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.

Beltane (1 May 2018)

Beltane (May Day) is an ancient Celtic festival; one associated with fire, sex, fertility, and renewal. It is the day the Maiden goddess comes together with the Green Man - they fall in love and consummate their union to become the May Queen and May King. The Wheel of the Year turns, and so we move from the tenderness and tentativeness of Spring into the fullness and vitality of Summer. 

Hawthorn, or May flowers. Hawthorn, birch, and rowan are the trees sacred to Beltane. Hawthorn is the tree of sexuality and fertility, while birch represents love and fertility. Rowan is the tree of healing and protection. 

The Beltane Fire Festival, in Scotland. 

May Day was the traditional time for handfasting ceremonies, where couples would come together and declare a betrothal period of a year-and-a-day. After the time was up, they could choose to part without any stigma or community ill-will. 

I'm near my year-and-a-day mark here in Boston (May 23). There have been many times this past wheel-turn where I would have broken the union if I could. Boston, for all its historic charms, is as uncomfortable as an ill-fitting wool sweater. I'm not happy here. This is not my home. I think that as long as I live here, I'll still feel temporary. 

But I want to feel temporary here. I want my bones to know that I feel their ache: the way they separate, pulling West; the way they burn cold at the touch of the Atlantic, like a heathen at a baptism. The ache means we haven't settled. And that's settled two ways: we haven't dug in, found permanence, and we won't acquiesce to a place that doesn't feel right. 

The violets here are different than the ones out west, but I still love them. 

I have been hibernating here, or something close to it. I enjoyed the brief Boston summer last year, and the gentle if short autumn. But I haven't been happy often. I know I'm depressed, but it's not a sadness. More than anything it's a grayness, a total lack of motivation, and the gnawing of anxiety. I feel paralyzed by doing anything that adds at all to my schedule, not wanting to go out with the friends I have here or make plans with friends from afar. I let my work with The Vaude Villains wither, relying too heavily on Crystal to carry us. I let my work with Ouija Broads dwindle to the bare minimum, again relying on my creative partner Liz to hold our weight. 

Carry. Carrying. To carry. 

In the Greek Persephone Myth, Persephone is carried to the Underworld against her will by Hades. Hades falls in love with Persephone, the wild springtime goddess and daughter of Demeter. He abducts her, taking her to the afterlife to be his wife. Persephone's mother, the now righteously distraught harvest goddess, refuses to let the Earth's plants grow in her anger. It's only when Earth's people begin to starve and beg Zeus for help that he commands Hades to return Persephone to her mother and the world above. But Hades tricks Persephone into eating six pomegranate seeds before Hermes rescues her. Since she has tasted the food of the Underworld, she is now tied to it, and must return for some months each year. Winter is Demeter's mourning of her stolen daughter, and Spring is a joyous celebration of her return to Earth. 

Magnolia tree blooming at Granary Burying Ground, with Franklin's obelisk in the back. 

The past season, the grayness has carried me. I eat too much and gain a lot of weight. I shop online a lot, but don't spend too much money - usually just putting items in an online shopping cart and leaving them there for a few hours is enough dopamine for me. I make two international friends and we become pen-pals. But it takes me longer and longer to respond to each, and now I find myself embarrassed at how late my response is that I put off writing back to them even longer. 

Cherry blossoms just down the block from my apartment. 

I've gotten such wonderful letters and care packages from Washington from so many friends. The guilt that I'm not reciprocating enough is consuming though, taking little bites of my joy each day. I forget important things many of my friends tell me, and end up having them repeat their conversations to me each time we connect. I hurt the feelings of a dear friend in Seattle when I say now's not a good time to visit. What I want to say is that I'm too depressed, too sad and easily overwhelmed to be a good host. But that doesn't get translated well and it just comes across as a callous dismissal of her and her offer. I commit to art exchanges with some Washington artists, but then scramble to come up with ideas that are "good enough" for my part of the bargain, and put them off, too. They pile up, reproaching me from the desk, the coffee table, the chair. I am 5 months late on making my parents' 40th anniversary gift. I am 6 months late writing about my wonderful trip to Ireland. I used to clear out my email inbox daily: now, my inbox has at least 30 unread messages that I feel too much guilt over neglecting to confront. 

Forsythia. Growing up, our neighbor Ava had beautiful, full forsythia bushes and so they always make me think of being 5 years old and home again. 

I reach out to one of my pen-pals, apologize for my lateness of reply and talk to her about feeling depressed. She immediately validates my feelings, and shares that her March was particularly difficult too, that she's just as deep in it as I am, but that we can rise out of it. I tell her that we are two Persephones, maybe struggling to lift ourselves out of the Underworld but making a damn honest effort at it. I think about painting her some pomegranates, and how I would gild the seeds within. 

That's all I can do, really. I mean, I'll continue to take my anti-anxiety medication, monitor my depression, keep pursuing therapy and doing small acts of self-care. But for being wedged in a place where I don't fit? I'll notice the flowers blooming. I'll stop and watch the still-novel red streak of a cardinal moving through the trees. I'll look for the neighborhood rabbits at dusk, and I'll feel the comforting roughness of 300 year-old bricks in the buildings downtown. I'll gild the seeds of Boston in every way I know how, and hope that my loved ones can be gentle with me as I come back to them. 

