Cardinal Heeley 2006

Catholic churches are wonderful places of silence and contemplation for me. When I want to retreat from the stress of the city and its noise, I visit a church. The older the church, the better. And here resides the scent of clear, cool incense.
I associate it with letting go of tension. It is like a deep breath, with which the trivialities of everyday life, that often occupy me for too long, dissolve and disappear. The scent of incense feels like being lovingly enveloped in silky velvet. I fall into it, and it catches me and carries me.
Incense: I will never tire of you! With every nuance and in every shade, you carry me. You are my beloved, my longing, and my desire. And if someone asks me which perfume I am wearing, I will smile and say your name. Always knowing that it is you who truly carries me.
Cardinal by Heeley: this was my first true incense fragrance. I hesitated for a long time to write a review about it. But by now, I have been able to experience other incense fragrances that allow me to finally write a comment.
Cardinal indeed presents itself initially in a Catholic guise. It reminds me of visiting a cathedral after a major Christian holiday. The scent of incense still lingers in the air, yet the heavy smoke has dissipated, leaving only the ethereal purity behind. It feels cool. However, the longer the scent remains on the skin, the warmer it becomes. Yet this warmth is not sweetness. Rather, it is a hard-to-describe kind of evolving earthiness that connects the ethereal with the earthly. Simply beautiful.
It was this scent that opened the portal to the world of perfumes for me. For I only burned incense at home for myself and never thought that there could be perfumes that convincingly smell of incense. That changed after this olfactory experience.