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  Tiresias, The Androgyne Perfume Oil

  Upon the next stage, a spotlight is focused on a mammoth bronze sculpture of two snakes entwined. Their bodies are wrapped around each other in an intimate embrace, and their tongues touch suggestively. The deep, somber boom of a standing bass leads into a twelve-string guitar’s plaintive moan, and as the music swells, a stunning, statuesque woman steps out from behind the statue, her fierce and regal face in profile. The spotlight dims to a deep amber-red, and shines a dark, sanguine light onto her, tinting her long, wild hair the color of blood. She sings:

  Sunday is gloomy, my hours are slumberless.
  Dearest, the shadows I live with are numberless.
  Little white flowers will never awaken you,
  Not where the black coach of sorrow has taken you.
  Angels have no thought of ever returning you.
  Would they be angry if I thought of joining you?
  Gloomy Sunday.

  She turns, and abruptly faces left. Her features are coarser, more masculine, and you notice the rough, dusky shadow of an evening beard on the singer’s face. On this side, the hair is cropped short, and as s/he sighs and begins the next verse, you hear the voice deepen to a weathered, sorrowful baritone.

  Gloomy is Sunday; with shadows I spend it all.
  My heart and I have decided to end it all.
  Soon there’ll be candles and prayers that are sad, I know.
  Death is no dream, for in death I’m caressing you.
  With the last breath of my soul I’ll be blessing you.
  Gloomy Sunday.

  The singer turns to face the audience, and your senses reel. On the left side, the features are sharp, but feminine. You can see the curve of her breast, the soft fullness of her hips, the arch of her fine brow. On the right, it is the body of an Adonis, muscular and commanding. You see that a thick seam runs down the center of the body, stitched roughly.

  Though the vision is disconcerting, the warmth and passion in the singer’s voice swells inside your heart, and you are spellbound. Enraptured, you realize that though the gender is opposed on either side, one soul binds the whole.

  Dark, moody, and bittersweet: black currant, patchouli, tobacco, cinnamon leaf, caramel, muguet, and red sandalwood.

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  Masks Confronting Death Perfume Oil

  James Ensor
  Jolly, jeering splats of red and black currants, neroli, and spiced apricot surrounding a grinning clang of spectral sandalwood musk.

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  In the Darkness They Murmured and Mingled Perfume Oil

  And they laughed, changing hands in the measure,

  And they mixed and made peace after strife;

  Pain melted in tears, and was pleasure;

  Death tingled with blood, and was life.

  Like lovers they melted and tingled,

  In the dusk of thine innermost fane;

  In the darkness they murmured and mingled,

  Our Lady of Pain.

   

  Labdanum, black plum, black currant, violet, and champaca flower.

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  Arachne of Lydia Perfume Oil

  Rukh was standing before a cage that contained nothing but a small brown spider weaving a modest web across the bars. “Arachne of Lydia,” he told the crowd. “Guaranteed the greatest weaver in the world – her fate’s the proof of it. She had the bad luck to defeat the goddess Athena in a weaving contest. Athena was a sore loser, and Arachne is now a spider, creating only for Mommy Fortuna’s Midnight Carnival, by special arrangement. Warp of snow and woof of flame, and never any two the same. Arachne.”

  Strung on the loom of iron bars, the web was very simple and almost colorless, except for an occasional rainbow shiver when the spider scuttled out on it to put a thread right. But it drew the onlookers’ eyes – and the unicorn’s eyes as well – back and forth and steadily deeper, until they seemed to be looking down into great rifts in the world, black fissures that widened remorselessly and yet would not fall into pieces as long as Arachne’s web held the world together. The unicorn shook herself free with a sigh, and saw the real web again. It was very simple, and almost colorless.

  “It isn’t like the others,” she said. “No,” Schmendrick agreed grudgingly. “But there’s no credit due to Mommy Fortuna for that. You see, the spider believes. She sees those cat’s-cradles herself and thinks them her own work. Belief makes all the difference to magic like Mommy Fortuna’s. Why, if that troop of witlings withdrew their wonder, there’d be nothing left of all her witchery but the sound of a spider weeping. And no one would hear it.”

  Soft brown and Tyrian purple: dusty clove and blackcurrant.

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