Gnosis Diary: Life as a Heathen

My personal experiences, including religious and spiritual experiences, community interaction, general heathenry, and modern life on my heathen path, which is Asatru.

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My Monster Powers January 2025 part 1

Posted by on in Paths Blogs

January is my birthday month, and it was also my mom's. For decades, we celebrated our birthdays together, and bought ourselves a bouquet of carnations to keep on the table and smell. We both loved the spicy floral smell of carnations. And then one day carnations didn't have a scent anymore. Suddenly the bouquet of carnations was a form without substance, like fire that produces no heat. It was as if we had fallen into a parallel universe where things had the appearance of reality but were not actually real.

Florist carnations are still like that, but I have gotten back the scent I love, because somebody put it in a bottle. In selecting perfumes for January, of course I picked carnations. L'Heure Bleu, which is also a favorite of my brother's. Brightest Bloom by Bath & Body Works, which I mostly use in the form of lotions and soaps. I also have a white glitter product, so it will do double duty this winter by also representing glittering snow. I also had bottle of real carnation extract which I put in my own lotions, soaps, hand sanitizer, etc. 

All our lives, when the subject of astrology came up, mom always got this fierce look on her face and said, "I am NOT an AQUARIUS." I always thought she was just blowing smoke but Marnie looked it up online and in 1938 Jan. 20th was in Capricorn. So mom was right. She was NOT an AQUARIUS. I am, however, so in January I will wear Aquarius.

I have it in the form of bath powder. Some vintage perfumed products from that era are not any good any more but the Aquarius powder I bought cheaply on eBay still smells fine. Powder would not go bad but some older powders lose their scent. I didn't realize until I started my Gila Lizard Powers (GLP-1) weight loss journey and became obsessed with perfume that a lot of vintage perfumes and perfumed products are dirt cheap, way less expensive than brand new things. Especially if I buy partial bottles and don't care if it has no box or might have most of the printed words worn off. I can also get quite a collection of scents by buying or trading samples and decants. Of course then I only have a tiny amount of each, but that's OK, I still get to Smell All The Things. There are also vintage mini bottles that are smaller than what we would consider a travel size decant now but were normal perfume bottles back in the day. They're tiny and cute, and I like to look at them as well as use fragrance from them. January is after-xmas sale time, so I'll probably be sampling more things and seeing if I can add some more things to my collection cheaply.

My January 2025 Perfumes

L'Heure Bleu

Brightest Bloom (glitter lotion and glitter spray)

Carnation Oil

Aquarius (powder)

Winter 2025 Perfumes

Throughout the winter I will want to wear fragrances that remind me of the flowers I can't smell in real life, and also warming and cheerful fragrances, and fragrances similar to winter time treats and winter time hot drinks. I will also want to wear any of my mists and lotions that have white glitter, to represent snow.   

Flowers: Flowerbomb Ruby Orchid, Tea Rose by Perfumer's Workshop, Rose Absolue by Annick Goutal, Heliotrope Blanc, Brightest Bloom, L'Heure Bleu, Fox in the Flowerbed, Mysterious Rose

Diamond Snow Glitter: Brightest Bloom (diamond shimmer mist), Luminous (diamond shimmer mist), Luminous (glowtion), Black Opium (shimmering moisture fluid), Midnight Amber Glow (glowtion)

Cinnamon: Cinnabar

Fruit: Winter Candy Apple, La Tarte Tatin by Jousset 

Cocoa: Dark Chocolate by Al Naas

Coffee: Coffee White Flowers, Amore Cafe by Mancera, Coffee Cloud by Good Chemistry

Warm and Cheerful: Golden Hour by Magical

Fire: By the Fireplace, Midnight Bonfire

Warm Glow of Nostalgia (vintage): Youth Dew, Opium, Cinnabar, Boucheron

Wintertime Treats: Twisted Peppermint, Winter Candy Apple

In filling out this list, I didn't have a cocoa. I resolved to find or make one by January. I found one in my samples of "budget Arabian" perfumes (which were actually from the Czech Republic. I don't know lol.) 

For New Years' Eve I bought a bottle of moscato to share with my housemate. I didn't finish my glass. Apparently I don't like alcohol anymore. This is part of my Monster Powers. I still like the smell of moscato fragrance, which is just as delicious to me as an actual glass of moscato used to be. Moscato is one of the notes in my fragrance Golden Hour. 

One of the main wishes I had when I started my Monster Powers journey was to get back my natural body. The body I could have had at this time if I had never tried Depo-Provera. Depo-Provera wrecked my metabolism when I was in my 20s and I know I can never get that body back. But I hoped to get back the body I should have had in my 50s if I'd never gotten Depo-Provera. I think it's working. I didn't develop the ability to drink alcohol until after I had gotten Depo-Provera.