And I'll remember that I've eaten a whole fucking lifetime of Washington seeds, and that one day soon I will carry them back home. 

A beautifully ornate doorway in Brookline. 

Food-baby-merman detail.

Seattle art: Art of the Tarot at Ghost Gallery

The place is called Ghost Gallery, but that doesn’t mean it’s invisible. So I’m not sure why I have such a hard time finding the space. Still, it takes several laps around the block before I find the place. It also takes standing directly next to the front gate while using Google Maps. And then takes one more lap around the block because I don’t understand Google Maps, apparently. The point is, Ghost Gallery is a little hard to find, but it is worth the haunt…I mean, hunt. (In Tarot, the Fool is the protagonist, and as the protagonist of this story I can tell you that walking around Capitol Hill trying to find the gallery made me feel like a fool indeed.)

Ghost Gallery's invisible entrance with suspected ghost

Ghost Gallery’s current show, The Art of the Tarot, is a group show curated by Ghost Gallery’s curator Laurie Kearney. The show features work by local and global artists centered around the theme of the tarot deck and accompanying lore. There’s a bar at the back, and right up front Emily from Joyride Tarot is doing tarot readings ($20 for 10 minutes).  

The Art of the Tarot is on theme, both for the gallery’s mysterious name and the recent “witch renaissance” in pop-culture. As a wee baby heathen in the 90s and 00s, I could only find crystals and tapestries at our mall’s one weird stoner store Atmosphere, or in far-flung new age shops. Now they’re ubiquitous dorm décor thanks to norm-core stores like Urban Outfitters and even Target stocking them. Witches and mysticism are “in,” according to Salon and other media outlets. Calling it “Mysticore” and the “season of the witch,” trend-spotters have predicted a witchy influence in fashion and style since at least 2013. Tarot itself saw a huge popularity surge thanks to The Wild Unknown’s tarot deck taking off (thanks in large part to social media shares).

Some witches and other mystic-minded folk have seen this increase in witch acceptance (at least as witch aesthetic acceptance) as a positive. Big brands carrying pentacles, incense, and tarot cards means greater access to goods for practitioners, and a de-stigmatization of these symbols as evil or abnormal. On the flip side, other magickal practitioners see the trend as an appropriation of symbols, stripped of their deeper meaning and cheapened for mass-market consumption. (A good editorial read on the community’s divide and one woman’s experience can be read here.)

Ghost Gallery does a good job of bridging that gap. The space itself is set back from the street, and you walk through a gateway and through an enclosed patio to get there. You’re primed for something different already, gently transitioning from the street to an art space. It makes it feel like you’re seeking out the symbols and beliefs the show deals with; it makes you deliberately contemplate them instead of seeing them on a rack of shirts or whatever in a box store. Like any art, you can come here and look at the works and go no further than “Hey, that looks cool” or “I’d never put that over my couch.” You can look at purely the aesthetics of the images in front of you and that’s completely fine. But if you want deeper meaning, the space and the patrons allow for that, too. Many of the artists are here for the opening, standing with their works and talking to guests. They talk visuals, sure, but a lot of them talk about the meaning of the Tarot and other magick in their own lives and artwork.

Outside the gallery

Art people

It’s so crowded I have a hard time telling which people are artists and which people are guests. I’m overwhelmed by the amount of art in the two rooms, of the paintings and drawings and jewelry and objects on the walls, shelves, tables, floor. They works are unified by a theme, sure, but quite different in terms of style and materials. It’s not an unpleasant jumble, but it’s still a lot to take in. I wedge myself in a corner by the front to try and get my bearings. Emily of Joyride Tarot is offering 10-minute readings and I jot my name down on a timeslot to feel a little more grounded in my purpose here. When I feel overwhelmed by the amount of people I can think to myself “I have an appointment. I am supposed to be here.” 

Jars of witchy things

A visitor tests a pendulum. She and her companion agreed it had good energy and she purchased it.

I’m here for personal enjoyment, but I’m also here to cover the event for Scream Sirens Magazine. I worry that it looks weird to lug in my big camera and take photos of the artwork and event, so I make my way to the counter to introduce myself and make sure it’s really okay that I’m there. (By the way, this uncertainty of belonging, of feeling in two camps, could be represented by the Temperance tarot card. I’m not sure where I come down on the witch symbols as pop culture fodder debate, and I’m not sure of my role at the event tonight. Drinking from both cups, this one.) I introduce myself to Kearney, and she makes me feel welcome immediately. Her excitement is now my excitement, and I photograph as well as I can in the crowded space. Art event photos are tricky: if the show is good, people will be looking at the art, meaning you get a lot of photos of people’s backs. Ghost Gallery has lots of nooks and crannies, though, and even better: lots of mirrors. I catch people’s better angles in both.

