June 2025 Lunacy
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13 June 2025 Perfume Oil
Add to cart13 is significant, whether you consider it lucky, unlucky or just plain odd. Many believe it to be unfortunate…
…because there were 13 present at the Last Supper.
…Loki crashed a party of 12 at Valhalla, which ended in Baldur’s death.
…Oinomaos killed 13 of Hippodamia’s suitors before Pelops finally, in his own shady way, defeated the jealous king.
…In ancient Rome, Hecate’s witches gathered in groups of 12, the Goddess herself being the 13th in the coven.
Concern over the number thirteen echoes back beyond the Christian era. Line 13 was omitted form the Code of Hammurabi.
The shivers over Friday the 13th also have some interesting origins:
…Christ was allegedly crucified on Friday the 13th.
…On Friday, October 13, 1307, King Philip IV of France ordered the arrests of Jaques de Molay, Grand Master of the Knights Templar, and sixty of his senior knights.
…In British custom, hangings were held on Fridays, and there were 13 steps on the gallows leading to the noose.
To combat the superstition, Robert Ingersoll and the Thirteen Club held thirteen-men dinners during the 19th Century. Successful? Hardly. The number still invokes trepidation to this day. A recent whimsical little serial killer study showed that the following murderers all have names that total thirteen letters:
Theodore Bundy
Jeffrey Dahmer
Albert De Salvo
John Wayne GacyAnd, with a little stretch of the imagination, you can also fit “Jack the Ripper” and “Charles Manson” into that equation.
More current-era paranoia: modern schoolchildren stop their memorization of the multiplication tables at 12. There were 13 Plutonium slugs in the atomic bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki. Apollo 13 wasn’t exactly the most successful space mission. All of these are things that modern triskaidekaphobes point to when justifying their fears.
For some, 13 is an extremely fortuitous and auspicious number…
…In Jewish tradition, God has 13 Attributes of Mercy. Also, there were 13 tribes of Israel, 13 principles of Jewish faith, and 13 is considered the age of maturity.
…The ancient Egyptians believed that there were 12 stages of spiritual achievement in this lifetime, and a 13th beyond death.
…The word for thirteen, in Chinese, sounds much like the word which means “must be alive”.
Thirteen, whether you love it or loathe it, is a pretty cool number all around.
…In some theories of relativity, there are 13 dimensions.
…It is a prime number, lucky number, star number, Wilson Prime, and Fibonacci number.
…There are 13 Archimedean solids.
AND…
…There were 13 original colonies when the United States were founded.
Says a lot about the US, doesn’t it?
Thirteen notes of empowerment and good fortune soaked in bittersweet chocolate: red ginger, cardamom, star anise, cloves, coriander, fennel, black pepper, pink pepper, red chili, sweet aged patchouli, mallow root, ti leaf, and molasses.
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Crow Moon 2025 Perfume Oil
Add to cart…The second time is set
Whose crumbs the crows inspect
And with ironic caw
Flap past it to the
Farmer’s corn
Men eat of it and die
– Emily Dickinson
An ironic caw: dry hay absolute, syrupy candied fig, a lash of scathing pink pepper, and the dark gleam of bittersweet blackcurrant.
Art by Drew Rausch!
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Eros Scolded by Aphrodite Perfume Oil
Add to cartJosé de Madrazo y Agudo
White and red roses, a blood-touched thorn, and a sprig of myrtle.
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Framboise Hair Gloss
Add to cartBerry-stained and tousled. Sun-drenched raspberries bursting on the vine—sticky-sweet juice, crushed leaves, and a whisper of wild thorns.
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Kite and two Crows Perfume Oil
Add to cartYosa Buson
Rain-soaked leaves, lightning-struck wood, gleaming black myrrh, smoked cedar, hinoki, and black tea.
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Les Fraises Hair Gloss
Add to cartSultry, sticky crimson juice dribbled on bare skin, a flash of teeth, a breathless laugh in the dark.
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Levatio Perfume Oil
Add to cartAn oil to help modulate nervous system function, encouraging rest, recuperation, and calm.
Contains: tangerine, lavender, patchouli, ylang ylang, Roman chamomile, bronze fennel, bergamot, wild carrot, and Himalayan cedar.
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Mélisse Hair Gloss
Add to cartDewy green stems, soft citrus zest, and a breath of summer wind. Bright, herbaceous, and gently soothing — a summer crown of lemon balm leaves crushed between sun-warmed fingers.
