February 5, 2024 at 12:50 pm (Camphor, Borneol, Cedar, Incense, Juniper, Mastic, Mermade Magickal Arts, Mike, Myrrh, United States)
This was going to be a bit larger of a Mermade review except that often some goodies just sell out fast, so I couldn’t get to Light of the Forest in time, which is a shame as I’m starting to feel like I need to buy anything with larch in it right away and I was really psyched over how good that one was; so much of it is just seeing what a different artist does with the materials after experiencing some of the classic Espirit de la Nature scents with larch featured.
This isn’t the first time I’ve tried Mermade’s Cedar Chest but going back through the reviews, it doesn’t look like I ever got to the last one either!
But with incense, you know the prize attributes of good aloeswood and sandalwood, but I’ve always been a big fan of cedarwood as well, possibly because depending on the type of cedar it can be quite different from incense to incense. Katlyn’s imaginative take on the hope chest, which sort of evokes great fantasy novels where some kids find their grandparent’s secret room and see this big chest in the middle, is actually quite simple, listing only camphor, cedar, juniper, kua myrrh and chios mastic. This gives it a sort of half wood/half resin feel to it with the camphor and cedar right to the front and the resins creating a base for these scents. The chios mastic actually had me thinking of the more citrus-leaning frankincenses until I saw this list, but I like the way the resins really mostly point at either the rest of this secret room or maybe the secrets in the chest. They lean somewhere close to lemon or grapefruit and I really like the way they combine with the wood for a bit of spiciness. The cedar feels like the scent we’re largely used to in the western US, unless I’m mistaken, but the camphor kind of magnifies the aromatics quite a bit (don’t get me started on camphor, one of my favorites!), it has such power and is so evocative of antique storage, largely due to its use in insect repellents left in closets (or chests!) I’d imagine a lot of the juniper plays its way in this mix as well.
There’s something about some aromatics that just kind of dip into the archetypal or the nostalgic and gain a kind of power from that, as the relationship between scent and memory is so key to experience. I love that Katlyn tunes into this in so many of her incenses and this is a perfect example. And even since I looked last, she’s put up three new blends that also look amazing!
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January 3, 2024 at 2:49 pm (Anise, Artemisia (Mugwort, Wormwood), Balsam, Benzoin (Loban), Bitter Orange (Neroli), Black Currant, Camphor, Borneol, Canada, Carnation, Cedar, Copal, Esprit de la Nature, Fir, Frankincense, Galbanum, Hay, Incense, Juniper, Labdanum, Larch, Massoia Bark, Mastic, Mermade Magickal Arts, Mike, Myrrh, Orange, Ornifolia, Pine / Pinon, Sandalwood, Spice (Cinnamon Clove Nutmeg etc.), Styrax Liquidambar, Sweetgrass, United States, Vanilla)
So first of all, Happy New Year to all, this is the first review of 2024. I am happy to report that I got a lot of review work done and so expect to see reviews every third day until sometime in February. Thanks also to Katlyn Breene of Mermade Magickal Arts who has always been a big supporter of ORS, this will hopefully be the first of two reviews of her recent incenses, which are as good as they always are, if not better.
I can’t really imagine a holiday/Winter Solstice season without the incenses of Mermade Magickal Arts,, Katlyn’s wintery blends have been among my favorite heatable incenses for the last decade or two, in fact if you look at the reviews index you’ll see a whole lot of them have gone by. Some like Wild Wood are now perennials, if not classics. While you can get greenness in stick incense, I’m not sure you can ever get it in the sort of resolution where different kinds of evergreens – pine, spruce, fir, juniper etc – actually contour the whole palette of an incense. And even beyond these green wonders, Katlyn has experimented nearly every year coming up with all sorts of treats in the winter tradition. And like with my review on Dimension 5, I really should mention that I don’t think Mermade has steered off of making great incenses ever since I first discovered them, before I even started ORS, so if you’re picking up a bias, then yeah I will gladly own it, in fact I’d suggest if you’ve tried any of her incenses you may have also picked it up too. Katlyn is the premiere artist of these sorts of incenses in the US and this group is another bunch of quality scents. In fact what really impressed me this time was how long lasting they were. I accidentally left my heater on high with Winter Wreath sitting on it overnight and I swear it was still emitting a great scent the next morning, so these are also incredibly long-lasting scents.
