Shine On, Harvest Moon

[wickedgoddess]

The Harvest Moon update is live at Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab and Black Phoenix Trading Post!

 

 

 

Harvest Moon 2011

 

HARVEST MOON

Harvest Moon is celebrated in almost every culture, and the bounty of the season is marked in a myriad of ways. Harvest Moon touches the Equinox, the festival of Janus, the culmination of Homowo, the “crying of the neck” in Cornwall, and the Women’s Festival of the Moon. This is a day that celebrates abundance and beauty, fertility and progress, and the light of this full moon blesses new undertakings and reunites lost loves.

 

The Harvest Moon, by definition, is the Full Moon that falls closest to the Autumnal Equinox, and thus, it shares some of that Sabbat’s characteristics. This Full Moon was thus named because it rises within half an hour of the sun’s setting, in the Northern Hemisphere, and at this time farmers are able to work longer into the night by the light of this Moon. As the year draws to a close, the Full Moon rises an average of fifty minutes later each night, with the exception of a few nights surrounding the Harvest Moon, which only rises 10-30 minutes later. This moon is also, to the human eye, the fullest and largest of the year’s Moons, hanging gloriously huge, yellow and low in the night sky, and many lunar illusions play tricks our eyes at this time.

 

The Harvest ushers in many celebrations, including the Equinox and the Festival of Janus, God of Doors. Janus is the Roman Lord of Gateways, beginnings and endings, and transitions. Thus, the Harvest Moon is a time for blessing new ventures, the onset of new and progressive phases in one’s life, and rites of passage into adulthood. This time of year also marks one of the Festivals of Dionysus, Lord of Ecstasy and the Vine.

 

This Harvest lunacy combines the autumnal scents of dry leaves, warm, brown spices, white oak, Himalayan cedar, Russian sage, red apple, sweet black plum, juniper berry, clove, saffron, verbena, and yarrow with Dionysus’ sacred grapes and ivy, the amaranth and lingum aloes of Janus, and a gentle breath of Harvest Festival woodsmoke and sweet red wine.

So much thanks to Julie Dillon for illustrating Harvest Moon!

 

Harvest Moon will be live on both sites until August 15th, 2011.

 

 

 

Also this month, we are pleased to introduce scents that benefit the CBLDF and The Hero Initiative.

 

It’s a tag team for free speech when Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab and J. Gonzo team up to benefit the CBLDF with incredible new Luchadore inspired scents celebrating the launch of J. Gonzo’s amazing new series La Mano del Destino!

 

It’s a battle of titans with the First Amendment at stake! In this corner: La Mano del Destino, fighting for your freedom of speech! His opponent, El Nuevo Puritano, bringing the wicked wrath of moral panic and outrageous censorship into the ring!

 

LA MANO DEL DESTINO

Powerful Sumatran patchouli and enigmatic Brazilian copaiba with pao d’arco, cacao absolute, bourbon vanilla, Ceylon cinnamon, and tobacco.

 

EL NUEVO PURITANO

The wicked wrath of moral panic: unmoving, rigid oak, dry leather, tonka, gunpowder tea, and pious olibanum with a core of perverse and furtive vanilla bean, bay leaf, clove bud, and lime.

 

 

 

Next up, to benefit the Hero Initiative, we have scents based on Matt Wagner’s Grendel comic book series.

 

MASTERMIND

The first of the Grendel legacy, a stylish, best-selling author who leads a double life as a relentless assassin and all-powerful mob overlord.

 

An elegant cologne of olibanum, opoponax, leather accord, black amber, bois de jasmine, cade wood, pale balsam, orange blossom, oudh, black plum, bourbon vanilla, and sandalwood.

 

AVENGER

A fashionable and fiery journalist who adopts the Grendel persona to avenge the death of her only child and is consumed by the dark identity.

 

Plush vanilla bourbon and rum accord with pink pepper, patchouli, clove, pikaki, golden amber, caraway, tuberose, and jacarandá-da-bahia.

 

EXORCIST

Christine’s lover who, in the aftermath of her violent death, becomes haunted and possessed by what he sees as the “entity” of Grendel.

 

A refined lilac fougère with frankincense, labdanum, styrax, and dark musk.

 

HARLEQUIN

A futuristic, gothic harlequin, addicted to a heinous hallucinogen with the street name “Grendel”, who leads chaotic attacks against the corrupt Catholic Church.

 

Psychotomimetic: pink grapefruit, white honey, orange blossom, saffron, champagne grape, elemi, guaiac, blonde tobacco, and olibanum.

 

 

 

And last, but certainly not least, this update brings us the third series of Last Unicorn scents.