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On Freedom Perfume Oil
Add to cartAt the city gate and by your fireside I have seen you prostrate yourself and worship your own freedom,
Even as slaves humble themselves before a tyrant and praise him though he slays them.
Ay, in the grove of the temple and in the shadow of the citadel I have seen the freest among you wear their freedom as a yoke and a handcuff.
And my heart bled within me; for you can only be free when even the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you, and when you cease to speak of freedom as a goal and a fulfilment.
You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief,
But rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound.
And how shall you rise beyond your days and nights unless you break the chains which you at the dawn of your understanding have fastened around your noon hour?
In truth that which you call freedom is the strongest of these chains, though its links glitter in the sun and dazzle your eyes.
And what is it but fragments of your own self you would discard that you may become free?
If it is an unjust law you would abolish, that law was written with your own hand upon your own forehead.
You cannot erase it by burning your law books nor by washing the foreheads of your judges, though you pour the sea upon them.
And if it is a despot you would dethrone, see first that his throne erected within you is destroyed.
For how can a tyrant rule the free and the proud, but for a tyranny in their own freedom and a shame in their own pride?
And if it is a care you would cast off, that cart has been chosen by you rather than imposed upon you.
And if it is a fear you would dispel, the seat of that fear is in your heart and not in the hand of the feared.
Verily all things move within your being in constant half embrace, the desired and the dreaded, the repugnant and the cherished, the pursued and that which you would escape.
These things move within you as lights and shadows in pairs that cling.
And when the shadow fades and is no more, the light that lingers becomes a shadow to another light.
And thus your freedom when it loses its fetters becomes itself the fetter of a greater freedom.
When the shadow fades and is no more, the light that lingers becomes a shadow to another light: frankincense and myrrh smoke, silver musk, ambergris accord, ti leaf, benzoin, and violet ash.
The sales from June’s scents from the Prophet series benefits Lutheran Settlement House, who provides food access, homelessness services, domestic violence services, senior care, and educational resources to Philadelphia’s communities.
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On Laws Perfume Oil
Add to cartYou delight in laying down laws,
Yet you delight more in breaking them.
Like children playing by the ocean who build sand-towers with constancy and then destroy them with laughter.
But while you build your sand-towers the ocean brings more sand to the shore,
And when you destroy them the ocean laughs with you.
Verily the ocean laughs always with the innocent.
But what of those to whom life is not an ocean, and man-made laws are not sand-towers,
But to whom life is a rock, and the law a chisel with which they would carve it in their own likeness? What of the cripple who hates dancers?
What of the ox who loves his yoke and deems the elk and deer of the forest stray and vagrant things?
What of the old serpent who cannot shed his skin, and calls all others naked and shameless?
And of him who comes early to the wedding-feast, and when over-fed and tired goes his way saying that all feasts are violation and all feasters lawbreakers?
What shall I say of these save that they too stand in the sunlight, but with their backs to the sun?
They see only their shadows, and their shadows are their laws.
And what is the sun to them but a caster of shadows?
And what is it to acknowledge the laws but to stoop down and trace their shadows upon the earth?
But you who walk facing the sun, what images drawn on the earth can hold you?
You who travel with the wind, what weather-vane shall direct your course?
What man’s law shall bind you if you break your yoke but upon no man’s prison door?
What laws shall you fear if you dance but stumble against no man’s iron chains?
And who is he that shall bring you to judgment if you tear off your garment yet leave it in no man’s path?
People of Orphalese, you can muffle the drum, and you can loosen the strings of the lyre, but who shall command the skylark not to sing?
Serpent scales in the sunlight: green leather, smoked oud, black cardamom, and osmanthus bathed in amber.The sales from June’s scents from the Prophet series benefits Lutheran Settlement House, who provides food access, homelessness services, domestic violence services, senior care, and educational resources to Philadelphia’s communities.
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The Serenade Perfume Oil
Add to cartBrynolf Wennerberg
A briny ballad sung by crustacean troubadour: salt-crusted red currant and driftwood strumming cheery chords of ambergris, orange blossom, and bubbly bergamot-squeezed pink grapefruit.
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The Woman Clothed with the Sun and the War in Heaven Perfume Oil
Add to cartFrom a 13th century Manuscript of the Apocalypse
Celestial drama. Radiant pomegranate crowned with golden amber and saffron, a waft of singed frankincense, and velvet black cherry.