But before we get to the winter incenses, let’s pop back to the autumn for Mermade’s Demeter’s Bakery. As soon as I had this heating, I started getting a sense of nostalgia about the scent. Over time I realized that it was reminding me in some sense of an old Nu Essence blend that I think was the Pluto. I scrambled back through our archives and realized Ross had reviewed this one many moons ago; however, I think I only matched up the benzoin as being overlapping. But the thing is, the longer you heat Demeter’s Bakery, the more it sort of transforms and modulates over time and so it even began to move past this later in the heat. The incense has a huge, yummy list of goodies in it: Omani black frankincense, Kua myrrh, Yemeni myrrh, ornifolia resin, massoia bark, anise seeds, Saigon cinnamon, benzoin, hay absolute, vanilla, Peru balsam, and black currant absolute. Once I gave this a second heat at the suggested temperature of about 230C, I noticed once again that similarity to Pluto, but where it felt like that aroma was created a bit by the sandalwood and bitter almond, here it’s much harder to call except that this is very much like a heated bakery good all the way through with that bit of yeast to get the bread to rise. Of course part of this is all the spices and the vanilla, but it seems almost facile to just talk about the cinnamon when there is so much going on at the spice level here, it’s like a rainbow of scent. But that sugar spice smell is right at the center of this and makes it oh so friendly. It’s funny with incense I often don’t even think of how important baked good are to our olfactory senses, how important cooking memories are to our olfactory experience. What’s clever about this one is it seems to start with those memories but then runs in a whole new direction with them. The second phase of the heat, feels like some of the moistness of the scent gives way to a more austere dry quality almost as if your baked good is finishing up. I think some of this is dependent on how much resin is in the heater cup and much later in the heat when its exhausted, some of the frankincense and myrrh remains give it a different quality as well. All in all this is some really fine work and somewhat different for Mermade as well.
I have probably brought this up before (I seem to remember doing so recently with the Temple of Incense Festive Kiss which is certainly in the same spirit) but one of my early memories was a recipe my mom made called “spiced tea.” It was a very 70s sort of thing with Tang powder, Lipton tea and spices. It had loads of sugar and smelled amazing so of course I loved it. Mermade’s Pomander is an almost 100% accurate representation of how I remember it smelling so this one moved pretty quickly to one of my very favorite incenses this year. In an environment where the most prized scents are rare woods or ingredients it’s always good to know that something a lot more conventional can do the trick as well. However the trick to this is that it’s not created conventionally but with a whole lot of artistic skill to make sure this is a real delight. If I have the list right, I read the ingredients as Carmel benzoin; labdanum absolute; Peru balsam; aromatic winter spices; Saigon cinnamon; clove; carnation absolute; bitter orange essential oil and orange zest; green, honey and silver frankincense; kua crimson; Yemeni myrrh; Mysore sandalwood; styrax liquidambar; and vanilla. What I love about all of this is just how it all coalesces into a simple but powerful spiced orange incense. It is just utterly perfect and I can’t recommend it more highly.