 

THE KING’S DAUGHTER

There were a prince and a princess sitting by a stream in a wooded valley. Their seven servants had set up a scarlet canopy beneath a tree, and the royal young couple ate a box lunch to the accompaniment of lutes and theorbos. They hardly spoke a word to one another until they had finished the meal, and then the princess sighed and said, “Well, I suppose I’d best get the silly business over with.” The prince began to read a magazine.

 

“You might at least –” said the princess, but the prince kept on reading. The princess made a sign to two of the servants, who began to play an older music on their lutes. Then she took a few steps on the grass, held up a bridle bright as butter, and called, “Here, unicorn, here! Here, my pretty, here to me! Comecomecomecomecome!”

 

The prince snickered. “It’s not your chickens you’re calling, you know,” he remarked without looking up. “Why don’t you sing something, instead of clucking like that?”

 

“Well, I’m doing the best I can,” the princess cried. “I’ve never called one of these things before.” But after a little silence, she began to sing.

 

I am a king’s daughter,

And if I cared to care,

The moon that has no mistress

Would flutter in my hair.

No one dares to cherish

What I choose to crave.

Never have I hungered,

That I did not have.

 

I am a king’s daughter,

And I grow old within

The prison of my person,

The shackles of my skin.

And I would run away

And beg from door to door,

Just to see your shadow

Once, and never more.

 

So she sang, and sang again, and then she called, “Nice unicorn, pretty, pretty, pretty,” for a little longer, and then she said angrily, “Well, I’ve done as much as I’ll do. I’m going home.”

 

The prince yawned and folded his magazine. “You satisfied custom well enough,” he told her, “and no one expected more than that. It was just a formality. Now we can be married.”

 

“Yes,” the princess said, “now we can be married.” The servants began to pack everything away again, while the two with the lutes played joyous wedding music. The princess’s voice was a little sad and defiant as she said, “If there really were such things as unicorns, one would have come to me. I called as sweetly as anyone could, and I had the golden bridle. And of course I am pure and untouched.”

 

“For all of me, you are,” the prince answered indifferently. “As I say, you satisfy custom. You don’t satisfy my father, but then neither do I. That would take a unicorn.” He was tall, and his face was as soft and pleasant as a marshmallow.

 

When they and their retinue were gone, the unicorn came out of the wood, followed by Molly and the magician, and took up her journey again. A long time later, wandering in another country where there were no streams and nothing green, Molly asked her why she had not gone to the princess’s song. Schmendrick drew near to listen to the answer, though he stayed on his side of the unicorn. He never walked on Molly’s side.

 

The unicorn said, “That king’s daughter would never have run away to see my shadow. If I had shown myself, and she had known me, she would have been more frightened than if she had seen a dragon, for no one makes promises to a dragon. I remember that once it never mattered to me whether or not princesses meant what they sang. I went to them all and laid my head in their laps, and a few of them rode on my back, though most were afraid. But I have no time for them now, princesses or kitchenmaids. I have no time.”

 

A matter of formality: lilac musk, sandalwood, sweet pea, watermelon accord, pale woods, elemi, and oakmoss.

 

HAGSGATE

“When those words were first spoken,” Drinn said, “Haggard had not been long in the country, and all of it was still soft and blooming – all but the town of Hagsgate. Hagsgate was then as this land has become: a scrabbly, bare place where men put great stones on the roofs of their huts to keep them from blowing away.” He grinned bitterly at the older men. “Crops to harvest, stock to tend! You grew cabbages and rutabagas and a few pale potatoes, and in all of Hagsgate there was but one weary cow. Strangers thought the town accursed, having offended some vindictive witch or other.”

 

Molly felt the unicorn go by in the street, then turn and come back, restless as the torches on the walls, that bowed and wriggled. She wanted to run out to her, but instead she asked quietly, “And afterward, when that had come true?”

 

Drinn answered, “From that moment, we have known nothing but bounty. Our grim earth has grown so kind that gardensand orchards spring up by themselves – we need neither to plant nor to tend them. Our flocks multiply; our craftsmen become more clever in their sleep; the air we breathe and the water we drink keep us from ever knowing illness. All sorrow parts to go around us – and this has come about while the rest of the realm, once so green, has shriveled to cinders under Haggard’s hand. For fifty years, none but he and we have prospered. It is as though all others had been cursed.”

