The Power of Scent

Of all the senses, the sense of smell is often the sense considered least important. Yet a scent has the power to set the mind reeling. Scent not only has the power to affect mood and invoke memories, a scent can shape your entire sense of well-being. Scent can even affect the way others respond to you.

Fragrances have been casting their spells for thousands of years. As early as 7000 BC, man used fragrant ointments from oils and plants. The Greeks, Romans, Egyptians and Chinese all used essential oils not only for bathing and perfume, but for healing as well.

The olfactory nerves are connected directly with your brain, where scent impulses create instant memories and reaction. A single scent has the power to trigger feelings of peace, energy and even a good night's sleep.

Many scents are associated with memories and summon certain emotional responses. We react to specific aromas with specific response. We are comforted by the savory scent of baking bread. We feel festive when breathing in the scent of apple-cinnamon pie. The invigorating scent of lemon, lime or tangerine works to lighten our mood and lift our spirit. While the scents of rose and vanilla evoke memories of romance.

The complicated world of scent is all around us casting its spell. One way to harness this power is through the use of Essential oils. Essential oils are oils made from the leaves and flowers of plants. You can buy bath products or home fragrances containing the oils, or you can purchase the oils on their own. Every oil has its own, unique healing property. Once you know the benefits of each essential oil, you can use them to their full advantage.

The power of scent is not hard to incorporate into your every day life.
For example: Essential lavender oil has been traditionally used in France as a topical application to heal minor burns and reduce scarring. It is also used to counteract insomnia, anxiety, rheumatism, headaches, pains and as a regenerative and anti-aging treatment. When you are feeling frazzled and need a mood lift, try adding several drops of essential lavender oil to a hot bath. Not only will this relax your mind, studies show that lavender oil helps reduce joint and muscle pain.

Even if you're too busy to think of scent as a daily necessity, there are effortless ways to incorporate their powers into your daily routine. The simplest one is ending your day with a fragrant soak.

You can add a couple of drops of essential oil to your bathwater or make up a batch of bath salts. Salt not only draws impurities out from your body, it works to heal and deodorize it too. These make-ahead recipes can last up to six month. For best results, use a wide-mouth quart-size jar and store in a cool place.

Basic Bath Salts
1/4 cup Epsom salts
1/8 cup baking soda
1/8 cup sea salt
10 drops essential oil
Measure salts into a jar. Secure lid and shake until thoroughly blended. Add five drops of essential oil that suit your magickal need and blend well, then add five more drops and blend again.

Psychic Bath
(to help you connect to the Divine)
20 drops almond extract
10 drops rose oil
5 drops lavender oil
5 drops lemon oil
5 drops cinnamon oil
Add to basic recipe.

Enchanted Dreams
Use this relaxing bath to recall your dreams.
Add: 10 drops jasmine oil
5 drops lavender oil
5 drops orange oil
add to basic salt recipe. Blend well, keep in a sealed jar. Use 1/2 cup per bath.

Buttermilk Bath Salts
Soothing and very moisturizing
1 cup buttermilk powder
1 cup sea salt
Add up to 24 drops of essential oils. Blend well, keep in a sealed jar. Use 1/2 cup per bath.

Holiday Cookie Bath Salts
Add: 4 drops vanilla
10 drops essential oil of bergamot
5 drops essential oil of ylang ylang
2 drops essential oil of cardamom
1 drop essential oil of chamomile
To 3 cups basic salt recipe. This recipe makes 6, 1/2 cup baths.

Super Simple Cleanser
1/2 cup of sea salt with three drops of lavender oil
Add to running water for a relaxing bath.
Substitute the lavender oil with tangerine when you want to be revived.

A Walk in the Woods
( A woodsy scent that invokes feelings of comfort and contentment)

1 cup of Epsom salts
1 cup of Sea Salt
2 tablespoons of baking soda
essential oils:
5 drops of rosewood
2 drops cedarwood
2 drops chamomile
Add to basic salt recipe. Blend well, keep in a sealed jar. Use 1/4 cup per bath.

Balancing Bath Salts
1/4 sea salt
3 tbsp baking soda
3 drops each geranium, lavender, palmarosa, and rose.
Add to basic salt recipe. Blend well, keep in a sealed jar. Use 1/2 cup per bath.

Soothing Fizzing Bath Salts
3 tbsp sea salt
3 tbsp baking soda
1 tbsp citric acid
8 drops of the essential oil of your choice.

