My husband calls me Patchouli Girl. It seems I smell like it more often than not. He happens to like the smell. Other people, like the man in line behind me at the market this morning, took a big sniff and mumbled, ‘what’s that smell?“ he sniffed a bit more in my direction and then backed-off slightly with a disgusted look on his face. You either love it or hate it. It seems to garner extreme reactions. The image of touring hippies who have not showered in weeks might come to mind. Or it makes you feel euphoric, sexy and peaceful. Maybe you’ve never even thought about it, but if you’re a woman who has ever wore perfume, I bet you’ve worn patchouli.. Interestingly enough, patchouli is used as a base in almost all women’s perfumes that are produced for the market (it works as a fixative, holding all the other scents together). So if you wear perfume, most likely you are wearing patchouli.
Patchouli has nice yellow color and when it’s pure it’s gooey and sticky and you can feel it cling to your skin. It’s never sweet, just dirty mixed with wood, but high mountain dirt, or East Indian dirt, or even sand. It‘s smoky and a bit medicinal. It’s mossy and dark. It’s inner. It smells amazing when mixed with sweet orange (probably 7 drops patchouli to 1 drop orange). I know a lot of people are really turned off by it, or least by it’s association, but once preconceived notions are dropped and the scent from the leaf of this magnificent plant travels inside, lingering in the nostrils just for a few seconds before it hits the body’s meridian highways, visiting the brain, the heart and the gut, you might just feel different about this evergreen bush.
The first time I smelled patchouli I was at a10,000 Maniacs concert. I was 15 years old at the most. I remember I had on light blue faded jean jacket, that powdery color, with slightly puffy sleeves that pleated by the wrists and had a waist that cinched right at the actual waist, which would tell me it was barely 1990. The jacket belonged to my friend Leigh Ann who was at the concert with me. Her mom dropped us off in their Dodge Minivan off and my mom was picking us up in The Olds Delta 88 at 11pm even though the show ended at midnight. We wandered the scene trying to not to feel like the 2 geeky kids we were, our mouths full of metal and mini-rubber bands and our faces lightly sprinkled with blackheads. We had never been to a real concert before We were too self-conscious and uptight to be dancing. We were just on the verge of blossoming and no idea what we truly possessed. As far as we were concerned, we did not fall in the category of beautiful of people who could have fun and dance.
We weren’t old or bad enough to be hanging out with the hot anarchist boys that I secretly physically and intellectually lusted after. They slouched in black trench coats and long bangs with army green messenger bags adorned with Ramones and Sex Pistol and Capitola A patches. They wore wire-rim glasses and read books by Jim Carol and Kathy Acker. I certainly wasn’t openly outraged about life enough to hang near them. I did not come clean with my true self until a couple years later. At this point I curled or straightened my hair daily and sprayed my bangs, wore pastels and was a cheerleader. I owned nothing black. Leigh Ann and I wandered trying to find a spot to hide so we could listen to the music. We settled in near a crowd of hippie-types ranging from 16-45 years old. There were even some toddlers on parents shoulders. This seemed like a safe spot for us. There was a lot of spinning and head nodding and rainbow shades bright enough to be apparent in the dark performance light. People smiled and closed their eyes. We settled down on the bleachers and watched them dance amoeba-like to music we loved.
The Maniacs were just getting into songs from the EP Lilydale, named after a small 150 year old community/village of psychics and mediums that’s located 25 miles north of where my home was. I self-consciously bobbed my head and rocked to music, feeling stiff and paranoid that people would see my lack of rhythm. I really wanted to get up and dance, too. I remember the urge was so overwhelming my muscles burned, my feet threatened to push into the ground and lift me up, but my fear and insecurity still reigned there was no way I was going to dance. I settled in on listening. I smelled something in the air I had only thought I’d experienced before with body odor. I leaned over and loudly asked Leigh Ann if someone smelled like really strong B.O. She thought it smelled like pot, although she have never smelled pot before. It was neither B.O nor the Kind Bud. Later I would discover it was patchouli oil and this part of the room reeked of it. I was intrigued. I took on deep breathing. Something about the smell made me feel good about myself, this concert, these people. The world. The live music, the bodies moving, the smell. I felt alive.