 

An accursed bounty: rich black soil and hay, cucumber, tomato, red lettuce, summer squash, black eggplant, arugula, grape vine, artichoke, and a tangle of herbs marred by an undercurrent of vetiver, patchouli, and black moss

 

LADY AMALTHEA

Molly Grue had taken the white girl’s head onto her lap, and was whispering over and over, “What have you done?” The girl’s face, quiet in sleep and close to smiling, was the most beautiful that Schmendrick had ever seen. It hurt him and warmed him at the same time. Molly smoothed the strange hair, and Schmendrick noticed on the forehead, above and between the closed eyes, a small, raised mark, darker than the rest of the skin. It was neither a scar nor a bruise. It looked like a flower.

 

A luminous white winter musk with lilac, wisteria, white chocolate, white mint, and tuberose

 

WITCH-CURSED CASTLE

You whom Haggard holds in thrall,

Share his feast and share his fall.

You shall see your fortune flower

Till the torrent takes the tower.

Yet none but one of Hagsgate town

May bring the castle swirling down.

 

Beyond the town, darker than dark, King Haggard’s castle teetered like a lunatic on stilts, and beyond the castle the sea slid. Drinn stopped him as he raised his glass. “Not that toast, my friend. Will you drink to a woe fifty years old? It is that long since our sorrow fell, when King Haggard built his castle by the sea.”

 

“When the witch built it, I think.” Schmendrick wagged a finger at him. “Credit where it’s due, after all.”

 

“Ah, you know that story,” Drinn said. “Then you must also know that Haggard refused to pay the witch when her task was completed.”

 

The magician nodded. “Aye,” and she cursed him for his greed – cursed the castle, rather. “But what had that to do with Hagsgate? The town had done the witch no wrong.”

 

“No,” Drinn replied. “But neither had it done her any good. She could not unmake the castle – or would not, for she fancied herself an artistic sort and boasted that her work was years ahead of its time. Anyway, she came to the elders of Hagsgate and demanded that they force Haggard to pay what was due her. ‘Look at me and see yourselves,’ she rasped. ‘That’s the true test of a town, or of a king. A lord who cheats an ugly old witch will cheat his own folk by and by. Stop him while you can, before you grow used to him.’” Drinn sipped his wine and thoughtfully filled Schmendrick’s glass once more.

 

“Haggard paid her no money,” he went on, “and Hagsgate, alas, paid her no heed. She was treated politely and referred to the proper authorities, whereupon she flew into a fury and screamed that in our eagerness to make no enemies at all, we had now made two.” He paused, covering his eyes with lids so thin that Molly was sure he could see through them, like a bird. With his eyes closed, he said, “It was then that she cursed Haggard’s castle, and cursed our town as well. Thus his greed brought ruin upon us all.”

 

In the sighing silence, Molly Grue’s voice came down like a hammer on a horseshoe, as though she were again berating poor Captain Cully. “Haggard’s less at fault than you yourselves,” she mocked the folk of Hagsgate, “for he was only one thief, and you were many. You earned your trouble by your own avarice, not your king’s.”

 

Drinn opened his eyes and gave her an angry look. “We earned nothing,” he protested. “It was our parents and grandparents whom the witch asked for help, and I’ll grant you that they were as much to blame as Haggard, in their way. We would have handled the matter quite differently.” And every middle-aged face in the room scowled at every older face.

 

One of the old men spoke up in a voice that wheezed and miaowed. “You would have done just as we did. There were crops to harvest and stock to tend, as there still are. There was Haggard to live with, as there still is. We know very well how you would have behaved. You are our children.”

 

Weed-strewn oak, opoponax, wet stone, creaking redwood, and desolate olibanum.

 

PRINCE LÍR

“Heroes,” Prince Lír replied sadly. “Heroes know about order, about happy endings – heroes know that some things are better than others. Carpenters know grains and shingles, and straight lines.” He put his hands out to the Lady Amalthea, and took one step toward her. She did not draw back from him, nor turn her face; indeed, she lifted her head higher, and it was the prince who looked away.

 

“You were the one who taught me,” he said. “I never looked at you without seeing the sweetness of the way the world goes together, or without sorrow for its spoiling. I became a hero to serve you, and all that is like you. Also to find some way of starting a conversation.”

 

Chivalry, love, and sacrifice. A noble cologne touched by a sweet sadness: vanilla fougere, bright citrus, juniper berry, ambergris accord, and basil.

 

KING HAGGARD

His eyes were the same color as the horns of the Red Bull. He was taller than Schmendrick, and though his face was bitterly lined there was nothing fond or foolish in it. It was a pike’s face: the jaws long and cold, the cheeks hard, the lean neck alive with power.

 

Dry cedar, bitter balsam, and ashes.

 

 

 

Halloweenies will be up before the month is over, and some will be out at this weekend’s Will Calls for testing!