An Excellent Day for an Exorcism Sixteen92 2017 Extrait de Parfum

An Excellent Day for an Exorcism smells like stepping into the dimly lit parlor of an eccentric small-town psychic.

Dark flowers come first: roses and dahlias with the slightly musty, almost funereal quality of blooms that have been sitting in a vase for a little too long.
Around them hangs the dry smoke of burning incense, mingling with old wood and the cool minerality I associate with crystals and stones in a New Age shop.

There’s an earthy quality here, too. At times it reminds me of an herbal salve made from damp soil, crushed flower petals and incense dust—strange, but strangely comforting.

Then something wonderfully domestic begins creeping into all the mysticism: spice cookies baking somewhere nearby. Warm baking spices and a gentle sweetness soften the darker floral, earthy and incense-laden elements without turning the fragrance gourmand.

The result isn't particularly frightening, despite the name. If anything, I find it cozy: maroon velvet, dark flowers, incense smoke, old wood, mineralic stones and freshly baked cookies in a room deliberately kept a little too dark in the middle of the afternoon.

Perhaps the spirits aren't real. The atmosphere certainly is.

And the cookies are excellent.

Zachary's spiritual promiscuity sometimes bore strange fruit. Buzzing, he shuffled through a narrow, dimly lit shop in a New England small town and found himself in front of a spice rack made of old, rusty metal. Whirls of white dust traced a few sunbeams diagonally across the room, mingling with the warm incense from the drive-in chapel, which still lingered as a mist from his clothes, before a wooden shrine with inscriptions hypnotized him. Do you have anything to do with religion? he whispered into the room, as the cool corrosion of the metal rack completely vanished into the clove spices, the balsamic resins, and the woods soaked in bitter honey, and Zachary began to breathe evenly, for there was no evil thought within him and the answer had not come.
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"An Excellent Day For An Exorcism" begins with the clearest metallic note I have ever smelled, cool, sweet-sour, a bit like blood, as it is ultimately human contact that gives metal its scent. This fragrance is accompanied by a not overly bitter clove that contributes to the coolness of the metallic impression, while simultaneously imparting the necessary bitterness to the warm, balsamic, almost fruity-resinous incense, which soon frees the wooden base from the dusty dry parchment notes and allows the rather skin-close scent to fade into a bitter woody-resinous finish after five to six hours.
Sixteen92, based in Fort Worth, Texas, has been producing fragrances in small batches since 2014. Claire Baxter draws inspiration from history, literature, tradition, and magic. Her creations are available as oils, perfumes, and/or extraits.

(With thanks to DufterMann)