perfumery_without_pretension2

Le Parfumeur Rebellee

Perfumery without Pretension –
a Biography of One Natural Perfumer
By Diana Rajchel

My relationship with natural
perfumery probably began at eight
years old. My mother is an avid do-
it-yourselfer, and was doing-it-
herself remodeling the bathroom.
The faint gunpowder texture of her
power drill combined with some
extra large glue guns smacked of
something unholy, as though she
were invoking all the sins the
family had previously released in
the bathroom. Not even open
windows on a breezy Indiana spring
day could banish the odor. Left
alone in the kitchen with that smell
for company, I decided to climb the

stepladder to the spice rack and pull lids off, desperate to inhale something
other than demonic power drill offal.I sniffed gingers and pepper, cinnamons and
rosemary. Pretty soon I had created a stew of nothing but the spices that I liked:
I accented cloves with nutmeg and ginger,. Not long after, anise found its way
into the pot. While I thought the white pepper might be a little incongruous, in
it went and in that circumstance it actually worked nicely. While the horrendous
mechanical scent wasn’t banished completely, it was made bearable by the
boiling spices on the stove, and caused both my parents to come into the
kitchen sniffing with the eager curiousness that comes when something smells
really tasty.

My mother later tried to replicate my experiment and failed; I had also forgotten
to write down the recipe. I always thought that spices were intuitive, that if you
simply knew the texture and heat level of the food, you should intuitively
determine what spice went best. I did not realize until my early 30s that my
mother kept spice charts in her cupboard precisely because she lacked that
intuition, and that my capacity for it led me from potpourri stews to herb
gardening to the perfumes that form my livelihood now.

My mother’s parents were subsistence farmers, and significantly supplemented
their grocery bill by growing as much food as they could on their property in
Muncie, Indiana. They encouraged my interest in plants and herbs, and would
leave out their Reader’s Digest copy of The Magic and Medicine of Plants for me
to find on my visits. I would spend hours fascinated with what the chemical
compositions that each photosynthetic miracle could perform. By the time I
converted to the religion Wicca at 19, I already had a decent grasp of herbs and
how they worked; I made no assumption that just because something was
“herbal” that it was “safe.” I’d spent too long reading about the insidious effects
of Digitalis (foxglove) on healthy people to make any such assumption.

In an effort to understand more about assigned magical properties of plants and
how those properties were determined, I encountered Culpepper’s Complete
Herbal. I was uninterested in its medical data – we now have the regularly
updated Physician’s Desk Reference for that – its astrological data intrigued me.
Culpepper had assigned each herb a planet and a zodiac sign; this helped me
assemble oils with a magical purpose in mind. It stuck with me, and soon I
began assembling concoctions of plant infusions and essential oils that I bought
at a local General Nutrition Center store to use by rubbing on candles or by
combining over an oil burner.

At some point I found myself with a small collection of essential oils – basil,
rosemary, and a third I don’t recall – and a need for book money, since my post
college marketing job barely paid enough for me to cover rent and groceries.
Casting around for a little extra income, I considered my essential oils, and I

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