We headed to take a bathroom break where a nice girl in an acid wash mini-skirt and clutch purse offered us swigs of Rumplmintz. It was a sweet booze that tasted like minty mouthwash going down (and up). The angelic harmonies of Natalie Merchant along with the fiddles and the congas started to pump through my blood and my body got warm. I realized that it was places like these that gave me faith. To gather together an the name of sound; that was going to be my religion. That night was defining for me. Patchouli lingered in the stuffy, musky air. I sensed something magical happening in my dull, small-town life. Soon after that night my path would cross with this bands which would lead me to cross paths with many other musicians throughout the rest of my life. That musky-scented night that lead me to a 15-year-old mini-epiphany: earthy smells and music were to be a big part of my future.
I didn’t start wearing patchouli until late college, summer going into my senior year. It was the year Jerry Garcia passed and my boyfriend (also named Jerry) got rid of me and my manic passionate self once and for all. I stopped going to Dead Shows because Boyfriend Jerry was the person I’d go with. Though, the night Jerry Garcia had a heart attack and died Boyfriend Jerry did come over to my apartment for an In-Mourning Fuck. Soon after that incident I bought a bottle of patchouli at small herb store where I went to investigate herbs that might work like the morning after pill, just in case that In-Mourning fuck had indeed reincarnated Jerry Garcia (thankfully it had not). Although I loved smelling patchouli, I just never wore it. I let the bottle sit in my drawer for a while. I think Patchouli just said something about you at my wanna-be Ivy League university, in my pre-law/politics department: hairy armpits and extreme bong-hits (both of which I explored more than often but you couldn‘t tell by looking at or smelling me). I was best to stick to smelling like a freshly opened Con-Law text book and cafeteria hot cocoa. Soon after my break-up a friend of mine gave me a mixed tape of west coast hip-hop, dub reggae, and mushroom jazz and I became beat junkie. A dancer. A DJ Groupie. And it inspired me to drench myself in my patchouli; it was the earth, the beat, the roots. And I wore tons and tons of it. I put it in my lotion, in my shampoo, in my underwear. Straight on my face and hair. I felt wonderfully juxtapose in my hippy and earthy scent, listening to KRS-One, A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul.
And I never stopped wearing it. It is the one thing that remains consistent in my life.
When I feel plain and tired. Self-conscious. Flabby. I race to find my patchouli vile and drip some out all up and down my arm, on my neck, in my hands and then rub my hair and I transform to strong and sultry, part-seductress part mama earth. I consciously wore it every night before bed when trying to conceive Mia, dabbing it around, thinking it would help awaken my fertility call. I used to wear it mixed with orange before going to Bill’s shows just to set my mood. Patchouli lures some people in. Catches them it’s nectar. Let’s them float in it’s mystery for a bit then pushes them down, grounding them, rooting them in their own intimate soil.. It attracts. It softens. It opens.
Bill and I made our own wedding invitations. We bought large pieces of hand made fibrous paper and envelopes from a local fiber shop. We hand ripped each invitation square and hand feed each one into a printer (actually, after many failed attempts and a lot of wasted paper, we paid someone to do that). We made a rubber stamp of an old pagan symbol and stamped each invite. When they were all stuffed and ready to be sealed, we sprinkled a bit of slightly crushed dried patchouli leaves in each envelope. Most people loved the smell when they opened the opened the envelope and found dried botanicals along with a request for their presence deep in the forest around the Adirondack Wilderness of New York. .