Attraction Bath
3 drops palmarosa
2 drops lavender
1 drop rose
add to basic salt recipe. Blend well, keep in a sealed jar. Use 1/2 cup per bath.

Healing Bath
3 drops niaouli
2 drops eucalyptus
1 drop Ssandalwood
Add to basic salt recipe. Blend well, keep in a sealed jar. Use 1/2 cup per bath.

Unhexing Bath
Use when you think someone has hexed you
1 cup Epsom salts

1 cup sea salt
Add equal parts: clove oil
peppermint oil
lemon oil
eucalyptus oil

add 1/4 cup salt mixture to each bath. Store in a tightly sealed jar.

Even the most common culinary herb has a magical property. Parsley is used for fertility and thyme for clairvoyance. Check out our Herb page for more information on how herbs are commonly used in magic and home remedies.

Importance of Recognizing and Celebrating the Holidays

November is a month rich in beautiful ritual. Yet it seems that the commercializing of the holiday season has spawned a generation of curmudgeons that often choose to stay home, opt out of social interactions and avoid family gatherings. We've assimilated into the fast-paced, plugged in society that celebrates independents. Is it any wonder our society is losing its relationship with ritual?

Today's youth clamor that our society has no culture yet it is their non-participation in family traditions that is causing this culture riff. A major portion of childhood memories are based around our individual holiday experiences. Participation in holiday celebrations helps us feel connected to our place in society. Through ritual we connect to generations, past and future.

Barbara Fiese writes in the Journal of Family that families that celebrate holidays are more likely to raise kids who have a strong sense of identity, are healthy, have close ties to family members and succeed in school. Dr. Steven J. Wolin, a clinical professor of psychiatry at George Washington University Medical School, cites that the power of ritual comes from heritage, tradition and most of all something being emblazoned in your brain over time. And that family rituals protect the individual against a sense of loneliness and uncertainty in daily living as it transmits shared beliefs of the family group across generations.

Carl Jung wrote, "Without meaningful ritual, people suffer. Ritual and ceremony can bridge our past and our present elegantly, making it possible for folks like you and me to travel through life, honoring the good and bad times we’ve been through. They can help us become human “well-beings,” ready to take on more life and liberty and ready to pursue our happiness.”

Recognizing and celebrating holidays and interacting with your family, friends and community are all ways to acknowledge seasonal changes. By celebrating these ancient rituals we attune with the magical tides and acknowledge the rhythms of life, death and rebirth, to harmonize with the world and to recognize that we are a part of it.

Dr. William Dorherty, director of the marriage and family therapy program at the University of Minnesota, has identified two kinds of rituals in our society. The first is the traditional secular and religious rituals surrounding holidays, weddings or funerals; the second involve ritual a family or individual has created to celebrate their life. As children our lives were sprinkled with these small, magical rituals from nightly prayers to singing skipping songs, blowing dandelions to blowing out birthday candles. As adults practicing daily ritual allows us to experience a more magical life. Through ritual we can reprogram the unconscious mind so we have a different set of expectations about how the world will respond to us. Through ritual we can find our way to the places in our lives that exist in between the tick-tock of everyday living and the luscious places of dreaming, the magical places that connect us to the Divine.

There are many simple ways to incorporate ritual into your life: practicing meditation, keeping an alter, lighting a morning candle, whispering a prayer, silently focusing only on your breathing as you visualize what you want to accomplish during the day… all of these are examples of simple morning rituals and all of these work to pull your awareness from the mundane and shift it to the sacred. Through daily rituals we are able to recalibrate our energy and connect with the Divine.

Ritual doesn't have to stop at home. Look at your workspace. What does it hold to remind you that you are a human being, not a robitron but a person, a human being living a tender, ecstatic, gorgeous life? I have a peacock feather and a bright red rock shaped like a heart and before I start my workday, I put the rock in my palm and whisper Namaste. This is called ritual. It is a small ritual but never the less it serves to remind me that I not a robot, and that I am so much more than just flesh and blood, but that I am also spirit as are all those I work with.

Taking a few moments everyday to engage in ritual allows you to become the spiritual being you really are and creating a personal ritual is easy. The important thing is to take something that is significant to you and to honor it. The gesture could include lighting a candle, practicing a daily meditation, honoring a specific place either inside or out, burning incense, or incorporate icons obtained in faraway places. Nothing is, unless you make it so with intention.