Winter Wreath is another classic winter green mix, Katlyn has gotten so good at these over the last couple of decades that I don’t expect anything less than top notch. This mix seems to have a bit of an herbal component to it that mixes it up a bit (it may just be some of the cedar touches), but it just ends up enhancing the increasingly high resolution mix of the usual wonderful ingredients: fir balsam resin and needles, Aleppo and Sweet Pinon pine, arbor vitae (Thuja cedar) and red cedar – you can nearly pick each one out in the mix, an amazing thing with evergreens all this close in family. These scents are all magnified by the resin mix of copal blanco, Oman frankincense sacra, and kua myrrh in the usual manner, giving that real depth to the top green scents. One thing I love about this resin mix is a lot of lime is coming out of the bottom which I assume is probably the quality of the copal blanco in the mix. It makes me think back to some of the older winter blends in the sense that this quality has shown up before, but this is probably one of the first times I’ve really noticed it, it’s such a powerful note that I’m reminded of key lime pie. It blends absolutely perfectly with all the wonderful evergreen notes as well. The myrrh seems to be more in the mix later in the heat, transmuting the blend into something different, almost wistful and poignant. It’s hard to say more, if you’re a long time customer of Katlyn’s then you probably know this kind of thing very well and if you aren’t it’s a perfect way in. Like I mentioned earlier, this a blend that heats for ages too, I can imagine getting at least 12 hours of a heat if you fill a foil container about half full or so.
And not terribly far from Winter Wreath is the Espirit de la Nature offering The Light Mothers, an incense offered as a pair with The Dark Mothers, both presenting different winter energies for the season. Unfortunately these two sold out right before I posted this, but I’m leaving the review for posterity (and a reminder that EdlN incenses often go really fast at Mermade!) This incense has a really sizeable list of ingredients including balsam fir resin, larch wood, juniper berries, cedarwood, larch needles, balsam fir needles, cedarwood, mugwort, sweetgrass, tree mosses, pinyon pine resin, pinus sylvestris resin, mastic resin, galbanum resin, camphor flakes, amanita muscaria mushrooms, as well as extracts of balsam fir, juniper berry, and cedar. As you can tell in the picture these come as pieces, although it looks like the mushrooms are in there as larger chunks. Those versed in Bonnie’s intensely personalized style of incense will be familiar with her careful and gentle approach. But while all of her creations are really subtle and widely resonant, this one is a bit louder in the mix, which is good for my oversaturated olfactory organs. While this incense shares some ingredients with Winter Wreath, it definitely goes in a different direction without that resinous backdrop, creating a similar aromatic depth with the extracts. To the fore are the larch ingredients and this might be only something I got by trying a couple of EdlN’s earlier blends with this magic scent involved, but it’s an unforgettable scent, one I almost immediately purchase anything with it in it. As always even this wide variety of ingredients can usually be detected with some guided sniffing, I’m always impressed with the way Bonnie puts so many voices together until it feels steered by one greater entity. Utterly brilliant work.
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July 3, 2023 at 7:11 pm (Agarwood / Aloeswood / Eaglewood, Benzoin (Loban), Black Currant, Calamus, Camphor, Borneol, Copal, Dragon's Blood, Frankincense, Grapefruit, Honey, Honeysuckle, Incense, Juniper, Labdanum, Lily, Mandarin, Mastic, Mermade Magickal Arts, Mike, Myrrh, Orange, Pine / Pinon, Raisin, Rose, Sandalwood, Sandarac, Tangerine, Tobacco, United States, Vanilla)
Before I took a look at the ingredients list of Bacchant, my initial impression was that it was something of a cousin to Holy Woods, as it seemed to hint a bit at the same minty notes on top. But then when I did look at them and then reheat the last piece in my sample, I felt like maybe the similarity was more the labdanum resin as there is a really obvious and clear-in-front black currant note (it reminds me of the pastilles I used to love when I was a child in England) that is the incense’s dominant front, ahead of that uniquely resinous labdanum center. This middle is something more caramel-confection sweet and I would imagine the vanilla has a lot to do with this, due to its use in cooking. There is a feeling that this is a bit close to some aspects of the Mermade kyphi (the raisins and honey I’d imagine), but I would also think the black currant is doing something analagous here to that almost wine-like scent you get in kyphis; when you tune into this the overall impression does seem quite Dionysian but equally as autumnal and season-related. There are also some similarities with some of Mermade’s green blends, although it isn’t one on its own. Overall, this has something of a feel of a fusion of a number of different directions of late, but the center of it feels quite decadent and sweet, a feeling of a wild party in swing. I also noticed on one or two occasions that the herb and flower mix the pieces come in can impart wholly different qualities on top that are quite fascinating, So certainly a unique new Mermade direction here.
