My New Bible

My daughter Karma gave me a copy of Essence and Alchemy by Mandy Aftel for Christmas. I finished it this morning. In a way I was glad that I had waited until now to read it. It was a richer experience because now I am familar with a lot of the essences she mentions in her book. As a coincidence my husband Sean had been reading stuff on Alchemy on the internet and saying how he wanted to become an alchemist. I started explaining how natural perfumery is a form of alchemy. He remarked that "blending oils" is not really alchemy. I found these two paragraphs in the book (pages 103-104) and let him read them... " Floral heart notes can be combined into voluptuous chords that are sultry, sophisticated, radiant, narcotic, exotic. They bridge the distance between the deep, heavy base notes and the light, sharp top notes, rounding off the rough edges and making the perfume cohere as a whole. This requires an almost alchemical transformation: idiosyncratic and intense as they are on their own, they are smoothly integrated into the evolving fragrance, enlarging it not by imposing their will but by allowing their singular personalities to be subsumed into a greater whole.
In this they mirror the alchemical phenomenon know as the mystic marriage, in which opposite elements are combined and an entirely new substance emerges. The material, the prima materia, becomes spirit, and spirit in turn becomes concrete. This process of joining matter and spirit, or coniunctio, is a recurrent theme in alchemical writing, in which the dualities are concieved as masculine and feminine forces. As in perfumery the transformation requires a medium, the soul. The resulting union, the mystic marriage of opposites, is often represented as a joining of the sun and moon, sol and luna, frequently portrayed as king and queen."
My side of the argument couldn't have been put more eloquently. When he had finished reading he understood how perfumery is not just "blending oils". He looked up at me with a new light of admiration in his eyes.
Essence and Alchemy traces the history of perfume back to the beginning. It takes you to Egypt, Rome, Greece, France and Italy. Mandy Aftel breaks down all the different elements of perfumery and the materials used therein. She describes the process in detail and offers recipes and and formulas to follow. At the back of the book Mandy gives lists of matrials she recommends the perfumer purchase to develop the art and also suppliers where the materials may be obtained.