Season of the Witch

Ok, I'll tackle this one. When I saw last month that Season Of The Witch was on Alkemia's "last chance" list, I finally bought a bottle. Sooooo not a blind buy, but we Alkemia buyers know you'll only be out maybe $18 for a 5ml bottle if you make a blunder here. And they warn you; Alkemia's description is: "Season of the Witch: An otherworldly mystery of black pine pitch, dark myrrh, aged black amber, and ritual Samhain incense blended with Black Cavendish and Perique tobaccos, protective tsuga, divinatory bay leaves, and intuition enhancing black cardamon." The problem here is that most of us have no idea what Samhain incense smells like, nor have we smelled Black Cavendish or Perique tobacco, and God knows, not tsuga either. So this little fragrance could be anything. Dark and woodsy doesn't begin to cover it. And whoever at Fragrantica here declared it amber and sweet never smelled it either. There is nothing sweet and ambery here. And it's not a typical 1967 hippie fragrance either; those of us who remember Donovan's song will remember something a whole lot lighter than this fragrance. This Season of the Witch reminds me of how one of those off-the-grid log cabins (check them out on YouTube) that's partially built underground might smell like after not being entered for several years. Especially if several tins of pipe tobacco had been broken into and dumped all around. This is a dark and brooding tobacco fragrance for people who are tired of anything non-tobacco gracing their fragrance. Not the least little floral petal graces this fragrance, nor any real incense either. (This fragrance reminds me of how great the range of incense fragrance really is.) What ever incense is in this is not Catholic Church incense, Indian, Chinese, Tibetan meditation, Hari Krishna, 1960's hippie incense, Rani wisteria cone incense from the 1950's, or that weird stuff at the bong shop incense. Perhaps some perfume chemist labels all odd unidentifiable stuff he/she makes up in the lab as incense. (Well hey, someone buys it.) I've worn this a couple of times now, but I don't think my intuition has been spectacularly enhanced either time I've worn it. Still, I sort of like it. But it will be a scrubber for most people. I scrubbed some of it off today before I went next door to pet the neighborhood cats, one of whom sniffed it quickly and backed away. You don't want to lose all your friends.