Florida Water

The first time I remember hearing of Florida Water was in high school when I was reading Gone With the Wind. Scarlett recalls how her mother has told her the only gifts a lady can accept from a suitor are flowers, candy, and perhaps a volume of poetry or a small vial of Florida Water. I didn't know if it was a tonic, perfume, or something you ate, but I figured it came in a cool glass vial.

I was partially right. Turns out, Florida Water is an American version of Eau de Cologne, basically, created (or at least trademarked) in 1808 by a New York perfumer, Robert Murray. I've never smelled either, but apparently they're similarly scented: unisex, citrusy. The major differences being that Florida Water uses orange (not lemon) for its citrus, and has a spicer scent, thanks to the addition of cloves and other ingredients.

Murray & Lanman’s Florida Water. Boston Public Library, CC 2.0.

Since its patent and marketing in the early 1800s, Florida Water has been used as a cologne, or a toilet water added to your daily bathing routine. Just before 1900, it was advertised as "The Richest of all Perfumes." Today, you can buy little plastic bottles of it in such high-toned establishments like Walgreens.

On a cooler note, Florida Water is used in witchcraft. Voodoo, Wicca and neo-Paganism, Santeria . . . many different sects of witchcraft use Florida Water in their rituals. Predominantly it's used for purification, but can have lots of applications. According to Lilith Dorsey of Voodoo Universe, Voodoo practitioners also use it during possession trance and for consecration, and Santeria practitioners use it for banishing and attracting rituals.

The witches I know use Florida Water kind of like a quartz crystal: it's a one-stop shop for purification, consecration, or a little positive pizazz. Like The Hood Witch suggests, it's great for purifying a new tool, crystal, or magickal element you bring into your practice. (Usually I just toss some salt on whatever I'm purifying and say something like "Hey, any bad shit vibes on this have to get the fuck outta here," but it's also cool to be intentional.)

Hey witch, I'm talking to you: neither way is wrong. You do you, boo.  

Bex suggests we make Florida Water as a witch/craft way to house-warm my new home. Making your own Florida Water is out of the question for some folks due to cost alone. You need a ton of supplies, and like half of them are niche things you won't have an easy time getting ahold of unless you live in a weirdo Mecca like Seattle. (I can't find an answer on how many witches live in Seattle, but one article estimates there may be 10,000 practicing witches living in New York. New York City has over 8 million residents; Seattle has just over 724,000. I wonder about the scalability of that estimate, because just over 1,000 practicing witches in Seattle seems LOW. I mean, have you hung out in Ballard or Capital Hill?)

Some recipes are quite simple, like the Ritual + Vibe recipe that relies heavily on essential oils instead of whole plants. Salt Publishing House uses more fresh or dried herbs, but is pretty basic. Instead, we use a recipe more akin to the one The Hood Witch uses, full of herbs and flowers and oils and vodka. So much vodka. Bex picks a date 2 weeks away from our planning session to give us time to collect everything we need.

Bex has some of the nicest handwriting I've ever seen.

I go to Dandelion Botanical Company in Ballard to get my half of the supplies on a lunch break. The woman behind the counter is at first really confused and then really excited as I tell her what I'm making. She's never heard of Florida Water, and as she's using an old fashioned scale to weigh out jasmine flowers and cedar and clove buds I tell her I'll bring her a vial if it turns out. Back at work, I eat an orange, carefully wrapping up the peel in Saran Wrap to bring back home to dry.

In this whole bid to be more intentional in my practice, I clear my new house's countertop space, laying out candles and dishes and crystals. I fill half the dishes with ingredients, and when Bex arrives she fills the other half with hers. My kitchen smells like an apothecary, dusty and green and kind of like hay. I like it. Bex opens the vodka and I hate the sharp smell of the alcohol.

We had like 4 more bottles of Vodka off camera.

We get the biggest pot I have (Jason's double boiler) and set it up on my gas-burning stovetop. Bex is in charge here, telling me what to add and I ferry ingredients to her like a happy little Igor. Five cups of vodka go in as a base, but we have the heat up too high and it cooks off too quickly so we have to add some water. Sage. Rose petals. Five cloves. All added in and stirred clockwise while envisioning purity and cleansing and light.

(A note about directions in witchcraft: clockwise or doesil is the direction you turn to raise energy, for positive spellwork, and to build. Counter-clockwise or widdershins is the direction you turn for banishing work.)

This pot isn't big enough, but it's our only option so we keep adding ingredients. I chop up sweetgrass into tiny little needles, relishing the beautiful sweet scent of it. I need a mortar and pestle but since I don't have one we just mash things with the back of a spoon or knife handle as needed. I'm sure it's fine.

The pink rose petals eventually blanched white and clear.

I remember being a kid, and together with my brother and the neighbor kids we'd pick the best-smelling plants we could find and add them to the stone birdbath in our backyard. Dad always got so mad that we "put a bunch of trash in the birdbath," but he didn't get it. Us kids talked about how if we could just bottle it and sell it before it turned bad, we'd make a million dollars because it smelled that good. So sweet and earthy and kind of spicy and very green.

Cooking Florida Water smells like that.

While it simmered, then cooled, Bex got out the bottles she had brought. They were too narrow-necked for all of the ruffage, so we poured the concoction into two big Mason jars I had, half for each of us. You can strain it right away and have Instant Florida Water TM, but Bex suggested waiting a traditional moon-cycle before straining the water into our bottles. You put the jar in a dark closet or at the back of a shelf, turning once a day to shake up the ingredients and think purifying thoughts at. You can bring it out at night to sit on a windowsill so it can soak up the moonlight, too.

Even after filling two large jars, we had leftover water and bits of flora. It felt too important to just dump down the garbage disposal, of course, but we weren't sure what to do with the extra. (Like, important, but not consecrated host important. Worthy of respect, but not fanatically so.) We take the pot of leftover Florida Water outside and pour it and the herbs at the base of a rose plant in my backyard. We'll have to wait for summer to see if it grows special with this magickal food.

I wait almost the full month before deciding it was close enough and decant my Florida Water into its pretty bottle. It smells like it did when cooking, but stronger, like long-brewed tea. I strain the water, which is now cola-brown, into the bottle, spilling quite a bit. I don't know how commercial Florida Water is clear. Does the process only use essential oils, or is there some very fine straining process? It's pretty in the sunlight, though. When I use it in a ritual bath, my skin will smell like tea and a summer 25 years ago.