  

Jewelry hangs in front of a visitor

The patrons are a good mix: some society-looking art patrons, some grungy artists, some gothically-attired magick practitioners, and some non-descript folks like me. The bar at the back of the shop helps them to mix, and so does the tight quarters: you’re going to bump into someone, you’re going to look at art next to someone, you’re going to reach for the same pendulum as someone else. I can start to tell the artists apart from the visitors because mostly they have their backs to the work, standing in front like proud but protective parents.

The art is as eclectic as the people: big paintings, little drawings, jewelry made of bones and metal and crystals and wire that’s formed into tiny vaginas. The wall behind the register is dominated by large, colorful paintings by An-Magrith Erlandsen (Seattle). Tarot decks by several artists are scattered on tables, and I’m particularly charmed by the sweet “Mini Rabbit” tarot decks by Nakisha Vanderhoeven (Seattle). I think my brother would like the strong graphical qualities of Peter Benedetti’s “Divine Will” tarot deck (New York). I buy “The Heirophant” by Dark Days Tarot and a small protection charm from the Gallery (Seattle). A full list of participating artists is available on the event page, and many of the works are available for purchase via Ghost Gallery’s online shop.

Art and visitors leading back to the second room

A guest and jewelry reflected; Emily of Joyride Tarot reads in the back

A protection amulet

The female divine is highly regarded in this show. I count at least four works that deal with The Empress card (my favorite is by Stasia Burrington), and several that show the High Priestess (I love the detail in the drawing by Dark Days Tarot). The moon, the stars, the earth, and other symbols are also represented by female characters. The number of male or female symbols a tarot deck features can greatly vary based on the deck. Often, the inclusion is less about the gender or anatomy, and more about the type of energy that card or deck represents. Anatomy or not, I like seeing such strong female representations in the art here, especially in a business run by a strong woman.

It’s my turn for a tarot reading. Emily has a quiet energy, and sits in a plush chair with her back to a red drape. She starts slow and quiet, but gets more animated the more we talk. She asks what my question is, and I tell her that I want to know what to do to get to the next level with my career. I recently graduated from a master’s program, and I’m desperately looking for a job in my field that a) seems fulfilling and b) pays a damn. I’ve applied to dozens of jobs without even a call back, and I feel really blocked about it. Emily writes my name and a few notes in her journal. She asks if she can say a blessing, and I close my eyes and touch my hands to the table while she asks for this reading to help me with my questions.

Emily and a guest during a reading

Emily spreads the deck (Alchemical Deck, by Robert M. Place) in a long line away from her and asks me to pick two cards. I run my hands across the deck, pulling two. I always hope I’m going to feel a jolt of electricity or a certain “rightness” that this is the card I should pick, but it never happens. Still, the cards I’ve pulled that way in the past seemed relevant to me, and it’s the same tonight. The first card I draw is the Hanged Man. In this deck, the card shows a man is tied by his foot to a beam by a long snake. He dangles toward the ground as coins spill from his hands. That card represents what I’ve done so far to get to where I am. My second card is the Six of Vessels, which looks much more optimistic. A woman pours liquid from one vessel into 5 others. Flowers bloom from one of the pots, and more grow in the background. This card represents what I should nurture to get where I want to go. Emily talks about the money and effort I’ve used in the past to obtain my degree, the struggle of school and job hunting and how it’s represented by the Hanged Man. Now it’s time to contemplate, to be deliberate in my actions, to water what is needed. She tells me she feels lush energy when she pictures my goals, but I need to look at the process step by step. I need to fill one cup at a time, move one step at a time, to get to where I want to be. All of this makes total sense.  Whatever your beliefs, I think the advice Emily gives me with the help of the cards is really logical: this cost time and money but wasn’t random, so keep taking calculated steps toward your goal. I can do that.

I speak with Emily later by email to know more about her process with tarot. She’s read since high school, studying with Jan Wallace, who is also a poet. Emily’s tarot process is firmly bound with poetry, too: she says “Tarot and poetry were never separable for me […] I've developed my own approach to reading and healing work over time.” At the gallery opening, Emily had a book open on a table inviting visitors to leave their own poem. I write haiku poems, and mine reads: Is it fate in the cards?/ Or is it in these hands that/ Hold those small wishes?

I ask about her thoughts on the recent trendiness of witches and mysticism, and her answer is something that I think will further shape my own thoughts on the topic. I think sometimes we can worry that when newcomers find “our” thing, that there’s a finite amount of whatever that is, or that their presence will cheapen our own association. Emily’s answer is much gentler, very welcoming. She says, “There are many layers to working with tarot cards, and I think even going to tarot cards at first for a kind of risqué identity is related to people´s longing to understand themselves, to belong, to find joy, and to ameliorate their own suffering.” Put that way, it shouldn’t really matter to me why someone is on the same road as I am: I’m just glad they’re making the journey, too.

The moon outside of Ghost Gallery. The Moon tarot card signifies consciousness unfolding.

***

The Art of the Tarot is on display through Sunday, October 9, 2016 at Ghost Gallery: 504 E. Denney Way at Summit/Olive.   

My interpretations for cards throughout this post come from the classic Raider-Waite tarot deck. There are myriad decks, and each may have nuances when it comes to reading those cards. I was never a big Lisa Frank fan but I’m crushing on this Lisa Frank tarot deck just the same.