Aromatica Poetica combines our love of literature with our love of smell in a colossal endeavor to promote and celebrate the oft-disparaged sense, the "fallen angel," as one of our inspirations Helen Keller named it in her attempt to raise it.
Author: aromatica poetica
Alchemy, Aromatherapy, and Distillation: An Interview with Cathy Skipper
Cathy Skipper is English by birth and spent much of her adult life in rural France, where she farmed, trained and worked as a herbalist and aromatherapist, and taught practical herbalism, botany and aromatherapy. Together with her husband Florian Birkmayer, she founded Aromagnosis.com. They live in New Mexico and offer courses live and online centralized around the work of Carl Jung, alchemy, aromatherapy, aromatic molecules and the mind. Her new book The Alchemy of Menopause helps women transform “the time …
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Helen Keller on Smell, the Fallen Angel
“SMELL, THE FALLEN ANGEL” is Chapter SIX of The World I Live In (1908), a magnificent book that tells of perceptions beyond seeing and hearing. In it, Helen Keller offers vivid descriptions that blend her practical and poetical appreciation of what is arguably our most undervalued sense. We at Aromatica Poetica present this as one of our foundational texts, alongside Proust’s Madeleine. This was gently edited for apparent scanning errors and the odd British spellings were Americanized. Smell, the Fallen …
Proust’s Madeleine: The Smell & Taste of Recollection
Many have written on the stunning way smell and by extension taste seem to circumnavigate our intellect to bring us face to face with the past, but few have written the phenomenon so eloquently and influentially as Marcel Proust. At Aromatica Poetica, we acknowledge this famous madeleine scene from the first book of A la Rechearche du Temps Perdu, translated variously as Remembrance of Things Past and In Search of Lost Time, as a foundational text. Here it is excerpted …
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Individuation & the Power of Scent: An Interview With Florian Birkmayer MD
Florian Birkmayer is the kind of multidisciplinary spirit we love at Aromatica Poetica. Trained as a psychiatrist, deeply influenced by Jung, and devoted to the healing power of scent and the natural world, particularly aromatherapy and equine therapy, his practice has led him to found Aromagnosis with his wife Cathy Skipper. Together they are developing an online and live learning curriculum that is truly unique, including classes such as Alchemy, Aromatherapy and Medicine of the Soul, Intuitive Plant Communication, Hydrosols …
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‘There’s Rosemary, That’s for Remembrance,’ With Recipes!
Ophelia, as her wits unwind, uses the language of flowers to express what her modesty as a young maid won’t let her say directly. She says, “There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance. Pray you, love, remember,” to her brother Laertes, perhaps as a stand-in for the lost Hamlet. Rosemary has long been renowned for its stimulating effects on the brain, and modern science seems to be catching on. I remember well a roommate in Santa Cruz who burned rosemary sprigs to …
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The Appreciation and Distillation of Milkweed Hydrosol in Three Acts
Act One, by M. Leona Godin, is about her encounter with milkweed hydrosol in a class taught by Cathy Skipper & Florian Birkmayer MD. Act Two is a poem written by Cathy Skipper, who created the online hydrosols certification program through The School for Aromatic Studies. Act Three details the collection and distillation of milkweed in the beautiful Taos region of New Mexico by Cathy Skipper & Florian Birkmayer MD. Act One: Drinking Monarch Nectar, AKA Milkweed (Asclepias) By …
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Cooking and Cocktailing with Hydrosol: Rose Geranium Martini, Bay Laurel Marinade, Clary Sage Punch
When we were nineteen, my best friend and I backpacked through Europe from Germany to Greece, ending our epic adventure in Athens. In the final days before returning to the US, we found a bottle of rose–not rosé–wine and took it to the rooftop hostel where we drank with bats swooping over our heads. The dark floral richness, like theatrical curtains opening on my tongue, stuck in my imagination as a pallet-expanding experience that busted through the confinement of the …
The Thistles and Fairies of The Botanist Gin
I’ll admit upfront that I loved The Botanist before I ever tasted it. When my boyfriend Alabaster told me about a gin, which , in addition to nine traditional botanicals, features 22 others that grow wild on the Scottish island of Islay, I was immediately smitten. I asked him to nab the last bottle in the shop where he works and hide it till payday. Meanwhile, I would look into these botanicals… The Botanist Gin’s website is a rabbit hole …