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BPAL Madness!

stellamaris

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Posts posted by stellamaris

  3. Posted · Report reply

    A divination blend specially attuned to the Santa Muerte Tarot. Along with every card description, Lo Scarabeos accompanying booklet includes a postscript with additional advice, simple and direct, that each card communicates, drawing from the deep well of ancestral wisdom The advice of the dead.

    Wisdom dispensed from beyond the grave: black copal, golden chrysanthemums, myrrh, worm-slick soil, and gilded marigolds.

    This is so beautiful, right out of the mailbox. I think I need back ups. The copal is strong for me, it is sort of incense rich and flowery. Five stars.

  4. Posted · Report reply

    And have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the sense? now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I knew that sound well, too. It was the beating of the old mans heart. It increased my fury, as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage.



    Hyper-aware, swirling with delusions: orange blossom, lemon balm, and clove.

    I love this, its very pretty. The lemon balm is super lemony, a plus for me. Very fresh.

  8. Posted · Report reply

    Ibis and Jacquel was a small, family-owned funeral home: one of the last truly independent funeral homes in the area, or so Mr. Ibis maintained. Most fields of human merchandising value nationwide brand identities, he said. Mr. Ibis spoke in explanations: a gentle, earnest lecturing that put Shadow in mind of a college professor who used to work out at the Muscle Farm and who could not talk, could only discourse, expound, explain. Shadow had figured out within the first few minutes of meeting Mr. Ibis that his expected part in any conversation with the funeral director was to say as little as possible. This, I believe, is because people like to know what they are getting ahead of time. Thus, McDonalds, Wal-Mart, F. W. Woolworth (of blessed memory): store brands maintained and visible across the entire country. Wherever you go, you will get something that is, with small regional variations, the same.

    In the field of funeral homes, however, things are, perforce, different. You need to feel that you are getting small-town personal service from someone who has a calling to the profession. You want personal attention to you and your loved one in a time of great loss. You wish to know that your grief is happening on a local level, not on a national one. But in all branches of industryand death is an industry, my young friend, make no mistake about thatone makes ones money from operating in bulk, from buying in quantity, from centralizing ones operations. Its not pretty, but its true. Trouble is, no one wants to know that their loved ones are traveling in a cooler-van to some big old converted warehouse where they may have twenty, fifty, a hundred cadavers on the go. No, sir. Folks want to think theyre going to a family concern, somewhere theyll be treated with respect by someone wholl tip his hat to them if he sees them in the street.

    Mr. Ibis wore a hat. It was a sober brown hat that matched his sober brown blazer and his sober brown face. Small gold-rimmed glasses perched on his nose. In Shadows memory Mr. Ibis was a short man; whenever he would stand beside him, Shadow would rediscover that Mr. Ibis was well over six feet in height, with a cranelike stoop. Sitting opposite him now, across the shiny red table, Shadow found himself staring into the mans face.

    So when the big companies come in they buy the name of the company, they pay the funeral directors to stay on, they create the apparency of diversity. But that is merely the tip of the gravestone. In reality, they are as local as Burger King. Now, for our own reasons, we are truly an independent. We do all our own embalming, and its the finest embalming in the country, although nobody knows it but us. We dont do cremations, though. We could make more money if we had our own crematorium, but it goes against what were good at. What my business partner says is, if the Lord gives you a talent or a skill, you have an obligation to use it as best you can. Dont you agree?

    Sounds good to me, said Shadow.

    The Lord gave my business partner dominion over the dead, just as he gave me skill with words. Fine things, words. I write books of tales, you know. Nothing literary. Just for my own amusement. Accounts of lives. He paused. By the time Shadow realized that he should have asked if he might be allowed to read one, the moment had passed. Anyway, what we give them here is continuity: theres been an Ibis and Jacquel in business here for almost two hundred years. We werent always funeral directors, though. We used to be morticians, and before that, undertakers.

    And before that?

    Well, said Mr. Ibis, smiling just a little smugly, we go back a very long way

    Egyptian embalming compound: beeswax and fir resin, myrrh, natron salt, cassia, palm wine, lichen, henna, and camphor.

    This is beautiful, very complex. The beeswax is the most prominent on first spraying , along with a sort of milky cassia thing. This is an intriguing and complex scent but very easy to love

  15. Posted · Report reply

    2015.

    Seemingly I did not wear this much last year, but wow this year will be different as this is a lovely deep musky Incense on me that wafts and hangs around in a most dreamy way. Sexy and dark in a Third Charm sort of way but with the red musk being less prominent

  16. Posted · Report reply

    Blergh. This was a total blind bottle whim purchase with my husbands Xmas Hellboy and Lady Death. It makes me so mad. If I had known this was so good I would have ordered 27 bottles.

    Incense! Incense! Incense!

    Starts of strange with the hazelnut then turns into Amazing.

  21. Posted · Report reply

    Wow. I never reviewed this? This is my husbands favorite BPAL outside of Hellboy. He tends to go for flowery things, and he amps the heck out of whatever jasmine is in here. I see the Wood of Jasmine, maybe that's it. Whatever it is, it's beautiful on him. I have never worn it myself, but it's his nightime go to, and it's lovely, very sweet flowery and musky. Also I might note my husband does love him some jasmine and mostly wears more feminine leaning things, but this does not make him smell effeminate. Not that it would be a bad thing for someone else, but he's sort of a hulking very butch guy, but this works on him absolutely. Making an order for my sixth bottle of this...better buy two...

  22. Posted · Edited by stellamaris · Report reply

    All Third Charm is good Third Charm. For me this is one of the all time best BPALs, right up there with Sentimental Journey for red musk sexiness. Rich and lovely, intense.

    I love Snake Oil, don't get me wrong, but for me Third Charm is a bit more rich and deep, more like Scheherazade in it's composition if that makes any sense, whereas Snake Oil is a bit more forthright. Also Third Charm is less vanilla sweet on me, more fruity red musk.

    I am a huge fan of Beth's honey notes, but I don't smell it here, in either version but that might just be me.

    Not a good PTA meeting scent, unless it's the Harper Valley PTA, but I digress.

  23. Posted · Edited by stellamaris · Report reply

    This is actually quite strong. I had to have it due to label art and name, please, had to.

    The rose is the old fashioned dried rose thing, not a fresh rose, but the iris is a bit of a stronger presence to me. Overall a pleasant inoffensive thing, true rose lovers should explore it. I often crave that old timey rose thing, horrifyingly called "old lady" by some.

    You know I had to pop in to amend this review just a bit, to say how much I am loving this one. It's really full and beautiful, not as innocuous as I first thought. Definitely a statement, and one that I am liking, old fashioned but not tired.

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