LiberAmoris

Oracle and healer, the Titaness Dione was once one of Zeus’ consorts. Her scent is dove black labdanum shining with opalescent lavender and poplar bud. This post is merely a placeholder for future reviews. Whoever is first to review, please report this post using the report button below, so a mod can merge it with yours. Thanks!

O Venus, beauty of the skies, To whom a thousand temples rise, Gaily false in gentle smiles, Full of love-perplexing wiles; O goddess, from my heart remove The wasting cares and pains of love. Red rose petals, benzoin, honey myrtle and ambrette seed. The Queen of Love smells like a classic BPAL, like Persephone or Spellbound, something unified through the prism of red rose. Red rose is the dominant note on me, closely followed by benzoin. The honey myrtle adds both a honeyed and a honeyed floral note, and the ambrette throws a musky blur over everything. It's a resiny (incensey), red rose, musky, honeyed blend, managing to be sexy, comforting, and nostalgic in equal measures. So glad I picked this up, it definitely telegraphs Venus but also love in so many dimensions.

In night when colors all to black are cast,Distinction lost, or gone down with the light; The eye a watch to inward senses placed, Not seeing, yet still having powers of sight, Gives vain alarums to the inward sense, Where fear stirred up with witty tyranny, Confounds all powers, and thorough self-offense, Doth forge and raise impossibility: Such as in thick depriving darknesses, Proper reflections of the error be, And images of self-confusednesses, Which hurt imaginations only see; And from this nothing seen, tells news of devils, Which but expressions be of inward evils. – Lord Brooke Fulke Greville Ink-black musk and dried blackberries, midnight opoponax and sweet labdanum. This post is merely a placeholder for future reviews. Whoever is first to review, please report this post using the report button below, so a mod can merge it with yours. Thanks!

In the black furrow of a fieldI saw an old witch-hare this night; And she cocked her lissome ear, And she eyed the moon so bright, And she nibbled o’ the green; And I whispered ‘Whsst! witch-hare,’ Away like a ghostie o’er the field She fled, and left the moonlight there. A leaper between worlds, the tiny trickster; she soars through liminal spaces, dancing in the strange shadows of dawn and twilight. Warm fur and mandrake root, blue sage and tall grasses, honeysuckle-tinged moonlight, carrot seed, comfrey, and dandelion. This post is merely a placeholder for future reviews. Whoever is first to review, please report this post using the report button below, so a mod can merge it with yours. Thanks!

Once I said to a scarecrow, “You must be tired of standing in thislonely field.” And he said, “The joy of scaring is a deep and lasting one, and I never tire of it.” Said I, after a minute of thought, “It is true; for I too have known that joy.” Said he, “Only those who are stuffed with straw can know it.” Then I left him, not knowing whether he had complimented or belittled me. A year passed, during which the scarecrow turned philosopher. And when I passed by him again I saw two crows building a nest under his hat. – Kahlil Gibran Corn husks waving on an autumn breeze, beams of amber sunlight, hay bales, and late summer wildflowers. This post is merely a placeholder for future reviews. Whoever is first to review, please report this post using the report button below, so a mod can merge it with yours. Thanks!

Sweet black tobacco infused with dried pumpkin and soaked in bourbon. This post is merely a placeholder for future reviews. Whoever is first to review, please report this post using the report button below, so a mod can merge it with yours. Thanks!

A strangely romantic, disturbingly erotic perfume. This post is merely a placeholder for future reviews. Whoever is first to review, please report this post using the report button below, so a mod can merge it with yours. Thanks!

Shavings of white pumpkin rind and honey powder. This post is merely a placeholder for future reviews. Whoever is first to review, please report this post using the report button below, so a mod can merge it with yours. Thanks!

With vanilla bean scrapings. This post is merely a placeholder for future reviews. Whoever is first to review, please report this post using the report button below, so a mod can merge it with yours. Thanks!

Lighting the path between worlds, the beacon at the threshold: night-blooming jasmine, smoldering maple leaves, a cluster of patchouli and blackened ti leaf, black sage, and pinewood smoke. This post is merely a placeholder for future reviews. Whoever is first to review, please report this post using the report button below, so a mod can merge it with yours. Thanks!

