Mercury

Fougère means fern.

The structure dates from 1882 and most of what followed was built on it. Here it goes back to the wild and loses its gender, becoming a Virgoan garden of mercurial spirits that reveals pathways into the Heavens and the Earth for the winged footsteps of the ever-curious.

Mugwort and lavender are beloved of the god, and the air around them runs green before fruity timur pepper, Calabrian bergamot and geranium absolute electrify it. Magnolia, jasmine sambac, violet and papyrus go inky through the middle of that, calling up Gemini's affinity for communication and the written word. Honeyed immortelle, coumarin and benzoin anchor the garden into the shining aura of Hermes, infamously flirtatious and never any older.

Planets Perfumery treats astrology as a symbolic language for meeting the planetary archetypes in the patterns of a life, and then asks how those archetypes might communicate through the senses. Jenna Scott and Socorro Carrillo-Lopez, both archetypal astrologers, met at the California Institute of Integral Studies and founded it with Mauricio Garcia, who works animistically. Each release is co-created with the spirit of the archetype involved, and the aesthetic world around it is built the same way.

The work is small batch and independent. Nothing endangered goes into any of it. Ethical naturals are the priority, and the synthetics are selected for sustainable origins, biodegradability and mood-elevating qualities. Three archetypes exist so far, and the intention is the complete system, each one a sensory doorway into its own archetypal world.