Dark Side of the Goddess

Gorgeous! Starts out smokey, then the resins take turns with what I thought was a very mild, pleasant citrus. Maybe that was the myrtle? Or jasmine? Whatever it is, it's pleasant and they continue to take turns dominating for 6 hours until the resins finally win. Love it! Anna Zworykina will be responsible for me retuning home and getting rid of almost all of my collection. I have never before encountered such complexity in natural perfumes. And they are so much better than both mainstream and niche ones- almost always there's something chafing my nose there. But AZ's masterpieces are just perfect! Edit 2016-09-21 I love how alive Zworykina's perfumes are! I was decanting several samples a couple of nights ago and afterwards noticed a gorgeous smell on my hand that I loved, but didn't recognize from the selection. Applied this one in the morning and realized that was it! Now in chillier weather the jasmine gets louder and the smoke is barely noticeable. When I say louder, it's not loud like "jasmin" can be in regular perfumes, but like a constant delicate melody, instead of taking turns with the resins. I love what she does with the jasmine, a note I love but usually gets only screechy or overly indolic on me. Could have something to do with using real jasmine and not synthetic impersonators, but other all natural jasmine perfumes (like April Organics) have never been even close to as lovely. Edit Feb 14th And in the winter, the smoke takes over completely! It stays smokey the whole day while the rest of the notes play a delicate and faint melody in the background. A completely different scent, and just as gorgeous.

Aromatic smoke The idea behind this fragrance was "smoke of sacral fire" and it realizes it very well. It's a soothing camphorous, smoky fragrance with woody, resinous undertones and some citric, floral nuances. A really competent and very pleasant (but soft) fragrance overall.

Beautiful smokey woody and cosy scent, with flowers starting to bloom about 30-45 minutes in. I have never smelt a fragrance with such amazing depth, you can pretty much walk around inside the scent. It's just a wonderful experience

Dark side of the Goddess – washed and scrubbed I won’t reveal a secret truth to anyone who ever thought about olfaction in general if I say that natural perfumery triggers our personal memories faster and more efficiently then not-only-natural perfumery does. Go guess why it is so. I like to believe that it’s because the natural one operates with smells and materials that we have met in our lives before, one way or another and that mostly we smelled them, let’s say, “unconsciously” – I mean we mostly paid attention to an event or a place or a person, the smell was only an accessory, but it was! (For it is really hard to find a place without ANY smell at all in our everyday life. ) And so these smells became interwoven with our memories the most natural way. Well... the smell of chemically pure linalool doubtlessly will remind you of lavender fields and maybe fresh bedsheets and peacefull rest, but good quality lavender oil does the same, only faster and without any effort at all. ))) And this Dark Side is quite in style with all above said. Forget for one moment all the images the name offers – forget the gothic entourage, the fearsome strength of vengefull gods, the darkness of Mother-Earth – and you find yourself on a date with your memories. Difficult to say what DSotG will remind to each of you but that's what it is to me... There is a lovingly kept ancient tradition in Russia, Ukraine and I suspect most part of slavic countries: in russian it is called [ba:nja] – баня (to find an image, google the word). It’s built of highly resinous conifer logs(pine or siberian cedar or even larch), and is almost like scandinavian sauna but with much more water-steam inside and traditionally people not only sit there relaxing, but also wash themselves with soap and water, and more important they whip themselves with brooms made of thin birch-tree twigs covered with young leaves carefully dried early in summer. You just put such a broom in hot water and when it becomes wet and flexible and you’re hot with steam, you a free to whip yourself with the broom, cleaning your skin of dirt and dead cells, your body - of cold and deseases and your mind of troubles. Sounds barbaric I know, but as a man who had his share of those delights, I swear it works perfectly well. Sorry for this ethnographic backtrack, but I promiced to explain and you anyway started to read... And imagine such a cabin when the ritual is over, the door is opened to let the steam out and the moisture dry, and all the cooling off cabin smells of melt conifer resin, plain soap, wet woods and human body. Archaic and melodious smell, both poetic and disturbing. And yes, if you look at the Dark Side of the Goddess as at a story of something ancient and eternal, it is quite logic that it smells this very way. I’m sure everyone has such memories hidden deeply in the soul, be it a cabin in autumn woods, a cave one hid himself in from rain, smell of soil and roots, of gathering autumn harvest – any experience of dealing with forces, majesty and beauty of nature, time and being. This is what this perfume about, simple and endlessly enigmatic at once. Try it: what would you feel?

I thought DSotG was a nice fragrance. I’m not sure I’d purchase a bottle, but it was decent to wear a couple of times. What I took away from it is that it is a rather ‘light’ oriental - not as strong as some of the others I sampled in the fragrance pack. The most prominent notes initially were the myrrh and patchouli, coupled with the incense and nutmeg. At another time I thought I smelled some cedar in there, too. The dry down was basically a sweet wood with nutmeg and probably some of the flowers, but I just wasn’t as crazy about this part of the fragrance. Again, I’d wear it to give another go ‘round, but don’t think I’d purchase a full bottle of this.