A ghost, though invisible, still is like a placeyour sight can knock on, echoing; but here within this thick black pelt, your strongest gaze will be absorbed and utterly disappear: just as a raving madman, when nothing else can ease him, charges into his dark night howling, pounds on the padded wall, and feels the rage being taken in and pacified. She seems to hide all looks that have ever fallen into her, so that, like an audience, she can look them over, menacing and sullen, and curl to sleep with them. But all at once as if awakened, she turns her face to yours; and with a shock, you see yourself, tiny, inside the golden amber of her eyeballs suspended, like a prehistoric fly. – Rainer Maria Rilke Sleek black fur and gleaming amber shining in the shadows, a rumble of myrrh, and claws as sharp as ti leaf. This post is merely a placeholder for future reviews. Whoever is first to review, please report this post using the report button below, so a mod can merge it with yours. Thanks!

Gloomy and bare the organ-loft,Bent-backed and blind the organist. From rafters looming shadowy, From the pipes’ tuneful company, Drifted together drowsily, Innumerable, formless, dim, The ghosts of long-dead melodies, Of anthems, stately, thunderous, Of Kyries shrill and tremulous: In melancholy drowsy-sweet They huddled there in harmony. Like bats at noontide rafter-hung. – Robert Graves Sheets of white musk and lavender curling around a melancholy song of violet root, iris, neroli, and honeysuckle. This post is merely a placeholder for future reviews. Whoever is first to review, please report this post using the report button below, so a mod can merge it with yours. Thanks!

Our spin on a traditional Guy Fawkes Night treat: treacle toffee soaked in rich, dark bourbon. This post is merely a placeholder for future reviews. Whoever is first to review, please report this post using the report button below, so a mod can merge it with yours. Thanks!

I feel myself sinkin’ downI feel myself sinkin’ down My body is freezin’ I feel something cold creepin’ around My windows is rattlin’ My doorknob turnin’ round an’ round My windows is rattlin’ My doorknob turnin’ round an’ round This haunted house blues is killin’ me I feel myself sinkin’ down I been fastin’ in this haunted house Six long months today I been fastin’ in this haunted house Six long months today The Blue Ghost is got the house surrounded, Lord And I can’t get away They got shotguns and pistols Standin’ all round my door They got shotguns and pistols Standin’ all round my door They haunt me all night long So I can’t sleep no more The Blue Ghost haunts me all night The nightmare rides me all night long The Blue Ghost haunts me at night The nightmare rides me all night long They worry me so in this haunted house I wished I was dead and gone – Lonnie Johnson A ward against evil: bay rum, whiskey, cigar smoke, black pepper, and salt. This post is merely a placeholder for future reviews. Whoever is first to review, please report this post using the report button below, so a mod can merge it with yours. Thanks!

“Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos.”― Mary Shelley, 1831 This Samhain, we’re reveling in the desecration of a classic blend: “Damp woods, fir needle, and black patchouli with the gentlest touches of warm pumpkin, clove, nutmeg, allspice, sweet red apple and mullein.” This post is merely a placeholder for future reviews. Whoever is first to review, please report this post using the report button below, so a mod can merge it with yours. Thanks!

“Variety is the very spice of life, That gives it all its flavor.”― William Cowper, 1785 Forget about the War on Christmas — the year’s most contentious seasonal battle is actually waged over this inescapable melange of palate-massaging flavors. We’ve got the formula down pat, and invite you to join us in a mad-science experiment: Just how far can we bend it before it breaks? This post is merely a placeholder for future reviews. Whoever is first to review, please report this post using the report button below, so a mod can merge it with yours. Thanks!

The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these and security were within. Without was the “Red Death.” Gushes of black and red wine splattering damask rose and white pear, engulfed in thick clove incense. This post is merely a placeholder for future reviews. Whoever is first to review, please report this post using the report button below, so a mod can merge it with yours. Thanks!

But, in spite of these things, it was a gay and magnificent revel. The tastes of the duke were peculiar. He had a fine eye for colors and effects. He disregarded the decora of mere fashion. His plans were bold and fiery, and his conceptions glowed with barbaric lustre. There are some who would have thought him mad. His followers felt that he was not. It was necessary to hear and see and touch him to be sure that he was not. The swirl of a thousand glittering vices: absinthe and laudanum, opium poppy and neroli, star anise and black currant, whip leather and iron shackles, gilded vanilla flower and King mandarin. This post is merely a placeholder for future reviews. Whoever is first to review, please report this post using the report button below, so a mod can merge it with yours. Thanks!

