I made a 'decadent' Gnosis perfume
As the title says, I recently made a Decadent perfume. I have, in all transparency, been reading more about the Decadent literary movement for a while, as well as some proximal figures like Arthur Rimbaud. What has caught my eye is their own tendency to merge occultism with art (something William S. Burroughs was also fond of doing), as well as the potential to lean into this via the ‘sensory overload’ mentioned as an excitatory mode to gnosis in Liber Lux. Rather than occultism as art, I see a more novel route of art as occultism.
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My base idea was to merge the sacred and the erotic, a Decadent classic. So, a warm and resinous base (labdanum, myrrh) mixed with some heady florals (champaca, orange blossom, gardenia), tipping towards rot by injecting them with indole and skatole. I wanted to make the top more excessive, so I added saffron, and added some sweetness into the base with benzoin. Mandarin and sweet orange were added to fill out the top, and to connect it to the heart through orange blossom.
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The overall structure is, then, this:
Top: Mandarin, Sweet Orange, Saffron
Heart: Orange Blossom, Gardenia, Champaca, Indole.
Base: Skatole, Labdanum, Benzoin, Myrrh.
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The end result is a very deep reddish-brown (as visible in image 2). Applied directly and not diluted, it is obnoxious to say the least. Overpowering doesn’t even capture it, it’s more like an assault on the nose. The labdanum and skatole come through very prominently, and it mostly just smells warm and fecal, with some leathery, floral, and sweaty undertones.
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I bought these cobalt blue roll-ons a while ago, and so I put the concentrate in there, diluted at 30% with squalane oil. The sensory nuances become more pronounced, and it leads to a more genuine sensory overwhelm, rather than just a negative smell. It opens quite leathery and spicy, then reveals a very lush, overripe floral heart, and fades into a warm, resinous, and bodily base.
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Overall, I am very happy with how the perfume works. I have used it in a few rituals already, paired with music, some kind of movement (tapping to the beat of the music and/or dancing), and sometimes closing my eyes to better focus on the sensory excess, and the perfume definitely helps in achieving that gnosis state. I do plan to make more perfumes for other ritual purposes in the future, so I might post those here too.