I reviewed a previous vintage of Sandalwood Dragon here. The current vintage still seems pretty close and has about as much to do with the camphor as it does the sandalwood, it’s a pairing that really brings out some unique notes. It was interesting reading my thoughts on the previous version with the lime and citrus as this one has struck me separately as more in the orange/citrus range so I am not sure if this just a new and different take on it or there’s been some different character imparted by the frankincense and myrrh mix. But if you can imagine a sort of three-way conference among the sandalwood base, the picture-perfect camphor scent and the resin mix then you’ll get some idea of where this blend is coming from and how intricately everything interacts. I have yet to get the balance right with the heater on it as it seems like a lot of the top notes go too fast if you put it up high (which you may naturally do with sandalwood), but that initial mix is extremely beautiful, amd I hope to get the hang of it soon!
When I was young I used to bike to a record store that was next door to another store that sold stringed instruments. I wasn’t reminded of it until I first heated Luthier. On the face of it, this is an incense that actually looks almost exactly like a traditional catholic blend, but it seems mostly based on a mix of pine resin, copals and mastic, and you can actually smell all three of them quite clearly. You can find a description of the scent Kat was inspired by with this one and it really does capture an “incense [that] is created from the resins traditionally used in the crafting of violin varnish.” It’s a bit quieter than a resin mix that is catholic based which is pretty typical of these resins, but their scent really seems to match the smell of a classic instrument store. Part of it is that the resinous qualities of the wood really lean more to the sorts of turpentine-like scents you get in a wood shop, something that always makes me feel a bit nostalgic. A really wonderful and unique incense, something I am not sure if anyone has introduced to the market to date.
I would have probably liked Tangerine Dream whatever the blend was, let’s be honest, I’ve been a fan of the group since I was a teenager, so I love the tip on this one (and I had a neat synch reading Alastair Reynolds’ Redemption Ark, where a planet is also named Tangerine Dream, the night before I posted this!). And where I would normally argue how hard it is to get anything fruity in an incense right, Katlyn absolutely nails the tangerine scent in this one (the essential oil really does work here) and then marries it with a unique floral-fruity background into something very pretty and quite uncommon on the market at the moment. It reminds me of art where you have one central color that dissipates into other colors, all remaining complementary of the center. Also, in case you think I know what I’m doing, on my first two heats I didn’t even notice that the incense is actually the little kyphi-like pieces, because they were quite buried in the mix of flowers (in fact in this case it seems like there’s more floral than pieces)! The ingredients here are Crimson Kua myrrh, Sultan’s Green frankincense, Mysore sandalwood, benzoin, dragon’s blood resin, calamus root, oils blended with Nepali anthropogen flowers, tangerine, ruby grapefruit, blood orange, red mandarin, rose Anatolian, ginger lily, and honeysuckle melange (White Lotus). Much of this gigantic list I noticed as I added it to this review, for sure the dragon’s blood, the florals, the grapefruit, blood orange and others. It’s a very complex fruity-floral and really strikingly beautiful – you don’t just get a general tangerine scent, but it feels like you get the peel and the juice and then a whole bunch of additions that help play off the central notes.
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June 26, 2023 at 9:31 am (Animal, Balsam, Benzoin (Loban), Breu Claro, Canada, Chocolate, Costus, Esprit de la Nature, Frankincense, Honey, Incense, Labdanum, Mermade Magickal Arts, Mike, Musk, Myrrh, Oud, Palo Santo, Raisin, Rosewood, Sage, Sandalwood, Sweetgrass, Tobacco, United States, Vanilla)
It is particularly difficult in the first half of the year to keep up with the sheer amount of brilliant incense art that both Bonnie Kerr and Katlyn Breene spin out over this period, and it can be hard to get to things before they sell out. Hopefully this guide will be helpful to readers, and there will certainly be a second round up in the (very) near future as Mermade has just released a number of intriguing new scents. The current four I have sat with a bit longer, so I wanted to get my thoughts on them out while you can still go find them.
