Essence and Alchemy by Mandy Aftel Read Free Book Online Page A

matter which is so exceedingly subtle that it cannot be perceived. So it must be a body which does not fill space, a matter which is beyond space, and therefore it would be in no time,” writes Jung, adding, “The subtle body is a transcendental concept which cannot be expressed in terms of our language or our philosophical views, because they are all inside the categories of time and space.”
    In other words, the alchemical quest stands for the attempt to create something new and beautiful in the world, through a process that cannot ultimately be reduced to chemistry. The elements—or, rather, the subtle bodies in them—learn how to marry. As Gaston Bachelard remarks, “The alchemist is an educator 39 of matter.” The experience of transformation he sets in motion in turn transforms him. As Cherry Gilchrist puts it in The Elements of Alchemy , “The alchemist is described 40 as the artist who, through his operations, brings Nature to perfection. But the process is also like the unfolding of the Creation of the world, to which the alchemist is a witness as he watches the changes that take place within the vessel. The vessel is a universe in miniature, a crystalline sphere through which he is privileged to see the original drama of transformation.”
    To the perfumer, then, the Elixir is a metaphor for the wholeness that can be experienced in working with the essences. Sensually compelling in themselves, they come trailing their dramatic histories and so transform the perfumer as she dissolves and combines them— solve et coagula —in the hope of creating something entirely new. If, as Henri Bergson says, “the object of art 41 is to put to sleep the active or rather resistant powers of our personality, and thus bring us into a
state of perfect responsiveness,” working with scent offers an unusually direct way of arriving there. It allows us to experience life afresh, sets the imagination flowing. But as with any art, we must seek it out and welcome the transformations it allows. As Paracelsus exhorts, “It is our task 42 to seek art, for without seeking it we shall never learn the secrets of the world. Who can boast that roast squab flies into his mouth? Or that a grapevine runs after him? You must go to it yourself.”

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    Prima Materia Perfume Basics
    Paul [Bowles] was … a great collector of aromatic oils, which he had gathered from his travels—patchouli from Penang, vetiver from Indian root grass, sandalwood from Bangkok, perfumes from Paris circa 1940, Berlin after-shave from the thirties. He would dip a stick of bland-scented incense into the neck of a bottle of oil, light it—the scent exploding from the heat—and then we’d discuss the book or piece of music he’d give me before I took my leave each evening. Paul was a man indifferent to the world at large but addicted to its sensory details.
    â€” Daniel Halpern, “The Last Existentialist”
    43 T AKE AN ORANGE in your hands. Press the rind with your thumbnail. You are in the presence of an essential oil—one of the forms in which the scented essence of a plant manifests itself. The odors of plants reside in different parts of them: sometimes in the rind of the fruit, as with blood orange and pink grapefruit; sometimes in the roots, as with the iris and the grass Vetiveria zizanoides , known as vetiver; sometimes in the woody stem, as with cedarwood or sandalwood; sometimes in the bark, as with cinnamon; sometimes in the leaves, as in mint, patchouli, and thyme; sometimes in the seeds, as with tonka bean and ambrette; and sometimes in the flower, as with rose and carnation. And a few scented essences used in perfumery are derived not from plants at all but from the glandular secretions of animals—the civet cat, the beaver, or the musk deer.

    Natural essences are the atoms of perfumery, the building blocks with which complex and evocative scents are created. They are,