of the highest heavens. White rose and scarlet iris, beeswax smoke and frankincense tears, vellum and sacred myrrh, and a thread of red saffron steeped in luminous amber.
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Heliotrope, black plum, muguet, tolu balsam, violet wine, labdanum, frankincense, and mauve patchouli.
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Icelandic A cool breeze over flushed skin: cloudberries, ambergris, and lemon zest gliding over warm amber musk.
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Bittersweet dark chocolate and roasted coffee bean tangled with flaky pastry and creamy, lightly sweetened cheese filling.
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Creamy white chocolate sweetened with rich date paste and brightened with a spark of fresh lime zest.
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Black Honey and Opium Poppy.
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Mandarin A strawberry stain on scarlet silk: strawberry nectar and translucent lychee folded into rock sugar and creamy sandalwood.
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Red peony, sweet red wine, plum blossom, cherry blossom, honeyed apricot, salted yuzu, saffron threads, cedarwood, dark patchouli, and black amber.
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Cognac, sweet rum, plum skin, rice milk, salted prune, Haitian patchouli, matcha, and cistus absolute.
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You also, Hyacinthus, would have been set in the sky! if Phoebus had been given time which the cruel fates denied for you. But in a way you are immortal too. Though you have died. Always when warm spring drives winter out, and Aries succeeds to Pisces, you rise and blossom on the green turf. And the love my father had for you was deeper than he felt for others. Delphi center of the world, had no presiding guardian, while the God frequented the Eurotas and the land of Sparta, never fortified with walls. His zither and his bow no longer fill his eager mind and now without a thought of dignity, he carried nets and held the dogs in leash, and did not hesitate to go with Hyacinthus on the rough, steep mountain ridges; and by all of such associations, his love was increased. Now Titan was about midway, betwixt the coming and the banished night, and stood at equal distance from those two extremes. Then, when the youth and Phoebus were well stripped, and gleaming with rich olive oil, they tried a friendly contest with the discus. First Phoebus, well-poised, sent it awhirl through air, and cleft the clouds beyond with its broad weight; from which at length it fell down to the earth, a certain evidence of strength and skill. Heedless of danger Hyacinthus rushed for eager glory of the game, resolved to get the discus. But it bounded back from off the hard earth, and struck full against your face, O Hyacinthus! Deadly pale the God’s face went — as pallid as the boy’s. With care he lifted the sad huddled form. The kind god tries to warm you back to life, and next endeavors to attend your wound, and stay your parting soul with healing herbs. His skill is no advantage, for the wound is past all art of cure. As if someone, when in a garden, breaks off violets, poppies, or lilies hung from golden stems, then drooping they must hang their withered heads, and gaze down towards the earth beneath them; so, the dying boy’s face droops, and his bent neck, a burden to itself, falls back upon his shoulder: “You are fallen in your prime defrauded of your youth, O Hyacinthus!” Moaned Apollo. “I can see in your sad wound my own guilt, and you are my cause of grief and self-reproach. My own hand gave you death unmerited — I only can be charged with your destruction. — What have I done wrong? Can it be called a fault to play with you? Should loving you be called a fault? And oh, that I might now give up my life for you! Or die with you! But since our destinies prevent us you shall always be with me, and you shall dwell upon my care-filled lips. The lyre struck by my hand, and my true songs will always celebrate you. A new flower you shall arise, with markings on your petals, close imitation of my constant moans: and there shall come another to be linked with this new flower, a valiant hero shall be known by the same marks upon its petals.” And while Phoebus, Apollo, sang these words with his truth-telling lips, behold the blood of Hyacinthus, which had poured out on the ground beside him and there stained the grass, was changed from blood; and in its place a flower, more beautiful than Tyrian dye, sprang up. It almost seemed a lily, were it not that one was purple and the other white. But Phoebus was not satisfied with this. For it was he who worked the miracle of his sad words inscribed on flower leaves. These letters AI, AI, are inscribed on them. And Sparta certainly is proud to honor Hyacinthus as her son; and his loved fame endures; and every year they celebrate his solemn festival. – Ovid Beloved of Apollo, the Spartan prince Hyacinthus was cherished above all companions. They raced beneath the open sky, hunted together, and Apollo trained his beloved in the art of prophecy, the lyre, and the discus. Some say Zephyrus, the West Wind, grew jealous and bent the arc of the throw one day and the shining disc, meant as sport, struck Hyacinthus down. Though he used all his skill in the art of healing, the god could not save Hyacinthus’ life. … when he beheld thy agony Phoebus was dumb. He sought every remedy, he had recourse to cunning arts, he anointed all the wound, anointed it with ambrosia and with nectar; but all remedies are powerless to heal the wounds of Fate… – Bion Apollo gathered Hyacinthus in his arms as the light dimmed from mortal eyes and wished to join his lover in the realm of death, but it was not to be. Where the blood touched earth, Apollo pressed his grief into the soil and from that wound sprang the hyacinth, petals veined with lament, marked with the cry of immortal love and immortal mourning. The flower became a living testament, renewed each spring, a sign that love does not vanish. The Lovers revealed in their most tender truth: that though love and devotion cannot provide a shield from the slings and arrows of the Fates, memory makes love eternal. It is love that refuses oblivion. Blood into blossom, rubedo unfolding in vegetal fire. Beauty bound to mortality, and through that binding made eternal. Golden laurel and sun-warmed skin, cypress shadow and noontide amber, crushed violets, lilies, and poppy, gilded myrrh, date palm, and hyacinth petals.
