Scents as Signposts

I realized recently that I tend to only use certain scents when I am doing certain kinds of work. When I thought about this for a little while, I realized that I was actually using the scents that I associate with different kinds of work as signposts to help invoke the proper mindset for that work. Since then, I've been playing around with using scents a little more consciously and experimenting with using scents to intentionally invoke mindsets.

A good example of this is some soap that I made recently. When making soap, I always add scent of some sort (unless I'm making it for someone that I know has sensitivities to such things). I wanted to bar that I was making to be something that could help me relax, so I thought about different types of work that I do, and different scents that I use that help me relax or that I feel relaxed during.

The strongest scents that kept coming to mind were sandalwood, which I use during devotionals, and lavendar, which I also sometimes use during devotionals and which I use blended with vanilla to help me sleep. So, I decided to try a mix of the three. The blend that I ended up with was 3 parts Sandalwood, 2 parts Lavendar and 1 part Vanilla. The lavendar is a middle note. Middle notes form the bulk of a blended scent. Since there isn't a top note in this blend, it is the first scent to hit the nose and is the strongest scent while I'm actually in the shower. The vanilla and sandlewood are both base notes. Base notes are typically heavy, rich, and linger much longer than top or middle notes, so these are the scents that linger on the skin.

What I ended up with was a product that did exactly what I needed it to do. It helped me relax and it also put me in the proper mindset to enter devotionals - an activity that typically follows right after a shower. The middle note lavendar is the scent that was hitting the most strongly during the shower itself, so it helped me to relax in the shower. The scent of sandlewood and vanilla lingering on my skin afterwards helped to reinforce the mindset that I was trying to invoke and helped me stay relaxed and put me in a proper mindset to enter devotionals.

Another strong scent that I use that I've found serves as a sort of sign post is white sage. I use white sage in purifications, and this is a scent that helps me enter an altered state of consciousness in order to work magic very quickly, and in particular helps invoke the proper mindset for purification and protective work.

Now that I'm more aware of the fact that I am using scents as signposts in ritual and really in general, I'm going to try to be more conscious about my use of scents. Should be interesting to experiment with.