What happens when a city of 3 million inhabitants has a sewer system that serves 1 million? The Great Stink! But can stench alone kill?
Category: History & Alchemy
Chatting with Courtney & Laura from I Heart Dead Things
A few weeks ago I had the privilege to sit down and have an amazing chat with Courtney Iseman and Laura Wasson over at the I Heart Dead Things Podcast we talked all things death, olfaction, and dived into some of my work that has appeared recently in Order of the Good Death and Death and the…
The Death/Scent Reading List
Over the last year I have had several requests for more information and deeper reads on subjects brought up on the blog. So after banging around my shelves a bit, here is the Death/Scent reading list. Some of them are staples of both olfactive and death literature, others are weird and wonderful deep cuts. This…
The Perfumed Mummy (Egypt Part IV)
Now we reach the intersection of material culture, belief systems, and death with the physical preparation of the body, which used many aromatic ingredients. The creation of the archetypical Egyptian mummy was a complex evolution that embraced the olfactive elements of the putrid and the divine.
Disasters, Mysteries, and Perfume: Unearthing the Philistines
In this post, we explore what we know and what we don’t about Philistine culture, thier death practices and how perfume may have played a role in their cosmology.
The Fragrance of the Soul: Olfaction & Death in Ancient Egyptian Religion (Egypt Part III)
This post is part of an ongoing series on fragrance in Ancient Egypt. Find out more about the sacred business of Egyptian perfume-making in Part I and how mummies ended up in magic incense in Part II. As a society, we have an anosmic view of history. We don’t think about the way things smelt or…
The Lost History of Women in Chemistry: Mariam, The First Alchemist
This post is part of D/S Women’s History Month series, click here for more women from our alchemical past. In the Indie perfume universe, the word alchemy pops up a lot. It graces the title of several popular companies. It also tends to be the word we use once words fail to describe the…
The Lost History of Women in Chemistry: Tapputi, The First Perfumer
This post is part of D/S Women’s History Month series, click here for more women from our alchemical past. On the day I’m sitting down to write this post, it is International Women’s Day, and all of March is Women’s History Month in the US, so I thought it would be a splendid time to…
Mummy Powder Incense (Egypt Part II)
To the modern Westerner, incense is the friend of the pothead teenager and long-time companion of the hippy. Incense is perhaps the oldest form of human scent manufacturing, however.
Sacred Scent Business (Egypt Part I)
There is no perfume culture with more mystery or confusion than that of the ancient Egyptians. Their perfume production wasn’t the oldest in the world nor the most sophisticated, yet the mystique of Egypt drips with fragrance. Perhaps it was because perfume and cosmetics played such a vital role in everyday life.
History & Alchemy?
History and Alchemy is devoted to the myth and history of scent production. We’ll explore how rare and beautiful scents became commodities, grave goods, and items of legend. The first post in this section will appear tomorrow which is based on the events depicted above. Any guesses as to what is brewing?