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Spring greetings from the Northern Hemisphere!

This newsletter features:

Mirroring the Heavens over at Wandering the Wonderland

The Spring Equinox & the Green Witch

Spring Styling Webinar, April 1st

Aurora Solid Returns

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Mirroring the Heavens

Most of us have been trained to start and celebrate the new year on January 1st, which in the northern hemisphere is in winter, when it's barren and cold outside with short days that might be icy and/or cold. In December, I found myself contemplating how ridiculous it is that we humans have decided to start the year on January 1st.

I began writing a post for Wandering the Wonderland on this topic, with a crisp new calendar hung at the perfumery next to my drafting table featuring a picture of a pretty crocus. The post got held up by my usual rabbit hole diving and the wildfires in California. After extensive editing it's finally been published over at Wandering the Wonderland.

The Spring Equinox & the Green Witch

In 2010, for the occasion of the Spring Equinox, I released the perfume Green Witch, dedicated to the Goddess Tethys. The fragrance was inspired by the 1974 novel of the same name by Susan Cooper, the third book of the authors Dark is Rising Series.

Green Witch was formulated as a traditional Chypre with oakmoss and labdanum in the base balanced with bergamot in the top, and then breaking the mold by adding seaweed for the story component.

In the Green Witch novel, Tethys arrives to the shore of the Cornwall coast to claim her daughter the Green Witch on the spring equinox, when the light is evenly matched with the dark, as in this fragrance.

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Auspiciously, and completely divinely guided, my daughter Eve, her boyfriend Gilles, Greg and I drove up the west coast to do a farewell ceremony for my mother.

We found a beautiful isolated beach near the polo field where she would network during her travel agent days. We took our shoes off, enjoying the feel of the warmth between our toes, and then built a heart shaped sand castle with a channel for the water to flow in.

When finished, we shared fond memories of Martha, reminiscing on her best attributes. I then stood with my feet in the ocean, looking out to connect with the spirit of the water, beckoning her to come, it felt a bit like summoning Tethy’s. Later that evening, I realized that we had done this ceremony on the Spring Equinox and I recalled the launching of the Green Witch perfume. Check out this post on instagram to see some photos.

Spring Styling Webinar, April 5th

Saturday morning at 10am PST, on April 5th, I am a special guest on Jennifer Butler's monthly webinar where she will share insights Spring Styling & Wardrobe Refresh. Use the promo code FirstTime to attend for free.

​Click here to register.

AURORA

Aurora in her solid format has returned, this is the first floral perfume I created in the nineties when I began experimenting with natural perfume making following my studies in Aromatherapy. I had sat down to recreate the aroma of a carnation flower after experiencing a beautiful carnation absolute from France during a visit with Christopher McMahon of White Lotus.

Originally titled Experiment #2, Aurora has a spicy floral reminiscent of carnations due to the combination of floral and spice. The main odor molecule in a fragrant Carnation flower is "eugenol", this component is found in high concentrations in the essential oil or absolute of clove.

"What beautiful, twinkling magic has been weaved in this amazing, heart-moving fragrance? Because it is surely magic, or at the very least the magic of art and love, that make this fragrance evolve so stunningly on the skin, going through countless transformations that seduce the senses one after the other..."

~ Divina, Fragrance Bouquet Blog

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I bow, acknowledge and offer gratitude, respect & love to Oghá P'o'oge, the land here that I call home and create on. The name comes from the Tewa people and means "white shell water place.". The first known ancestral people of the area were here in about 1050 to 1150, but abandoned it around 200 years before the Spanish arrived.

In 1610, Spanish governor Don Pedro de Peralta renamed the area Villa Real de la Santa Fé de San Francisco de Asís, which translates to "Royal Town of the Holy Faith of Saint Francis of Assisi". The name "Santa Fe" is Spanish for "Holy Faith".

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Illuminated Perfume / 1600 Lena Street, A6 / Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505
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