So make your life sacred. Take time out to see your world. Don't let the hurry and worry of life take the magic out of your existence. We as a nation have forgotten the art of conscious living. Unplug and take a conscious breath. This is your life you are missing. Put down that cell phone when you are out on your walk. Be present in the here and now, and stop multitasking! If you are eating, then push away that paper, book, phone and take a conscious bite. Be present and enjoy the flavor and texture of your food. Allow yourself to revel in the rich taste, to savor the decadent scent. Give your spouse your full attention during your conversations and be there in that moment when you send your child off for school or play. When we shift our awareness back to the things that matter, it honors and allows them to regain their importance in our lives and makes a way for the magical moments to exist, the moments that make life worth living.

Experience the Magic of the Season

October is surely one of the most enchanting months of the year. Energy crackles in the air. The air turns crisps and blustery. Leaves fall from the trees to twirl at our feet before whirling off down the street. Nights grow cold. Morning meet us with a chilly nip. This is the time for celebration, a time of gratitude for life's abundance as we go from a season of plenty into a season of want.

So turn off that television, step away from your computer, put down your cell. Unplug yourself and step outside. Look at the beauty right outside your window. Most of humanity has experienced their most moving spiritual experience in nature. How inspiring is a thunderstorm or the sight of a brilliant sunset? What emotions were elicited last time you caught the scent of an unexpected rainstorm or stood ankle deep in lapping ocean as the tide rose of fell? Did you feel the first cold nip in the morning as the seasons changed? Stepping out into natural world is a way of connecting with the Divine. The act of becoming aware of the glory of the natural world, of reconnecting with nature allows us to move within the slower, more harmonious rhythms of life. And It allows us to escape our hectic schedules and experience the magic: in the beauty of the setting sun, in the glory of the full moon, in the wonder of a hummingbird sipping nectar from a blossom.

Seasonal awareness, awareness of the solstices and equinoxes and reflecting seasonal changes in our own person practices, allows us to attune our own personal energy to the energy of the natural world. Eating seasonal, recognizing and celebrating holidays and interacting with your family, friends and community are all ways to acknowledge seasonal changes. By celebrating these ancient rituals we attune with the magical tides and acknowledge the rhythms of life, death and rebirth, to harmonize with the world and to recognize that we are a part of it. As children our lives were sprinkled with small, magical rituals from nightly prayers to singing skipping songs, blowing dandelions to blowing out birthday candles. As adults practicing daily ritual allows us to experience a more magical life. Through ritual we can reprogram the unconscious mind so we have a different set of expectations about how the world will respond to us. Through ritual we can find our way to the places in our lives that exist in between the tick-tock of everyday living and the luscious places of dreaming, the magical places that connect us to the Divine.

There are many simple ways to incorporate ritual into your life: practicing meditation, keeping an alter, lighting a morning candle, whispering a prayer, silently focusing only on your breathing as you visualize what you want to accomplish during the day… all of these are examples of simple morning rituals and all of these work to pull your awareness from the mundane and shift it to the sacred. Through daily rituals we are able to recalibrate our energy and connect with the Divine.

Ritual doesn't have to stop at home. Look at your workspace. What does it hold to remind you that you are a human being, not a robitron but a person, a human being living a tender, ecstatic, gorgeous life? I have a peacock feather and a bright red rock shaped like a heart and before I start my workday, I put the rock in my palm and whisper Nameste.. This is called ritual. It is a small ritual but never the less it serves to remind me that I not a robot, and that I am so much more than just flesh and blood, but that I am also spirit as are all those I work with.

Taking a few moments everyday to engage in ritual allows you to become the spiritual being you really are and creating a personal ritual is easy. The important thing is to take something that is significant to you and to honor it. The gesture could include lighting a candle, practicing a daily meditation, honoring a specific place either inside or out, burning incense, or incorporate icons obtained in faraway places. Nothing is, unless you make it so with intention.

So make your life sacred. Take time out to see your world. Don't let the hurry and worry of life take the magic out of your existence. We as a nation have forgotten the art of conscious living. Unplug and take a conscious breath. This is your life you are missing. Put down that cell phone when you are out on your walk. Be present in the here and now, and stop multitasking! If you are eating, then push away that paper, book, phone and take a conscious bite. Be present and enjoy the flavor and texture of your food. Allow yourself to revel in the rich taste, to savor the decadent scent. Give your spouse your full attention during your conversations and be there in that moment when you send your child off for school or play. When we shift our awareness back to the things that matter, it honors and allows them to regain their importance in our lives and makes a way for the magical moments to exist, the moments that make life worth living.