This three-card reading designed for the Sainte Cellier community is inspired by the traditional way of breaking down and analysing a perfume: Base Notes, Mid Notes and Top Notes. It is a guide to mood, feeling, energies, and currents that might be affecting the reader, and offers fragrance suggestions to enhance positive energies and mitigate negative forces.
Base Notes represent the intimate, the important, and the foundational with far-reaching consequences. Maybe no-one but you and those closest to you know how these themes and energies are affecting your life, and possibly, you want to keep this stuff on the downlow. Positive or Negative, Base notes demand respect!
Base note fragrance suggestions reflect the inner self and are most effective when applied to your home environment or enjoyed in solitude and reflective moments.
Mid Notes represent overall direction and day to day activities, reflecting the ‘every day’ and the self you show in work and routine activity. They affect the external self and inform others’ opinions of you.
Mid note fragrance suggestions are for perfume notes and families that will energise and support you throughout the time covered by this reading.
Top Notes represent memorable and fleeting moments in life. Top Notes are about being ‘out-out’, red letter days, serendipitous encounters, and first impressions.
Top Note fragrance suggestions add highlight to complement or contrast with the Mid and Base Notes for this period.
BASE NOTES – Six of Pentacles
The Six of Pentacles signifies generosity and unequal relationships. It encourages us to willingly accept help from others. This assistance could be emotional, practical, or financial. The Six of Pentacles is sometimes known as the Charity card, but I think of it as the ‘Ain’t Too Proud To Beg’ card.
It is far more comfortable to be the person slinging gold sovereigns out through the window as one’s coach and four rushes past the assembled peasantry, than it is to be the humble supplicant, grovelling in the mud for a hand-out.
If you’re fortunate enough to be able to help others, help them with grace, and an acknowledgement that the Wheel of Fate could see you on the receiving end of charity one day. If you are the one in need of help, but struggling with feelings of shame or anger about asking for or accepting it, remind yourself that you would want to be a generous patron if the situation were reversed, wouldn’t you?
You can best support this card’s energy with fragrance from the Wood family, and adding some Herbal elements will boost energy and keep your spirits high. Suggestions include (but are not limited to): bathing with sandalwood soap, eucalyptus bath oils or salts, walking in woodland, smelling fresh herbs.
Neela Vermeire Créations Trayee combines wood, herb, spice, and floral notes in a complex fragrance perfectly suited to the artful balance demanded by the Six of Pentacles.
MID NOTES – Ten of Pentacles (Reversed)
The Ten of Pentacles is the card of Excess and Abundance, but ours is reversed, suggesting that we are giving up a degree of material security for risk and adventure, allowing us to discover deeper meanings in life. Exciting! How to support this, and what to wear to fill yourself and others with confidence in your abilities?
More Earth energy equates to another Wood fragrance, and – fittingly for this card of abundance and excess – the drama and depth will complement the Ten element and give an air of All Calm, No Qualms.
If you’re grinding your teeth reading this, thinking ‘Oud is very expensive! And you’ve just told me I’ve sacrificed my material security to the point that I might need financial assistance!’: fear not, we hear you.
Ways to get your hands on Oud energy without resorting to shoplifting:
investigate the teenage boy section of your local high street chemist - there is a lovely Oud inspired fragrance to be found there, I promise you!
OR -
opt for luxurious woods with a hint of Gourmand. Why? Because Tarot is an unending circular journey in which Pages follow Tens, and those sweet and greedy children of the Minor Arcana know the power of a Gourmand to lift the spiritual blood sugar.
ERIS Mxxx offers drama for days and - like all the best Gourmands - conveys the sense that the wearer is replete, satisfied and cared for. This perfume choice is the perfect way to channel a little Page energy (discovery, new beginnings) in support of the risky but exciting Ten of Pentacles Reversed.
TOP NOTES – Five of Swords
The upright Five of Swords is a card of victory, but interestingly, a possibly ill-gotten and thoroughly undeserved victory. Its appearance as a Top Note suggests that you might be the dazzling centre of attention at a party that you’ve gate-crashed: no matter – the Five of Swords encourages a little cheating!
When a little deception is required in your out-in-the-world interactions, your fragrance choices can help you to win approval, rather than ignominy. You might be inveigling your way into a new social circle or getting one over on old enemies: either way, when the Five of Swords appears, a Fresh Soliflore should be in your fragrance armoury.
Freshness is equated so often (and so undeservedly) with Innocence. Choosing a perfume from this family will mask your steely Sword energy, allowing you to convincingly pull off a ‘Who Me?’ should anyone have the temerity to challenge your right to hold court. A Soliflore is the perfect choice for anyone who wants to be the centre of attention, remembered the morning after for all the right reasons, and Five of Swords energy finds a mate in the inherent duality of Jasmine.
Ah, Jasmine … the floral so perfectly radiant, enticing, poised and elegant that it seems to wear white gloves and be capable of exiting an e-type Jag in a miniskirt with absolute decorum, and yet! There’s an undertone of decay and filth to Jasmine, giving it a seductive appeal that few can resist.
Isabelle Larignon's Bangla Yasaman understands and exploits Jasmine’s devilish power to heavenly effect, fulfilling the Five of Swords demand that you exude absolute confidence and dare to be memorable.
Sainte Cellier Tarot Card Reading One, Coins & a Sword, can be purchased here.