Eve and Adam

[doomsday_disco]

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.

[wilhelmscream]

In the bottle, I mostly get that clean skin musk, a bit of fig and that crisp apple skin, and a whiff of smokiness.

 

On the skin, smoky and lightly musky, with a bit of sweetness from the fruit notes.

 

Then I really began amping the smoke note and had to give it time to settle down. It did, but it just gives me this image of burnt apples. Ultimately, I don't think this one is working out well on me, but I do like it in the bottle!

[leptonpyr]

This has kind of a weird opening on me, but it dries down into something much nicer. Going on wet, the disparate elements don't quite coalesce: I get a really clean scent that reminds me weirdly of apple-scented baby shampoo, then this odd, almost medicinal, sharper bite that I can't quite place. I wish I could be more specific, but it honestly reminds me the most specifically of the smell of multivitamins in a health food store (??),  while some light incense is being burned somewhere in the background. The fig is very waxy, green, and sharp, like it's very far from ripening.

 

An hour or two in, the skin musk moves from weird-clean-shampoo to a beautiful skin musk, the fig gets sappier, and it starts to bloom into something quite creamy, with a whiff of pomegranate and a touch of light spice. This stage is very, very nice. 

Lasts about 4-6 hours overall and stays pretty close to the skin. I'm interested in trying this again in a month or two to see if the opening gets any less weird on me.

[sudenmorsian]

This is surprisingly pleasant even it's not something I'd usually wear. At first it's mostly skin musk with a hint of apple skin. Oh, there's also smoke, very gentle and just a whisper, but realistic smoke I like so much! The smoke isn't heavy at all, maybe other notes keep it grounded. 

 

The scent is light, delicate and airy. I think I recognize the fig sap but the skin musk, apple and smoke are still the main players. I'm not really getting any pomegranate.

[Assimbya]

I got decants of the entire lovers collection from a decant circle because I wanted to experience the ways they all related to one another, but of the collection this was probably the one I expected to like the least, as I'm picky about fruit notes. However, it turns out that this is an extremely well constructed and beautiful perfume, which I find very wearable despite being skeptical about apple or pomegranate on my skin.

 

This starts out as what I thought of as a sophisticated, grown-up apple scent; the apple is toned down, balanced, not the tart sweetness you'd get from a body spray marketed to teenagers. As it dries down the apple recedes and it's mostly skin musk and smoke, with just a hint of fig and apple skin (distinctively, not juice) in the background; definitely I have a sense of bare skin by a campfire. This is very appropriate to the inspiration and very well-done; like most of this collection, it's not enough me or something I'd regularly wear to warrant a bottle, but it tells its story clearly and effectively.

[kinneret_rising]

Wet, this is juicy apple with something strange and uneasy beneath -- skin musk for the revelation of Eve and Adam’s nakedness and separateness from each other; fire and smoke for the daily work they must do after being expelled, or perhaps from the angel’s flaming sword that bars them from the garden. For me, this scent is tricky; I strain to identify the notes, wondering what is next. Dry, the apple scent remains forward, but troubled by a foreboding of fire and smoke.