Mixing Essential Oils for Magic: Aromatic Alchemy for Personal Blends Read Free Page A

going at the time I forgot about it until I arrived back home several days later. Alone in my apartment, I flicked on the TV for company as I unpacked my suitcase. I was half-listening to the program, which happened to be about angels, however, when the interviewee said that angels make themselves known through sudden floral scents I stopped in my tracks Introduction 7
    and listened. The type of experience I'd had was exactly what the person on TV was describing.
    While I don’t know if my Aunt Mary had actually become an angel, I do believe her
    spirit communicated with me that night. Since then I’ve come to realize that I have a guardian spirit who makes himself known with a gentle sandalwood-like scent. He seems to show up when I need reassurance as well as when I’m engaged in spiritual activities.
    With the help of essential oils we can invite communication with spirits as well as enhance divination, psychic, and dream work.
    Alchemy Instead of Therapy
    As previously mentioned, I refer to the blending of oils for magic and ritual as aromatic alchemy. I purposely avoid the term aroma therapy because it implies that something is broken and needs to be fixed. We are not giving our magic, rituals, or divination therapy when we use essential oils. Instead, we are using them to aid us in transforming our practices and breathing life into our intentions.
    As mentioned, essential oils carry the essence of life. In an experiment using Kirlian photography, a fresh-cut leaf and a strip of blotter paper with pure essential oil were photographed side by side. Both showed strong auras indicating life-force energy remains within essential oils.6 Understandably, the synthetic oils that were tested did not exhibit auras because they are not from living organisms.
    Although I originally wanted to focus this book on pure essential oils (those created through distillation) and omit extracts created through other processes, I realized that this approach would be limiting. For example, jasmine has such delicate flowers that the distillation process does not work with them, but to disregard this popular scent with its range of magical potential just didn’t seem right. Since I opened that door, I decided to also include the hydrosols (previously known as floral waters) in the arsenal of magical scents presented here. I have not found research using Kirlian photography with these other products and I do not know if they produce auras as do pure essential oils. However, they do carry the vibrational energy of the plants from which they were produced. And so I leave it to each individual to decide what to include in magical practice and ritual.
    After all, the purpose of this book is to encourage exploration and creativity in the realm 6. Aftel, Essence and Alchemy , 49
    8 Introduction
    of scent. Let your intuition and imagination guide your aromatic alchemy and shape your magic.
    As noted, there are no hard and fast rules for creating essential oil blends, but there are basic guidelines for choosing oils that will have a mutually enhancing effect when combined. With a fundamental understanding of the various methods, we will see how to
    incorporate a magical approach so you can create powerful, synergistic combinations.
    This book is divided into three sections. In the first we will explore the historical background of oils and their present-day magical uses. We will get to the nitty-gritty and learn about the different aromatic extracts, the processes used to create them, and the equipment needed to get started with blending. This is followed by three standard methods of choosing/mixing oils: by botanical family, scent group, and perfume note. Another chapter is devoted to what I call the As Above, So Below method that I created. And as previously mentioned, we will also give the carrier oils their due and explore how you can incorporate their magical properties into your blends. Although this is not a recipe book, I will be sharing one at