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In Tristan und Isolde, the music itself mirrors a yearning that cannot find solace within the confines of flesh, a longing that cannot be satisfied within the constraints of mortal love. “O sink hernieder, Nacht der Liebe,” they implore, calling down the night as sanctuary and sacrament, and in the final transfiguration, “In des Welt-Atems wehendem All,” they yield themselves to the vast eternity of the cosmos. The Liebestod unfolds as love’s consummation through annihilation. They lift the cup and the world alters its course, not by whim but by the immutable heartbeat of destiny dancing through their veins like quicksilver, dissolving the boundaries of crown and oath, eroding the rigid architecture of law until only longing remains. The potion works as mercurial catalyst, sacred and profane entwined so completely that no mortal decree can separate them, and their love is swept into an inexorable tide that pulls them beyond honor, beyond fealty, beyond the sunlit world. Here the Lovers are fate-struck, their devotion defying and shattering the visible order while revealing a deeper one beneath it, for in their undoing lies transformation, and in their surrender the eternal marriage of longing and oblivion. Then, being with the Queen for the last time, he held her in his arms and said: “Friend, I must fly, for they are wondering. I must fly, and perhaps shall never see you more. My death is near, and far from you my death will come of desire.” “Oh friend,” she said, “fold your arms round me close and strain me so that our hearts may break and our souls go free at last. Take me to that happy place of which you told me long ago. The fields whence none return, but where great singers sing their songs for ever. Take me now.” “I will take you to the Happy Palace of the living, Queen! The time is near. We have drunk all joy and sorrow. The time is near. When it is finished, if I call you, will you come, my friend?” “Friend,” said she, “call me and you know that I shall come.” “Friend,” said he, “God send you His reward.” As he went out the spies would have held him; but he laughed aloud, and flourished his club, and cried: “Peace, gentlemen, I go and will not stay. My lady sends me to prepare that shining house I vowed her, of crystal, and of rose shot through with morning.” And as they cursed and drave him, the fool went leaping on his way. – The Romance of Tristan & Iseult Drawn from the best French Sources and Retold by J. Bédier Rendered into English by Hilaire Belloc Dark wine spilled on oak, pine boughs and love philtres, rose petals and sea-salt, storm-wind over cold stone battlements, myrrh smoke braided with heart-pulses of red musk awash in tears, tinkling fairy bells and the bitter sweetness of forbidden fruit steeped in a silver chalice.
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Honey, Raspberry Jam, and Buttercream.
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Cardamom cream, sweet bourbon, tolu balsam, toasted bamboo, raw cacao, and hinoki.
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Winding through the Tree of Knowledge, the serpent offers transformative awareness, wisdom, and the awakened potential that elevates the soul or brings its downfall. Far be it from me to pass up an opportunity to revisit my beloved Snake Oil (especially with a Biblical twist) so I’ve crafted a Serpent in the Garden take on the original formula, suffused with fig, pomegranate, apple, green sandalwood, olibanum, blackcurrant, and iridescent serpent scale accord.
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An invitation: black amber and pink peony sealed in a creamy white paper envelope.
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In the book of Book of Genesis, the first pair stand in untested unity, formed of earth and breath, innocence and possibility. “And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him” (Genesis 2:18), and from that declaration arises polarity as gift rather than fracture, difference as the condition of communion. Bone of bone and flesh of flesh, they are not rivals but reflections, two aspects of one living mystery: the soul and the spirit of humankind. Yet the drama of the Lovers is not stasis but choice. When the fruit is taken and shared, consciousness deepens and the seamlessness of Eden gives way to the currents of history. “Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken” (Genesis 3:23). Through Eve’s invitation and Adam’s consent, spirit and soul descend into the rivers of Time, entering the full measure of embodied existence with its labor and ecstasy, its birth pangs and graves. Mortality becomes their teacher, and the dust from which Adam was shaped becomes the destiny to which he must return, “for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return” (Genesis 3:19). Esoterically, she may be seen as the animating impulse, the quickening spirit that urges experience, while he embodies the ensouled humanity that must walk the path she opens. Their so-called fall is also initiation, the necessary passage from unconscious unity into lived duality, where joy and sorrow are known rather than merely imagined. The Lovers here are not simply the bliss of Eden but the courage to enter time together, to face consequence side by side, and to seek, through exile and return, the restoration of a higher garden not of innocence but of awakened wholeness. In the first dawn of consciousness, before history clothed itself in shame, stand Adam and Eve as archetypes of a polarity not yet divided against itself. She is the descending brilliance, arching her consciousness towards the world itself, the soul drawn upward toward gnosis. He turns toward her, embodied will answering its own reflection. Above them burns the stark, pure radiance of unity and within them sleeps the yet-unforged Stone. The serpent coils at the axis of the Tree. It is the mercurial spirit, subtle and ascending, the luminous volatility of both knowledge and growth that refuses stasis. Through its whisper the fruit becomes the tincture that awakens innocence into awareness. Sulfur awakens in desire, Mercury stirs in receptivity, salt forms in the tears of exile. The expulsion is the separation required for conjunction, solve preceding coagula. What was unconsciously whole must become consciously divided so it may one day reunite in wisdom. In these Lovers, unity dissolves into duality, and in that darkening begins the opus. This is not the loss of Eden; it is the ignition of the Great Work. Skin musk, fig sap, pomegranate, apple skin, and the smoke and warmth of humankind’s newly-kindled fire.
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The Tree of Life bearing twelve flaming fruits, emblematic of the twelve signs of the zodiac. In the flames burn consciousness, passion, and the material, sensual pleasure bound into human existence. In these fiery branches, the Lovers are challenged with questions of moral discernment, conscience, and consequence, and in the shadow cast by these flames, the soul is challenged before union can be achieved. Twelve fiery fruits ablaze with saffron and clove-spiced labdanum held aloft in arching acacia branches.
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White tea, black cherries, gardenia, tonka bean, carnation, and almond.
