Once upon a time, in the garden of Eden, between the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge there was another plant, but few were able to see. It was green and often took the appearance of a climbing snake above the water of life. Her name was Divinia fragrans and she was an epiphytic orchid, shaped in the purest "Art Nouveau" style, sitting very high above the ground, between the trees almost like a heart (it was actually only one tree). This unusual plant "spoke" only at dawn when her highly scented petals were whispering an invitation to birds to taste the fruits of the tree and spread the seeds in the garden. Sometime Divinia was protecting the tree with the most frightening odor.
This unknown flower was the origin of all fragrances and when the first inhabitants of the Paradise were sent away, it was the scent of the garden they missed the most - The Divinia - the "invisible" plant hidden in the tree. Scent is the essence of life and, under its most sublime form, the fragrance, it is the vague souvenir of the Lost Paradise.
In tropical areas, scent is everywhere and under every form, from the most beautiful to the most repulsive. The life breathes like Sahara did thousands of years ago, before it became a desert. But in other parts of the planet the scents of life are not everywhere everytime. In the North, the cycle of 4 seasons is constantly offering the presence and the absence of strong scents, from the blooming flowers, several weeks in spring, to the winter with its rare scents and few survivors. Caves and deserts are also deprived of the heavy tropical scents. They are like modern buildings.
The Mesopotamians built ziggurats and believed that these pyramid temples connected heaven and earth. The most impressive had 7 steps and the 8th was the air, the sky, the heaven or in other words the paradise where all scents return from their ephemeral life on earth. The first mention of a perfumer is also in Mesopotamia. Tapputi Belatekallim is considered to be the world’s first chemist and she was a perfumer. Her name was mentioned in a cuneiform tablet from the second millennium BC (actually there were 2 women). The Egyptian perfume records, much older, didn't reveal any creator yet. Perfume is the 8th ART and the only one that was not accessible to all, nor for experience, nor for understanding.
Beyond the 4 major functions of fragrance, there is another one, much deeper and maybe older. The scent is the essence of life and the perfume is its sublimed expression. It is the "sublimated" essence, having passed from the solid to the gaseous state (or vice versa) without becoming liquid. From a physical point of view this is not correct today when most of ingredients are liquids. But thousands of years ago it was true for the men in front of Divinia flower - the archetype - who saw the plant, the tropical mist and felt the presence of the perfume without "seeing" it.
Fragrance represents life beyond the separation between subject and world, it is a symbol for the permanent possibility of experiencing fusion.
This first function - fragrance as a repository of life and a gate to a different universe without imposing a total disconnection with the current one - can be understood today if you think about the meaning of iPod to the youngest generation. The "sound machine" is small enough and performs something similar - an answer to the experience of alienation in the contemporary world, a similar function to imagination. Unlike "gramophone" i-pod is almost a magical device and it will become even smaller.
Perfume did that thousands of years before for those who could afford it and was an unconscious expression of the lost paradise. Its presence in any type of magical ritual was not only to attract /repel but also to ensure that the experience is real and not imaginary. The illusion should be perfect, like candies today shaped and flavored like fruits. Are dreams scented? That's a question I cannot answer for the moment.
Why do I wear a fragrance for so many years? Why do I feel the need to smell again and again some perfumes and I'm not bothered if I forget others?
It is not seduction, nor celebrity! I doubt that any woman wearing the same perfume 15 years did a list of her conquests, a "performance" test and a marketing research in Cupid's land.
We wear fragrances for many years because we love to contemplate them and we feel transported in our unconscious Paradise. A great perfumer is the most accomplished artist (but not recognized by the society). Wearing a masterpiece perfume is pure contemplation, hours and hours of pure admiration. Unless you are a Beaux Art student you don't spend more than 5 minutes in front of Raphael!
Some perfumes appeal to us because they have something very deep and because they are able to "touch" some scent archetypes.Scent archetypes are not metaphors/concepts, they are the most mysterious side of us, a link between the physical world and our inside. They are both molecules and a fraction of the olfactory space. They are more relevant to us than other scents and are not concepts. Scents were here before us but they do not have equal meaning. When those archetypes are present in a fragrance in their most sublimed form that transcends their crude reality through ART, that creation will be a long time around us.
Some perfumes appeal to us because they have something very deep and because they are able to "touch" some scent archetypes.Scent archetypes are not metaphors/concepts, they are the most mysterious side of us, a link between the physical world and our inside. They are both molecules and a fraction of the olfactory space. They are more relevant to us than other scents and are not concepts. Scents were here before us but they do not have equal meaning. When those archetypes are present in a fragrance in their most sublimed form that transcends their crude reality through ART, that creation will be a long time around us.
There are 2 types of scent archetypes: those very old that go back to our origins as if they were a part of our collective "DNA" and those "circumstantial" that reflect a short period of time and have a strong causality factor. Those archetypes are both universal and specific. We are sensible to green odors but not all green molecules / naturals have the same impact on us, some go deeper. Though perfumers work with molecules, this is where the science stops and the art starts. The subject can be explored only by artists, sometime centuries before science is able to give a rational explanation. From the entire olfactory space (the "good scents") we feel attracted and moved only by several areas. Curiously, some great floral perfumes of the XXth century, though unrelated, point to a specific area from this space. They do not smell the same but the effect (the "activated" zones) is almost the same.
It is said that who discovers the Divinia flower in the jungle, will find the key to the lost Paradise.
PS:The flower depicted in Sumer is very similar to the honeysuckle, later adopted as an ornament by Greeks, a flower that is similar in shape with some tropical orchids.
PS:The flower depicted in Sumer is very similar to the honeysuckle, later adopted as an ornament by Greeks, a flower that is similar in shape with some tropical orchids.
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Fragrance is the 8th Art - Octavian Coifan - Le Parfum est le 8ème Art