In my 20s, my natural body did not react well to alcohol. Even a teeny bit of it could make me faint. Even a piece of "diabetic safe" sugar free candy. I thought I was allergic to it. I didn't understand what was really happening until decades later when I got on diabetes medicine and went to a dietician to design a diabetes and allergy friendly diet for me. She told me that hard alcohol lowers blood sugar. That's why diabetic safe candy is made of alcohol sugars like sorbitol. When I was younger, I often had low blood sugar but didn't know it. Lowering it my blood sugar even a little gave me the equivalent of a diabetic emergency and I had no idea that's what it was. My post - Depo-Provera body had high blood sugar, so now hard alcohol was safe. The harder the better. Vodka, rum, and whiskey were on my Yes list from the dietician. Fruit and grains were on the No list. Beer was also a No because American beer isn't high enough in alcohol. Wine was a gray area. So if I wanted a fruit flavor it had to be in the form of liqueur. I wanted blackcurrant jam, and I had blackcurrant liqueur. I wanted a fresh peach, and I had peach schnapps. That was my official diet. I called it the Bacon and Whiskey diet. Now, with my Monster Powers, my blood sugar hovers around normal all the time and suddenly I don't even like the taste of alcohol, even my favorites. I ate a xmas orange. An actual real fruit. My blood sugar didn't spike. I can eat fruit now. Like I did before Depo-Provera. I'm getting my natural body back! I did not realize it was possible that I might lose my taste for booze when I started getting my natural body back, but apparently it is happening.

I had already given up making Northern Lights Goddesses Brew several years ago because it became too physically challenging for me to harvest and process wheat. Now, I embarked on a project to reformulate the flavors of Northern Lights Goddesses Brew into a perfume.

I could not simply put the exact same things in it because flavors and scents may hit my brain the same way but they are not produced the same way. I made a couple of early versions of Household Goddess but they were too linden-centric, and along the way I had been instructed that my perfume should be for all goddesses not for Frigga specifically and she wasn't even that keen on linden flowers anyway. So I needed to keep tinkering with it.

I ended up doing the project the same week I was sampling the Indie Traveling Box because I was inspired and also because I wanted to include a complete set of the Erin's Garden Collection in the box when I sent it on. I produced my first batch of my final version of Household Goddess, a fragrance in honor of all goddesses. The first vial went in the box, along with Golden Hour, Coffee Ritual, Monsoon, Midnight Bonfire, and Sweetheart.

Sweetheart was also a perfume I finished formulating that week and the first vial of that went in the box too. It's in honor of my cat Sweetheart, based on his fur colors of white and amber. It also contains extrait of catnip from my garden. 

January is of course also when after-xmas sales happen. I was running out of my unscented sunscreen and needed some more sunscreen. I wanted to get both an unscented one for the face and a fragrance one for the body, and everything was coconut. Coconut is nice but I can get tired of it. I was on the hunt for a non-coconut scented sunscreen, and finally found one, and it was... pineapple. Bath and Body Works got into the sunscreen game and instead of using their regular fragrances they made all their sunscreens smell like a tropical beach vacation, just like everybody else's sunscreens. I wear sunscreen on my face and neck any time I plan to go outdoors, year round, and I haven't ever gone on a tropical beach vacation. I thought, "I will make my own sunscreen, with blackjack and hookers." 

I bought zinc oxide powder and mixed it with my regular lotion base, and voila! I had made my own sunscreen. I made myself two test batches, one unscented for my face, and the other my latest new scent: Blackjack. Main accord: blackberry, because it's black. I had always intended to make some fragrances with local Las Vegas area references anyway. I named the unscented version Poker Face.

***

In previous years, I used to honor Ullr in the winter with Ullr schnapps. Most of the time I added it to hot cocoa. This year I am exploring replicating flavors of favorite foods and drinks with perfume. I attempted to replicate the flavor profile of Ullr schnapps by layering Twisted Peppermint and Cinnabar. Results: That's not it. I thought of making a mix of my own with a peppermint, cinnamon, and cacao. Results: (pending)

I sampled a lot of perfumes. In fine weather I went out of the back porch with my sampling setup. At first I bought some samples but then I mostly swapped samples for samples with other forum members. I also participated in my first traveling box, one of several themed sets of samples that the forum members ship to each other so everyone can try them.

One of the things I learned from participating in the Indie Traveling Box was that there are a lot of pagan and witch oriented independent perfume houses. It's exciting to find so much pagany and witchy activity in a space that is not specifically a pagan space.

Also a lot of the witchy seeming perfume houses with identifiable pagan and witch perfumes had at least some with titles I would consider unlucky or bad energy. I still sampled them but only on cloth, not on my skin, and depending on how bad the name was, I also did my gesture of throwing bad energy toward where it would become light, then fully exhaled and asked Odin to fill me with breath, and inhaled new clean air, and took a shower when I was done sampling.

Even with that issue, it makes me really happy to see so much pagan and witch representation in an otherwise mainstream activity. Even some of the commercial perfume houses have pagan or magic oriented perfumes, and they aren't all goddesses of beauty either. Gucci made an entire collection about an alchemist's garden, for example. The pagan, witch, and heathen indie houses go way further into their ideas than the designer houses, but that's true of almost every indie and niche house, just with a different set of ideas.

I discovered an indie maker with an entire collection about Ragnarok, and of course I had to order some samples. Results pending.