Patchouli as an herb is good for ritual.. I am one of those you believes in plant magic. Medicinal plants and herbs and trees are earth’s soul food. Not only can the nourish us physically, they can be spiritual guides and healers. To use plants as guides and allies we must listen to them, smell them, talk to them, wear them and eat them with utter respect. They will talk to you and reveal their uniquely individual personality. As we sprinkled it in our wedding invites, practiced visualizing and invoking a feeling of what we wanted at our wedding, relaxed and tranquil ceremony, intimate and cozy dinner reception for family and friends and high-energy, drunken after-party at a dark little club we reserved after-ward so my dad didn’t have to have pay a 10-hour open bar tab for fun-loving night owl family and friends. We knew the patchouli offering would bring us tranquility and fertility, 2 of it’s well-known gifts to us. We sealed our intent and love inside those envelopes. Indeed, our wedding was peaceful and tranquil, and sure enough we conceived less than 3 months later.
I burned a patchouli, sage and cedarwood candle at both of my daughters births and post-partum days.
I keep a little jar in my kitchen, main play area of my house. When things start getting hectic, when Mia is chasing Sula with her drumsticks, or feeding her the dog’s food, or demanding things that are just not in her cards for that day and screaming when I try to explain that, I whip out my vile of patchouli. When I start to feel that heat rise in my stomach and that jaw start to clench and those shoulders rise…I take out the bottle, drop some my wrists and make a big deal of sniffing it in and breathing. Then I drop a ¼ drop on the girls wrists and they rub it around their skin a bit and take big elaborate breaths in. Then hopefully we are back to being a more gentle, creative and fun bunch.
One of my favorite yoga classes to teach was a Yin class, also known as Taoist Yoga. I taught it at night, as the early morning and evening are the best time to practice Yin. Yin yoga is very soft and gentle, muscles are discouraged from being used. Instead they are softened to the point of mush. It’s not easy yoga at first. Poses are held for at least three minutes and the breath is easy and natural. You are demanding the body to relax, a body that is mostly likely not used to stilling and opening this intensively. So I taught by candlelight and always burned a mix of patchouli and ylang ylang. The blend mellowed the vibes and helped erased the tensions of the day, while opening the third eye and playing a came of come hither with your softest, easiest body.
Using plants and herbs oils and teas and tinctures really are Wise Woman ways, ancient ways of medicine. Green medicine. As one of my herbal mentors calls this kind of healing spiralic (instead of linear or cyclical). There is no beginning or end, just dance of respect and belief and connection. The best way to learn about it is to be with it, use it, and if you are so inclined, converse with and develop a relationship with it, and of course, read all about it. The refreshing thing about this type of medicine is that it is self-empowering. No formal educations or great amounts of money need be spent. There is a green library waiting for us to browse. It takes only the cost of seeds and time to cultivate, or dried herbs or walking shoes to explore overgrown urban lots or preserved areas and a handbook on what wild medicines grown locally.
I wonder where this smell lays in my own personal karmic pathcouli history? Was I Malaysian? It has it’s original roots there and the Philippians. It’s also found in most tropical regions around. Was I cultivator? Harvester? Distiller? Medicine Woman? Alchemist? Incense roller? Or just a women, a mama, a sister, a friend, living more in time and pace with our home I nature. Living more aware and grateful of the bountiful gifts of health and wellness that truly can’t be bought, but more importantly can be planted and loved, cultivated and harvested, crafted and shared.
Fun Patchouli Facts:
-Patchouli is an amazing anti-inflammatory for the skin
- It tones and tightens and can even help reduce the appearance of cellulite.
-It helps in taming acne, eczema, and dermatitis as well.
-It’s often found as an ingredient in anti-wrinkle tonics
-It regulates oily skin and dandruff.
-It’s used as a mild anti-depressant
-It’s an aphrodisiac
-It’s a good bug repellent
-It’s an antiseptic.
-It’s invaluable to mothers after birth. A few drops in some almond oil or salve and applied to the fanny and those burning hemorrhoids might just shrink down..