And the revel went whirlingly on, until at length there commenced the sounding of midnight upon the clock. And then the music ceased, as I have told; and the evolutions of the waltzers were quieted; and there was an uneasy cessation of all things as before. But now there were twelve strokes to be sounded by the bell of the clock; and thus it happened, perhaps, that more of thought crept, with more of time, into the meditations of the thoughtful among those who revelled. And thus, too, it happened, perhaps, that before the last echoes of the last chime had utterly sunk into silence, there were many individuals in the crowd who had found leisure to become aware of the presence of a masked figure which had arrested the attention of no single individual before. And the rumor of this new presence having spread itself whisperingly around, there arose at length from the whole company a buzz, or murmur, expressive of disapprobation and surprise –then, finally, of terror, of horror, and of disgust. Terror, horror, and disgust: a bowel-churning sweet clench of myrhh and green musk in a pool of suffocating black moss and a shock of white cognac. This post is merely a placeholder for future reviews. Whoever is first to review, please report this post using the report button below, so a mod can merge it with yours. Thanks!

In an assembly of phantasms such as I have painted, it may well be supposed that no ordinary appearance could have excited such sensation. In truth the masquerade license of the night was nearly unlimited; but the figure in question had out-Heroded Herod, and gone beyond the bounds of even the prince’s indefinite decorum. There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion. Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made. The whole company, indeed, seemed now deeply to feel that in the costume and bearing of the stranger neither wit nor propriety existed. The figure was tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of the grave. The mask which concealed the visage was made so nearly to resemble the countenance of a stiffened corpse that the closest scrutiny must have had difficulty in detecting the cheat. And yet all this might have been endured, if not approved, by the mad revellers around. But the mummer had gone so far as to assume the type of the Red Death. His vesture was dabbled in blood –and his broad brow, with all the features of the face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror. When the eyes of Prince Prospero fell upon this spectral image (which with a slow and solemn movement, as if more fully to sustain its role, stalked to and fro among the waltzers) he was seen to be convulsed, in the first moment with a strong shudder either of terror or distaste; but, in the next, his brow reddened with rage. “Who dares?” he demanded hoarsely of the courtiers who stood near him — “who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery? Seize him and unmask him — that we may know whom we have to hang at sunrise, from the battlements!” Blasphemous mockery: blood musk and vetiver. This post is merely a placeholder for future reviews. Whoever is first to review, please report this post using the report button below, so a mod can merge it with yours. Thanks!

The “Red Death” had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal –the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men. And the whole seizure, progress and termination of the disease, were the incidents of half an hour. Splatters of red musk, bruise-purple violets, vetiver, and pimento. This post is merely a placeholder for future reviews. Whoever is first to review, please report this post using the report button below, so a mod can merge it with yours. Thanks!

But to the chamber which lies most westwardly of the seven, there are now none of the maskers who venture; for the night is waning away; and there flows a ruddier light through the blood-colored panes; and the blackness of the sable drapery appals; and to him whose foot falls upon the sable carpet, there comes from the near clock of ebony a muffled peal more solemnly emphatic than any which reaches their ears who indulge in the more remote gaieties of the other apartments. But these other apartments were densely crowded, and in them beat feverishly the heart of life. Night-blooming jasmine and cereus reflected through ruddy musk and crimson amber. This post is merely a placeholder for future reviews. Whoever is first to review, please report this post using the report button below, so a mod can merge it with yours. Thanks!

The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. Ginger-squeezed champagne with crushed diamonds, orange blossoms, and peach blossoms. This post is merely a placeholder for future reviews. Whoever is first to review, please report this post using the report button below, so a mod can merge it with yours. Thanks!

And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all. Darkness, Decay, and the Red Death: blood musk and black tobacco, birch tar and bleeding cypress sap. This post is merely a placeholder for future reviews. Whoever is first to review, please report this post using the report button below, so a mod can merge it with yours. Thanks!

But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys. This was an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince’s own eccentric yet august taste. A strong and lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron. The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts. They resolved to leave means neither of ingress or egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within. The abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. Imprisoned in frenzied joy: ribbons of raspberry and red currant streaming through thick goat’s milk. This post is merely a placeholder for future reviews. Whoever is first to review, please report this post using the report button below, so a mod can merge it with yours. Thanks!