***

In mid January I approached the day I was scheduled to take my weekly Monster Power injection. I get 4 vials in a box, so after I take my 4th shot I'm out until I get a refill. I had just been off my medicine for over a month due to the insurance company, and I know it takes the pharmacy a while to fill this prescription, it isn't like just dispensing some pills. I tried to order more online and the system said it was too soon to order because I was not out yet. I know from the experience of being off my medicine for a month that once it's built up in my body I can coast for a week. Longer than that and I have to go back on my previous set of pills, which puts me back in the cycle of rising and crashing blood sugar. I don't want to turn this blog into 10 Things I Wish I Knew About Diabetes 40 Years Ago but if anyone is interested in how and why that rollercoaster happens to me and how it affects my life, you can ask me on one of my social media. 

So, I had 1 vial left of Gila Lizard Powers medicine and didn't know how long it would take to get another box of 4 vials. If it was another month before I got more medicine, it would be way easier to deal with 1 week off, 1 week back on, 2 weeks off, than it would be with a 4th week of on followed by 4 weeks of off. I decided to skip a week and hoard my last vial.

***

On the full moon Jan. 13th I put on Full Moon (at the Temple) by Poesie, and shared the rest of my sample with my housemate. It smelled way better on her. Everybody's different. She participated in an online ritual in the Wiccan style, but I went outside and howled at the moon. For a while the gods had told me not to howl anymore but they said I could go back to howling so now I'm back to my family's howling ritual that I grew up with. 

***

I was "product testing" my zinc sunscreens by wearing them. In the late afternoon after tea it was nice on the back porch, and when I had perfume samples to test from a swap or traveling box I enjoyed testing them outside. I discovered my Poker Face sunscreen was fine but I needed to redo Blackjack. Along the way I also worked on the fragrance for Blackjack, because it needs to be an actual perfume too, used across all my products: body sprays, lotions, molded soaps, and so on. I finalized the note pyramid as: blackberry, apple bourbon, and amber.

I'm not sure I can actually sell them as sunscreens though because I think sunscreens are supposed to have an SPF rating. If I make one with a LOT of zinc so it actually looks white maybe I could call it Vampire Sun Scream Lotion. And then turn my original Blackjack one into a flanker of Vampire so I could call them all Sun Scream instead of sunscreen. It's super easy to just add zinc to a lotion but getting "product testing" is WAY out of reach. Just like it's easy to bake cookies but getting a nutritional rating for them to put on a package is way out of reach for me or any other home cook. I suppose the obvious solution is to just call them "lotion with zinc." Vampire Sun Scream Lotion is way too cool of an idea to just shelve, though, I'm totally going to make one. It will smell like home earth.

***

When I wrote my blog post "What is Beauty?" it was the Friday of the week I skipped my injection to hoard my last vial. My appetite had returned but my blood sugar level was staying steady and so I still had my Monster Powers. I knew I could coast for a week, and it was working. Being able to produce a post about beauty that turned into poetry towards the end, thus being, itself, a work of beauty, proved to myself that my Monster Powers were still active in my mind and spirit, too.

Poetry didn't flow like that for me anymore after my "neurological event" in 2021 until I got my Monster Powers, except during specific hours when I was either using absinthe or lion's mane mushroom. Becoming allergic to mushrooms like summer really upset me because it put my brain treatment out of reach, so finding that my Monster Powers also made my brain work like it before is really wonderful for me.

That morning, I got up and went to my main house altar, where I keep a small tray of perfumes. That tray is the ones specifically dedicated to particular days of the week and to the gods and powers of those days. Before I started my perfume journey, the tray only contained fragrances from Cherry-Ka's Trunk, the Asatru related ones. One-Eye for Wednesday, Thunderstrike for Thursday, Vanr Volva for Friday, and Silver Wordsmith for Saturday. Plus the other associated Asatru fragrances that I might choose any time: The Hornsman for Heimdall, Bilskirnir for Sif, Hidden Goddess for Hel, and of course now also Valkyrie, which is for the valkyries but also for me, and to me mostly symbolizes friendship because it was made for me as a surprise gift. Now, I have selected perfumes for the other days of the week as well. For Sunday: Melody of the Sun, Grain de Soleil, and Soleil de Feu. For Monday: Moonlight, and Moon Carnival. For Tuesday: Icefall by Pineward. There is one more perfume on the tray, Bulgarian rose absolute in a wooden bottle, which my mom brought back from a folk dance cruise long ago.

That morning, it was a Friday, so I put on Vanr Volva. I also decided to put on the rose absolute as an additional gift for Freya. I used that time to commune with her. She affirmed for me that she is still my primary goddess. Her light still comes from my heart, and it has all along.

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Erin Lale is the author of Asatru For Beginners, and the updated, longer version of her book, Asatru: A Beginner's Guide to the Heathen Path. Erin has been a gythia since 1989. She was the editor and publisher of Berserkrgangr Magazine, and is admin/ owner of the Asatru Facebook Forum. She also writes science fiction and poetry, ran for public office, is a dyer and fiber artist, was acquisitions editor at a small press, and founded the Heathen Visibility Project.

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