Chaste Moon is live.

[kebechet]

Ted, Brian and I will be out of town from Thursday til Sunday cheering on Teddy’s hockey team, the L.A. Riots, at the Can-Am tournament in Las Vegas. We will be back Sunday night and our Vegas-fried brains should be functioning by Monday morning.

 

Chaste Moon is live. In addition, we’ve added the following concoctions:

 

+ A LITTLE LUNACY

CHASTE MOON -- Though March marks the end of the desolation and chill of winter, it is not yet Spring, the time of rebirth, fertility and the Earth’s fecundity. March’s Full Moon is a Virgin’s Moon, pure, youthful, unsullied and innocent. This is the Moon of the Child, and the scent is as soft and gentle as a baby’s breath: milky blossoms and soft cream touch the last buds of winter, coupled with crystalline, bright traditional Lunar oils.

 

+ BEWITCHING BREWS

AEVAL -- A raven-haired Fairy Queen of Ireland. One of her eternal duties dictates that she must hold a midnight court every season and hear the pleas of married Irishwomen. The court serves only to determine whether or not husbands are adequately serving their wife’s sexual needs. A judicious yet powerfully sensual blend, a mingling of justice and sexuality: sage, sweet pea, bold pale musk and warm tonka.

 

JUKE JOINT -- A bawdy, gleefully wicked and unruly scent: Kentucky Bourbon, sugar and a sprig of mint.

 

LEANAN SIDHE -- Most of the Gaelic poets, down to quite recent times, have had a Leanhaun Shee, for she gives inspiration to her slaves and is indeed the Gaelic muse -- this malignant fairy. Her lovers, the Gaelic poets, died young. She grew restless and carried them away to other worlds, for death does not destroy her power. – W.B. Yeats

 

The name translates to “fairy, love of my soul”. A vampiric spirit and a dark muse, the love of the Leanan Sidhe is both a gift and a curse. These eerily beautiful Irish spirits drain the sanity and lifeforce of the men they inspire to artistic greatness. Her kiss infuses a man with depth of vision and feeling, otherworldly passion, and a sudden and ineffable understanding of the unending sadness that plagues mankind. Her perfume is a crush of Irish herbs and flowers, Gaelic mists, and nighttime dew.

 

SANTA MUERTE -- Santa Muerte, Saint Death, is not a harbinger of doom and symbol of entropy. She is the Queen of Mercy, a source of motherly comfort, and a symbol to all sweethearts that love lasts even beyond death. She is a vision of beauty in her own right: glittering rings adorn every bony finger, she is draped in a cloak of the finest satin, and her grinning skull, beneath her cowl, is crowned by a bejeweled tiara. A deep, resonant scent, both comforting and soft: lovers’ roses, solemn chrysanthemum, dark vetiver and dazzling cactus flowers.

 

- - -

 

+ FUNEREAL OILS

DANCE OF DEATH –

Carrying bouquet, and handkerchief, and gloves,

Proud of her height as when she lived, she moves

With all the careless and high-stepping grace,

And the extravagant courtesan's thin face.

 

Was slimmer waist e'er in a ball-room wooed?

Her floating robe, in royal amplitude,

Falls in deep folds around a dry foot, shod

With a bright flower-like shoe that gems the sod.

 

The swarms that hum about her collar-bones

As the lascivious streams caress the stones,

Conceal from every scornful jest that flies,

Her gloomy beauty; and her fathomless eyes

 

Are made of shade and void; with flowery sprays

Her skull is wreathed artistically, and sways,

Feeble and weak, on her frail vertebrae.

O charm of nothing decked in folly! they

 

Who laugh and name you a Caricature,

They see not, they whom flesh and blood allure,

The nameless grace of every bleached, bare bone,

That is most dear to me, tall skeleton!

 

Come you to trouble with your potent sneer

The feast of Life! or are you driven here,

To Pleasure's Sabbath, by dead lusts that stir

And goad your moving corpse on with a spur?

 

Or do you hope, when sing the violins,

And the pale candle-flame lights up our sins,

To drive some mocking nightmare far apart,

And cool the flame hell lighted in your heart?

 

Fathomless well of fault and foolishness!

Eternal alembic of antique distress!

Still o'er the curved, white trellis of your sides

The sateless, wandering serpent curls and glides.

 

And truth to tell, I fear lest you should find,

Among us here, no lover to your mind;

Which of these hearts beat for the smile you gave?

The charms of horror please none but the brave.

 

Your eyes' black gulf, where awful broodings stir,

Brings giddiness; the prudent reveller

Sees, while a horror grips him from beneath,

The eternal smile of thirty-two white teeth.

 

For he who has not folded in his arms

A skeleton, nor fed on graveyard charms,

Recks not of furbelow, or paint, or scent,

When Horror comes the way that Beauty went.

 

O irresistible, with fleshless face,

Say to these dancers in their dazzled race:

"Proud lovers with the paint above your bones,

Ye shall taste death, musk scented skeletons!

 

Withered Antinoüs, dandies with plump faces,

Ye varnished cadavers, and grey Lovelaces,

Ye go to lands unknown and void of breath,

Drawn by the rumour of the Dance of Death.

 

From Seine's cold quays to Ganges' burning stream,

The mortal troupes dance onward in a dream;

They do not see, within the opened sky,

The Angel's sinister trumpet raised on high.

 

In every clime and under every sun,

Death laughs at ye, mad mortals, as ye run;

And oft perfumes herself with myrrh, like ye

And mingles with your madness, irony!

 

A gloriously elegant representation of Lady Death. Dry, bone-white orris, black musk, serpentine patchouli and our murkiest myrrh.

 

 

THE GHOST –

Softly as brown-eyed Angels rove

I will return to thy alcove,

And glide upon the night to thee,

Treading the shadows silently.

 

And I will give to thee, my own,

Kisses as icy as the moon,

And the caresses of a snake

Cold gliding in the thorny brake.

 

And when returns the livid morn

Thou shalt find all my place forlorn

And chilly, till the falling night.

 

Others would rule by tenderness

Over thy life and youthfulness,

But I would conquer thee by fright!

 

A thin, sinuous, creeping chill, the scent of glee-filled undeath: white iris, osmanthus, Calla lily, tomb-crawling ivy and a coffin spray of gladiolus, lisianthus and delphinium.

 

- - -

 

+ SIN & SALVATION

ROSE CROSS -- A profound symbol of an individual’s personal initiatic process, spiritual refinement and evolution, synthesis, grace found as a result of trial and suffering, and the alchemical process by which we transform the raw essence of our souls through light in extension. This is a holy oil, a representation of the triumph of spirit over matter: purest rose with sacred frankincense.

 

- - -

 

+ WANDERLUST

PRAGUE -- Crocus with snowdrop and three lilies.