When I was in high school, I bought some “love” oil to use in a spell. (I considered myself a baby witch at the time.) With its pungent aroma of jasmine, rose, petals, and herbs swimming around in the bottle, this tiny vial of oil was one of my very first magickal tools. That was over 20 years ago, and I still have the bottle on my altar. There’s only a little bit of the oil left, so I’ll open it once in a while just to take a whiff. While it’s not of any practical use to me now, the way that it’s able to transport me back to the time I was 15 almost makes the oil a spell for time travel itself. That, or it just shows how powerful scent is.
“Smell is our most ancient sense,” says Marissa Zappas, perfumer and creator of her eponymous fragrance brand. “Perfume—oils, resins, incenses, flower essences, etc.—have been used since the beginning of time for a variety of reasons: to seduce, comfort, even kill. I think there’s something about the way scent penetrates our unconscious that makes it divine.”
Cosmetics have long been associated with the occult. In the Middle Ages, the cosmetics-hating Church believed that wearing lipstick meant you were in cahoots with the devil. (Affluent women were exempt from this, of course.) Even the word glamour is derived from a Scottish term for “magic spell.” These days, beauty brands have been known to give their lipsticks and eyeshadows witchy monikers, while some infuse crystals into their products for a boost of positive energy. But perfume has its own magical history.
“Perfume in the days of the ancients was always tied to protection from evil as well as seduction and witchcraft,” says Bri Luna of The Hoodwitch. “Utilizing flowers, wild herbs, resins, and preparing them into the finest perfumes and fragrance oils was a way for women to camouflage their body odor, thus making them ‘witches’ and ‘deceivers.’” The concept of aromatherapy, which is tied to self-care and stress relief, has its roots in mysticism. Ancient Egyptians used fragrance in spells and ceremonies, and in The Scent of Ancient Magic, author Britta K. Ager writes how Greco-Roman magicians “used scent extensively as part of their rituals.”
In various modern magickal practices, fragranced oils are used to dress candles for spellwork, and Florida Water, a light floral and citrus cologne by Murray & Lanman that has been around since 1808, is famously known in magickal circles as a go-to for cleansing and protection.
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