by S D Anugyan
Initiation was due to a mistake on my part. I had started going to a spa regularly for treatment, but had miscalculated the appointments one day and ended up spending far more time than I could normally handle in my current condition. Because of that I had five intense hours of swimming, hydrotherapy, various saunas, steam rooms and Roman-style laconicum, with a massage and luxury afternoon tea thrown in for good measure. It’s tough work, but someone has to do it.
I sat silently in the back of the taxi on the way home in a sort of stupor. Something was different. The masseuse and I had selected an oil containing ylang ylang, black pepper, rosemary and ginger. This was an unusual choice I had never been offered before, good for strengthening muscles, and had a strong effect on me. Hours later the effect hadn’t worn off, and I realised what was happening: my usual-dominant senses of visual and audio had receded, giving way to tactility, smell and taste after five hours of little else. This wouldn’t be new to everyone, but it was to me, a wordsmith who dealt mostly with visual scenes, esoteric concepts and dialogue. I had been allowed into a world I had only previously glimpsed.
To continue with this tale, I am going to have to share one of my rather unusual techniques I use for writing and creativity in general. The method is to find a film that is crap but not too crap, and start playing it from the beginning, whether online or with a DVD, whatever is convenient. Romantic movies work particularly well, but they can’t be too good: Shakespeare in Love or When Harry Met Sally, for instance, demand too much attention. Likewise, if they’re particularly awful (sorry, for those I am about to offend, Love Actually and The Holiday fall into that category for me), because they also demand too much attention by way of cringing agony; or if they are completely bland, they don’t demand any attention at all, and also don’t work. A delicate balance has to be achieved.
The sort of films I am thinking of few people watch or have even heard of, often freely available on YouTube and made by family friendly companies like Hallmark, who remain the champions of this genre despite many challengers. The genius is that it’s usually pretty much the same plot at the centre, yet with enough variation to keep you (or at least me) mildly hooked. Often the lead character – always a woman – can be quite funny too.
How this works for me is that the film engages the busy part of the mind, whilst leaving the rest free. Something goes quiet within as busy monkey thoughts, now fully engaged, chatter on about the film, getting out of the way for creative ideas to emerge elsewhere like gold from the silent earth and make it onto my writing paper, or digital notebook. Yet because the film will have some merit, occasionally ideas come from that direction too – a small thing, a remark from a character, a glimpse of stunning mountains or a lakeside house. It can be anything.
A few months ago, soon after that initial spa experience, I was employing this technique, and the film had me a bit more engaged than usual. The lead character was trying to save her family’s perfume company, and was explaining to the ‘bad boy’ (whom she was obviously going to end up with) that perfume had three levels of scent: the Head, the Heart and the Base. A bell went off in my head.
An internet search or two later revealed the truth of this, and the complexity. I felt I had discovered a new, rich, fascinating language, beginning with these first three words. The Head is the immediate hit one gets from a perfume – it doesn’t last long, and with cheap perfumes that may be all you get. The Heart is revealed after the initial scent has passed, and brings a depth to the experience, lasting longer, up to about an hour. The Base can last even for twenty-four hours, and is often what we smell on a person while the Head and Heart have gone.
Amused, I was struck by how this can provide a guide to relationships as well: anyone can be affected by the Head – immediate impressions of a beautiful body, witty remarks, a nice smile, fashionable clothes, an enticing scent! – and then the emotions of the Heart take over, things start to get deep. Yet even this is not sufficient as the mundanities of day-to-day life become predominant, and for a relationship to flourish, the Base needs to kick in. And as someone who’s mostly stayed with the Head and Heart, I have to hold my hand up and say mea culpa on that one. I wouldn’t fit well into a Hallmark movie.
There was also some serious synchronicity going on. Two of the characters in the book I am currently writing are in the perfume industry. It’s only background for the main plot, and doesn’t come into it much; but I was aware of a huge gap in my knowledge and that this would affect any grounding of the characters I wished to achieve.
People often talk of a Book Angel guiding them to what they need to read next, and I’ve had to be immensely grateful to mine on several occasions when they led me to the right bookshop or the right shelf at the right time. On this occasion, it must have been within a few days of having the movie revelation, I felt guided into my local Oxfam store whilst waiting for a bus. Not only that, I was drawn like a magnet unerringly to one part of the shop. To one particular shelf. My hand reached out for what I could see was titled Perfumes: The A-Z Guide by Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez.
I’m good at ignoring my angels, and I was still slightly reluctant to purchase it. Was I really that interested? The reviews helped me decide, including one from Hilary Mantel and a remark from a critic that it was ‘far more addictive than it has any right to be’. My bus was coming so I decided hurriedly, and this proved to be one of my happiest literary purchases in recent times, for the book is a gem. It is much more than what it appears.
