The Witch Gather Perfume / Amrita Aromatics 2016 Perfume Extrait

When you found me, the days were short and the nights were dark. You knew at a glance how lost I was and you knew the darkness, but you didn't say 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 rosebush there on the walls bears scattered blossoms and the little clouds above the fireplace tell of the fire that never goes out.
You invite me in, put a blanket around my shoulders so that its warmth envelops me like balm. Slowly the 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 hearth, tend the embers and draw water from the well in front of the house. And so I stay by your side until the second moon lets the light return.
With bare feet on the loamy ground, we whisper poems into the smoke as the water in the kettle boils under the flames of the hearth fire. We stir the brew of black tea and flowers and secrets, filtering it through the finest leather until I can feel the threads of smoke silvering the tiny cracks in my insides, lightening the dark places.

Day and night the fire will crackle in your hut. It must never go out.

***

Breo Saighead, later also known as Brigid, is a particularly versatile, sometimes contradictory goddess from Celtic pre-Christian Ireland. Among other things, she is considered the guardian of fire, bringer of light, mother goddess and healer, but is also known as a blacksmith 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 become noticeably longer in February and spring begins to assert itself inexorably against winter. And that could be the reason, more or less consciously, why Breo Saighead of all people came to my winter-weary mind when I smelled Ananda Wilson's The Witch for the first time.
With its dark ambery resins, balsamic warmth and notes of smoky tea, spices, leathery osmanthus and a few scattered rose petals, I would undoubtedly have categorized the scent as autumnal, wintry, and yet now in early spring it seems to be just what I needed.
For a while now, I've been torn between my longing for fresh greenery and the need to snuggle up. I'm not in the mood for my heavier winter fragrances, but find the cooler spring fragrances too demanding. A little unexpectedly, The Witch fills exactly this gap in between.
Perhaps it's the somewhat surprising ethereal camphor-like freshness that glitters over the fragrance for about fifteen minutes - I can't for the life of me identify which of the notes might be responsible for this effect, but it does ensure that the confusing density that often irritates me about natural fragrances is absent. Then amber balsam with a pronounced osmanthus note works its way to the fore, settling like rays of sunshine on the spring-hungry soul, and is balanced by a dark, smoky tea note and spices, as if someone had handed me a healing potion, brewed in a cauldron over Breo Saighead's eternal fire. Slowly, the smoke clears and makes room for the slightly animalic leather notes of Osmathus, the fragrance softens and begins to glow mysteriously like the last full moon of winter, before it becomes quieter and quieter, a spicy amber glow, and finally fades away.

Dear Brida, how can I thank you for sharing this treasure with me?