We are marking the ten-year anniversary of our American Gods collaboration with Neil Gaiman by introducing the next installment of scents inspired by his beautiful, harrowing, heart-shredding novel. It is one of my favorite books and Neil is one of my favorite humans, so this project is extremely dear to my heart.
The paradigms were shifting. He could feel it. The old world, a world of infinite vastness and illimitable resources and future, was being confronted by something else-a web of energy, of opinions, of gulfs.
People believe, thought Shadow. It’s what people do. They believe. And then they will not take responsibility for their beliefs; they conjure things, and do not trust the conjurations. People populate the darkness; with ghosts, with gods, with electrons, with tales. People imagine, and people believe: and it is that belief, that rock-solid belief, that makes things happen.
The mountaintop was an arena; he saw that immediately. And on each side of the arena he could see them arrayed.
They were too big. Everything was too big in that place.
There were old gods in that place: gods with skins the brown of old mushrooms, the pink of chicken flesh, the yellow of autumn leaves. Some were crazy and some were sane. Shadow recognized the old gods. He’d met them already, or he’d met others like them. There were ifrits and piskies, giants and dwarfs. He saw the woman he had met in the darkened bedroom in Rhode Island, saw the writhing green snake-coils of her hair. He saw Mama-ji, from the carousel, and there was blood on her hands and a smile on her face. He knew them all.
He recognized the new ones, too.
Neil Gaiman is the winner of numerous literary honors and is the New York Times bestselling author of The Ocean at the End of the Lane, American Gods, Neverwhere, Stardust and Anansi Boys; the Sandman series of graphic novels; three short story collections and one book of essays, The View From the Cheap Seats.
Neil is the first author to win both the Carnegie Medal and the Newbery Medal for one work, The Graveyard Book. He also writes books for readers of all ages including the novels Fortunately, the Milk and Odd and the Frost Giants and picture books including The Sleeper and the Spindle and the Chu’s Day series. Neil’s most recent publication, Norse Mythology has topped bestseller lists worldwide.
Originally from England, he now lives in the USA. He is listed in the Dictionary of Literary Biography as one of the top ten living post-modern writers, and he says he owes it all to reading the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook as a young man.
This series based on Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, winner of the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, SFX Magazine and Bram Stoker Awards for Best Novel, and now a Starz television series.
Visit Neil’s official site, American Gods at Starz, and NeverWear.
Your purchase from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab will help our friends at the National Coalition Against Censorship promote and defend First Amendment rights.
Original American Gods art by Hugo-winner Julie Dillon.
PERFUME OIL BLENDS
Presented in an amber apothecary glass vial.
Because of the nature of this project, imps are not available for any American Gods scents.
watin77 –
one of my favorite scents ever, definitely my autumn & winter go-to. whenever i wear this friends (and sometimes even strangers) will say things like “you smell delicious” or, once, “who walked into this party smelling like a leather jacket and baked goods???”
reminds me of standing in a snow-covered clearing in the middle of the woods, with an evening storm on the horizon. you’re wearing a leather jacket, smoking a cigarette, and holding a thermos of something warm and alluring. for some inexplicable reason it smells like someone nearby is baking cookies.
Margo –
Cinnamon, fir and something metallic or mentholated on first application. Very clean and balanced. The incense isn’t strong or burning. More of a stored-in-a-wood-box smell. I agree that it is masculine but not so much so that it couldn’t be unisex as well. The leather and unfiltered cigarette is a roll your own smoke from a leather pouch of tobacco. On him, my fiancé says it smells like camping in an evergreen forest with friends and I agree. On me, it smells like cooking with herbs and spices in a the log cabin by the lake. Really like this.
Micah –
I should preface this by saying I am new to BPAL scents and didn’t quite know what to expect from a product that boasted such notes as ‘aortal blood slowly drying’ and ‘unfiltered cigarettes’. But, given the fact that Czernobog is my favorite American Gods character, and that I am willing to try anything that’ll make me smell like an ancient man who chain smokes and brags about killing cows, I was willing to try it out.
Holy. Gods.
I adore this. So much. Upon smelling it in the bottle, it was extremely, nay, the embodiment of raw. But!!! It smelled GOOD. It has a very dark, foreboding feeling going with it. It smelled a bit cinnamon-y in the bottle, with a leather type complexity to compliment it, and I could definitely pinpoint the black incense right away.
On my skin, believe it or not, it smells extremely clean, but with the innocence not quite there. I equate it to some gothic sunscreen (SPF 1000!!!) with the added bonus of some Slavic god’s cologne.
All in all, Czernobog has been appeased.