For one thing, it’s hilarious. The authors have a brilliant sense of humour even as they guide us through the complexities, history and science of the perfume industry. Right from the start, Sanchez states the answer to the perennial question women ask, as to what scent drives men wild: bacon. From thereon in, she and Turin cheerfully educate, guide and demolish prejudices, such as price being a reliable guide to a great perfume. One of their top marks goes to Jovan ‘Sex Appeal for Men’, which guys have splashed on (too) liberally since the seventies.
Gender differentiation is another thing they demolish, refusing to separate scents between male and female, reminding us that ‘fragrances have no genitalia’. In fact, they recommend people get out of their comfort zones and experiment generally e.g. butch individuals trying floral scents, more delicate people aggressive tones such as leather and aniseed.
This world about which I knew nothing, was fascinating, and very helpful. I started putting together a Perfume Library, basically a box filling up with samples and guides to the various notes of each scent. I have in the past compiled playlists for different characters in my books. (One character listened to a lot of death metal, which drove me mad, but helped deliver some of my best writing.) Now I could add the olfactory aspect, selecting a perfume appropriate for a particular character and scene. Fortunately, all my current characters have excellent taste, if sometimes a bit pricey.
This has resonance with something Osho talks about in Hidden Mysteries (Ch 1), how particular scents were used in temples: ‘Whether it was an earthen lamp filled with ghee, the burning of incense, or the use of sandalwood paste or flowers… And there were specific flowers for the propitiation of particular deities.’ A recent study reveals how the Greeks and Romans anointed their statues ‘with olive oils, beeswax, and rose-scented fragrances’, ‘suggesting that these statues were not merely representations of the divine but living embodiments that engaged all the senses.’ (Brøns C., The Scent of Ancient Greco-roman Sculpture, Oxford Journal of Archaeology, 2025)
My understanding is that scent, like sound, has a direct effect on the etheric level. This is why particular herbs like sage or rosemary can be utilised to cleanse an environment of energetic debris. As far as the body is concerned, any aromatherapist knows far more about this than I do. One masseuse I went to a few years ago had an extraordinary intuition of what oils to use, leading to a profound experience on my part and a session that went far beyond the physical. Witchcraft at its most wondrous. Hauntings often arrive with scents associated with the departed, such as cigar smoke or specific flower scents, the etheric acting as a medium between the physical and the spirit worlds.
Where perfume may depart from scents used in temples, is that it is nearly always mostly artificial. Indeed, one of the breakthroughs was ‘Angel’ by Mugler. Not only did it break the cardinal rule that a perfume can smell of candy or flowers, but not both, it created a scent which was unprecedented – it doesn’t exist in nature. Sanchez thought it was a joke after someone sprayed it on her, until she found herself going back for more.
Even a scent like ‘Tommy Girl’, beloved by teenagers of all ages, which has its roots in the creator recalling how tea smelt on the samovar in his Russian childhood, has an ingredient list only a trained chemist can really comprehend. Its unique, light, floral attributes are produced from a combination of chemicals such as tetrametylhydropiperidinol, which sound very different from the advertised top notes of apple tree blossom, mandarin orange, camelia and blackcurrant!
Yet this paradox is what I am finding particularly intriguing. The hippy in me is appalled at all the artificiality, the explorer is fascinated with this new kind of genius. My previous attempts to set a tone through a particular incense or oil are starting to feel rather basic, though I will still use those techniques. Just a few days ago I used white sage to cleanse a room very effectively, though I have found I can only use organic quality incense now or I get a headache. Which brings me to the next issue.
I have many friends who can’t be around artificial scents, one telling me how she went into anaphylactic shock after being exposed to someone’s cologne. Many of us will recall the Sniff Test before entering Buddha Hall. One woman I recall being thrown out because of her extensive perfume aura. I could smell her approaching from around a corner over ten metres away. Now, in retrospect, I feel I should have picked up how vulnerable she must have felt, using perfume as a shield to protect herself.
Even the fiercely ethical Lush champion the use of artificial ingredients because it saves them having to damage plants or animals in order to extract essences in ways that are anyway costly and inefficient. And to be fair, natural ingredients such as essential oils also can contain allergens or suspected carcinogens.
I don’t know the answer to all this – yet another reason why the word ‘ignorance’ is in the title – but one of the maxims at the gate of Delphi, ‘Nothing in excess’, seems appropriate: to go on exploring, researching, but with sensitivity and caution. This is a brave new olfactory world, for me at least.
Featured image by Ulysse Pointcheval on Unsplash
Related articles
- Smell is ‘information’ (and ‘dis-information’) – Random thoughts by Punya
- Fragrant thoughts – Tarpan’s thoughts on the subject of smell, and an excerpt from the chapter titled, Horse Dung and History of Smell from his recently published book, The Crows of Kedarnath
Related discourse excerpts
- What has happened to smell? – “What calamity has happened to smell? There seems to be no reason why smell has been so suppressed. No culture anywhere has consciously suppressed it but it has become suppressed.”
- Smell can be made an object of meditation – Osho speaks on the topic of ‘Perfume’; “Each sense has two possibilities: if the energy falls …downwards, then it is sexual; if the energy rises upwards, then it is spiritual.”
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