The Dark Side of the Goddess

Темная сторона богини

Anna Zworykina

I have scattered bitter blossoms along the path like pebbles.
Radiantly, they release their scent, wilting into dark medicine beneath the green camphor flashes. They say it is the sparkle of my eyes, but you need not hide. I have long overheard your racing heartbeat, the pulsing blood beneath your heated skin, your damp forehead. Let me cool them with my hand when your eyes are heavy and burning.
I have breathed nutmeg dust into the wind.
Do not be afraid. Step closer and forget all the old stories of wreaths made of myrtle or even laurel. So pure and green. The price is high. For you, but also for me. I will not lie to you about that, but it is never higher than the value, never more than you can spare. I will pay it too. With every touch, every gesture, every fiber of my heart that weaves itself with yours.
I have splinted the crack in your soul with cassia.
Take a look into the myrrh-blind mirror, in which I no longer see, listen to its words, and then let yourself sink into the dark earth that I once rubbed on my limbs. The smoke threads, bound in the blackness of my hair, the fine scratches from thorny branches, and the glimmer of hope from the cedars.
Follow my drop of blood into the night, until you become one with me.

***

“Try Anna Zworykina's fragrances if you like true vintage; or if you like complex challenging scents which are like a riddle or a labyrinth and it's easy to get lost in the ultimate complexity of natural materials vs clean simplicity of synthetic compounds,” it says on Anna Zworykina's homepage - and, yes, who could possibly say no to that?
Personally, I do not place an exaggerated value on scents consisting solely of the most exclusive, rarest, and highest quality natural raw materials. It is much more important to me that the result is original, smells good, and is so balanced that I can understand the idea behind it, the structure, and the story that the scent tells me. I am flexible regarding the path that leads to this result. However, I greatly admire it when olfactory artists achieve exactly that without resorting to the synthetic trick box, and manage to master that little bit of unpredictability and heightened complexity that working exclusively with natural raw materials entails.
Anna Zworykina's olfactory playground, who as a PhD biochemist could presumably draw from both worlds, but has clearly and unequivocally chosen natural scents, does not convince me in this regard for the first time.
The Dark Side of the Goddess starts with a somewhat chaotic, medicinal top note, which settles somewhere between indolic, human-like jasmine and bitter marigold after a few minutes. Above the floral notes, a green camphor storm flashes, which could be composed of the menthol facets of patchouli, myrtle, and laurel, while the (spicy) aspects increasingly work their way to the forefront, and I distinctly perceive nutmeg with its slight sharpness. Frankincense forms a bridge to balsamic-sweet and dark myrrh, which is brightened by cassia (I smell the mimosa-like flowers, not the cinnamon bark) and cedar, while the patchouli develops ever more earthy.
What an exciting ambivalence between warm-soft-balsamic darkness and harsh-green notes that repeatedly flash up somewhat demanding, yet also illuminate a path through Anna Zworykina's complex scent labyrinth! And although these constant calls for more durable scents drive me terribly crazy, I must admit in this case that I would love to enjoy this skin-close scent longer than the few hours it accompanies me.

Thank you so much, dear Dark Goddess Brida! What an experience. This cries out for more.