First of all, I do have to admit something when it comes to the Espirit de la Nature line and that is they can be very quiet incenses and with my level of domicile incense saturation, maybe some personal age, etc., I often can find it very hard to get the right space to smell these and quantify my impressions. For one thing several of Bonnie’s incenses are recommended to heat at lower temperatures, but I have found I have to really sit right by the heater to even catch the scents and the top levels often still go pretty fast. This may not be the case for everyone and it may also be the warmer weather, but it can be a bit tricky. Of course it’s well worth it because the picture you get would put reducing fractals to shame in their complexity and beauty and I’m always amazed at their almost Zen-like balance.
Balsam Coast is probably a bit stronger than the more floral based incenses so the balsam centrality along with a lovely sense of clay and floral in the mix cuts through. The mix is a really impressive and very different South American themed incense that even with the inclusion of palo santo and sweetgrass is actually quite different to the blends that Katlyn creates that are more based on copals. I very much love balsamic qualities in incense especially those that border on ambers and while there is some hints of that here I think this is a very new direction. It sort of dissolves into this almost gooey like marzipan direction with some slight nuttiness in the background by the midpoint that is utterly gorgeous. But the back end of the burn really brings out this sense of clay more with earthier notes more reminiscent of patchouli or vetivert. A brilliant achievement indeed to have that many things going on with one tiny nugget. It is running out quite quickly, there was only one left on Mermade when I checked, so it may be worth reaching out to Bonnie if you miss it.
Kama Sutra, however, is like what I alluded to earlier, in order to even get some idea of the scent, I have to sit right next to the heater and bend my head over, it is that subtle (or maybe I have some personal scent blockers in my make up somewhere!) It is an incense that seems largely a vehicle for muskrat musk with a lot of interesting resins and infused resins in a mix. You can definitely tell this is a musk incense, it definitely has that sort of sweet animalic scent you tend to expect, but the question here is how much of it interacts with the rest of the scents to provide what is a lot of almost liquor like notes and even some interesting floral aspects. Part of my difficulty is that this comes off so low that you are almost teased by the incenses subtleties, there’s something kind of new and unknown that actually fuels one’s fascination. And of course one is pulled along by the name to imagine the intent of this was to work more on a pheremonal sort of level (in a way I don’t want to quite spoil what direction I’m thinking in here, but reading the description at the page might give enough clues). Overall though, I tried heating this a few times, but largely struggled to get over the threshold with it at least in terms of how I’d normally analyze an incense. Those with higher intolerances to heavier and smokier aromas might actually find this more to their resolution, but if one thinks a bit more laterally here, this is quite interesting indeed maybe even paradigm shattering. I’d certainly love to imagine more experiments in this direction, it kind of forces one to approach the incense both more intuitively and at the serpent level. Unfortunately in this case the incense had sold out by the time I posted this, so it may be worth checking with Bonnie if you’re interested.
Cafe Arabic attempts something like a mix of coffee and oud. The ingredients listed here start with dark cocoa, and include a blend of Oman frankincense, Tolu balsam, and benzoin; genuine honey tobacco absolute; and agarwood. Mermade explains, “It is bound with raw labdanum resin and specially prepared honey and raisins in calvados. Also, a generous dose of oud was added to elevate this blend, making it a perfect blend for the gourmand and smoke lovers alike.” So in a way one can see this as a sidestep from Mermade kyphis as well as the labdanum experiements of the last few years. Coffee is one of the really difficult aromas to get right in incense. Vedic Vaani, for example, do a few coffees that actually abut on coconut and so the experience is often how does an incense creator move things in that “smell of brewing coffee” direction more. There’s certainly some basis for labdanum, balsam and some aspects of previous kyphis that move in this direction, after all you are kind of looking for a darker sort of scent, but if you’re marrying the coffee with its sweeter cousins in drinks, it gets a bit easier to accomplish. It is fun in a lot of these incenses to see how balsam can be coopted to move in a number of different directions and there is certainly top notes that work well to create a coffee scent. Agarwood and oud also do so in part, and you get that sort of secondary effect of creating something more deluxe with them as well. I tried this out on a couple different heaters to see if I could see how different temperatures volatized this one. I would have thought hotter temperatures would bring out the oud or agarwood more but I was surprised to find the balsamic qualities to be a bit stronger when I turned it up. The coffee is really something of a fleeting top note and the middle is more of a conglomeration of different effects. The honey tobacco absolute in particularly moves this in a sort of harvest-like or summer direction. So in many ways this is something of a chameleon and even though I heated this nearly a half dozen times before I put the review down, it felt like I was still pursing what to say about it.
