Amber
Spices
Black tea
Red rose
Osmanthus
Saffron
Marieposa
90 Reviews
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Marieposa
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38
Breo Saighead
When you found me, the days were short and the nights were dark. You knew at a glance how lost I was and you understood the darkness, but you said not a word. Your hand closed around my fingers, it was strong and warm, and I followed you to your simple hut. Even in winter, the rose vine there on the walls bears scattered blooms and the little clouds above the fireplace herald the fire that never goes out.
You invite me in, wrapping a blanket around my shoulders so that its warmth envelops me like balm. Slowly, color returns to my cheeks and lips, and you smile, showing me the dried herbs and rare spices in your kitchen, the tiny golden flowers and the strong tea. You instruct me to stoke the fire in the stove, to tend the embers, and to draw water from the well in front of the house. And so I stay by your side until the second moon brings back the light.
With bare feet on the clay floor, we whisper poems into the smoke as the water in the kettle bubbles under the flames of the hearth. We stir the brew of black tea and blossoms and secrets, filtering it through the finest leather, until I feel the smoke threads silvering the little cracks within me, brightening the dark spots.
Day and night, the fire in your hut will crackle. It must never go out.
**
Breo Saighead, later also called Brigid, is a particularly versatile, partly contradictory goddess from pre-Christian Celtic Ireland. She is regarded as the guardian of fire, a bringer of light, a mother goddess, and a healer, but she is also known as a smith and warrior, and as the patron saint of poets - perhaps because stories are best told by the fire? Who knows …
The festival in her honor is Imbolc, the moon festival on the second full moon after the winter solstice, when the days in February noticeably grow longer and spring begins to assert itself against winter. And that might be more or less consciously the reason why Breo Saighead came to my winter-weary mind when I first smelled Ananda Wilson's The Witch.
With its dark ambered resins, balsamic warmth, and notes of smoky tea, spices, leathery osmanthus, and a few scattered rose petals, I would undoubtedly have classified the scent as autumnal or wintry, yet now in early spring, it seems to be exactly what I needed.
For a while, I have been torn between my longing for fresh green and the need to snuggle up. I have no desire for my heavier winter scents, but I find the cooler spring fragrances too demanding. A little unexpectedly, The Witch fills exactly that gap in between.
Perhaps it is the somewhat surprising ethereal camphor-like freshness that sparkles above the scent for about fifteen minutes - I cannot for the life of me identify which of the notes could be responsible for this effect, but it ensures that the confusing density often found in natural scents is absent. Then amber balsam with a pronounced osmanthus note comes to the forefront, laying itself like sunbeams on the spring-hungry soul, balanced by a dark, smoky tea note and spices, as if someone had handed me a healing potion brewed in the cauldron over Breo Saighead's eternal fire. Slowly, the smoke clears, making way for the slightly animalic leather notes of osmanthus, the scent becomes softer and begins to glow mysteriously like the last winter full moon, before it gradually fades away, a spicy amber glow, and finally disappears.
Dear Brida, how can I ever thank you for sharing this treasure with me?
You invite me in, wrapping a blanket around my shoulders so that its warmth envelops me like balm. Slowly, color returns to my cheeks and lips, and you smile, showing me the dried herbs and rare spices in your kitchen, the tiny golden flowers and the strong tea. You instruct me to stoke the fire in the stove, to tend the embers, and to draw water from the well in front of the house. And so I stay by your side until the second moon brings back the light.
With bare feet on the clay floor, we whisper poems into the smoke as the water in the kettle bubbles under the flames of the hearth. We stir the brew of black tea and blossoms and secrets, filtering it through the finest leather, until I feel the smoke threads silvering the little cracks within me, brightening the dark spots.
Day and night, the fire in your hut will crackle. It must never go out.
**
Breo Saighead, later also called Brigid, is a particularly versatile, partly contradictory goddess from pre-Christian Celtic Ireland. She is regarded as the guardian of fire, a bringer of light, a mother goddess, and a healer, but she is also known as a smith and warrior, and as the patron saint of poets - perhaps because stories are best told by the fire? Who knows …
The festival in her honor is Imbolc, the moon festival on the second full moon after the winter solstice, when the days in February noticeably grow longer and spring begins to assert itself against winter. And that might be more or less consciously the reason why Breo Saighead came to my winter-weary mind when I first smelled Ananda Wilson's The Witch.
With its dark ambered resins, balsamic warmth, and notes of smoky tea, spices, leathery osmanthus, and a few scattered rose petals, I would undoubtedly have classified the scent as autumnal or wintry, yet now in early spring, it seems to be exactly what I needed.
For a while, I have been torn between my longing for fresh green and the need to snuggle up. I have no desire for my heavier winter scents, but I find the cooler spring fragrances too demanding. A little unexpectedly, The Witch fills exactly that gap in between.
Perhaps it is the somewhat surprising ethereal camphor-like freshness that sparkles above the scent for about fifteen minutes - I cannot for the life of me identify which of the notes could be responsible for this effect, but it ensures that the confusing density often found in natural scents is absent. Then amber balsam with a pronounced osmanthus note comes to the forefront, laying itself like sunbeams on the spring-hungry soul, balanced by a dark, smoky tea note and spices, as if someone had handed me a healing potion brewed in the cauldron over Breo Saighead's eternal fire. Slowly, the smoke clears, making way for the slightly animalic leather notes of osmanthus, the scent becomes softer and begins to glow mysteriously like the last winter full moon, before it gradually fades away, a spicy amber glow, and finally disappears.
Dear Brida, how can I ever thank you for sharing this treasure with me?
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Brida
