"As a response to the impossible possibility, we now have the elixir at the center of the workshop. It sits in a glass vial with a long neck, sealed with a cork. A drop of its universal love potion will be added to each of our perfumes to create the momentum, the vital link with nature, and to release us from our human ethnocentrism.
A little crazy and idealistic, with the enthusiasm of beginners, we set out to create a tangible elixir of universal love. A magical, alchemical stone that would transform us as well as those who would come into contact with it. By dissolving parts of the whole, a little bit of each of the mineral, vegetable, animal and human realms, the elixir would link all dualities together, a link of universal love that would seal the particles of the universe.
Our mission was to create a medicine for the world that, with a single drop of its power, would trigger like lightning the direction towards the path of reconnecting our humanity with the rest of the world. A medicine qualified by the eccentric people, which no one would be obligated to take, and whose ambition was nothing less than the sacred union of dualities, of day and night, of the Moon and the Sun, of the Queen and the King, and of the high and the low.
With some excitement and without truly knowing the way, we embarked on the elaboration of what the alchemists call the "Red Work," the Philosopher's Stone. We found the recipe in old books: "At the appointed time, visit the interior of the earth, rectifying you will find the hidden stone, the true medicine." Somewhat obscure, as often with alchemical writings, we understood that we had to delve into the secrets of matter to find a light, a love potion that would become universal medicine.
We prepared ourselves diligently for the event. Each of us took a part of the mineral matter and collected all sorts of rocks. Pebbles from the seashore, calcites and schistose marls in the soil we cultivated, which we associated with finely ground quartz. We crushed them all together with a mortar and then baked them in the oven, our wood stove becoming the alchemist's athanor for the occasion. After the calcination of these mineral powders, we ground them again, washed them in alcohol vinegar, and finally in rosemary hydrosol to extract a transparent salt.
In a second step, each of us added a part of the plant matter. I poured olive oil into a bowl and, by olfactory intuition, added copaiba balm, essential oils of pine, vetiver, patchouli, rosemary, tulsi, noble laurel, mint, and sage, joining the formula with a drop of rose. Then, using a glass still, the soxhlet that extracts the spirit of the plant with alcohol, I distilled other plants that grew here and there, such as hellebore, eucalyptus, rue, laurel, juniper, vine, lavender, and a branch of mistletoe found on a pine tree. Léa chose rose and helichrysum, which she distilled in contact with pink quartz crystals.
Finally, we combined our respective potions elaborated on each side of the feminine and masculine. We circulated them together in the alembic to evacuate the first vapors, before exposing them for a whole day, from full moon to full sun.
We let them rest until the new moon in the cave, dug on the sunny side of the mountain. The alchemists say that the remedy is incubated in the compost of the earth, like the child in the womb of its mother.
During a slightly solemn ceremony, we removed the alembic from its cave. From its stay, it was draped in a beautiful red ruby. We were going to put a drop of this Vegetable Stone in each of our perfumes to give their material the carrying intentions, those of a salt that would make a connection between all things by distilling universal love.
As a response to the impossible possible, the elixir now sits at the center of the workshop. It sits in its long-necked glass vial sealed with a cork stopper. A drop of its universal love potion will be poured into each of our perfumes to create the momentum, the vital link with nature, and to free us from our human ethnocentrism in which we are trapped.
Extract from the book "A l'eau sauvage" by Eric Roux Reiffsteck, release planned in 2023.