Holy Wood is a real triumph, it might be my very favorite of all of Katlyn’s South/Central American themed incenses so far. If I was to do a real quick rendering of what this is like for me, it’s almost something like a chocolate-peppermint confection. I’m not always a huge fan of palo santo, so the fact that this contours that ingredient to exemplify everything I do like about it really makes this an attractive and powerful incense for me and something of a revelation. All of the cooling, minty aspects of that wood have been drawn out and I think the mix of it with vanilla, honey and balsam manage to combine to give it that confectionary, sweet feel. I’ve mentioned elsewhere that sage can often have some really interesting sweet notes as well and with three kinds you would think that might herbally overwhelm the incense but it just gives it an interesting sense of lateral depth instead. I would guess from the ingredients what gives it a more darker, chocolate-like sense like you might find in the Cafe Arabic is the labdanum resin, mixed with everything else going on it almost feels like some level of molasses to give it a darker, thicker background. It’s wonderfully named as the overall effect is redolent of a shamanic experience, like a deep cooling mist through Amazonian rainforests. Nice to see this one isn’t running out as I review this either, so be sure to add this to any order you might make, it’s that great.
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January 5, 2023 at 10:47 am (Agarwood / Aloeswood / Eaglewood, Anise, Balsam, Benzoin (Loban), Camphor, Borneol, Cardamom, Cedar, Chamomile, Cypress, Fir, Frankincense, Galbanum, Herbal, Incense, Incense Notes/Samplers, Jasmine, Juniper, Kyphi, Labdanum, Lotus, Mastic, Mermade Magickal Arts, Mike, Pine / Pinon, Sandalwood, Spice (Cinnamon Clove Nutmeg etc.), Styrax Liquidambar, Sweetgrass, Tea, Tobacco, United States, Veronica)
I just posted the last two articles for my Gokula series today as Gokula is running a 20% off sale through 1/8, so I figured if you hadn’t checked the line out yet now is a perfect time! There are some definite goodies in their gigantic line and there’s actually a whole back half I didn’t review that are Mahavadhas sourced, so if you come across any of those that are good, do let us know in one of the Gokula post threads! Anyway, this takes us nearly to the end of the reviews stored up from last year, there may be a couple more to trickle in. More on this in a sec…
As I’ve been taking it easy over the holidays, I haven’t had too much of a chance to review or evaluate anything, but I did want to mention a few more Mermade Magickal Arts goodies. These aren’t intense reviews as I basically love all Mermade incenses which definitely all deserve deeper dives, but Katlyn tends to always be really busy during the holiday season and releases quite a few new vintages and I wanted to get in my thoughts before they’re gone. It was really nice to see Baccy Claus again, it’s at least the second vintage but I would guess the batch I had previously was before we started ORS up again. This one seems an improvement, never a surprise with Katlyn’s work, almost as if the middle had been brought up to match that peppery herbal note that makes this a scent unique in her catalog (think a mix of tobacco and herbal with the greener evergreen notes cradling this top scent). This one even has some unique elements in the mix with a touch of Amanita and Sativa, I’ve had the pleasure of an incense or two in the long past where Kat will mix something like this in and the results are always special and a bit different from the normal catalog. So certainly this is one to add to your cart right away.
Also checked out was her latest vintage of the Classic Kyphi, as I have long stated on these pages the Mermade kyphis are always well worth checking out, although I have been really unable to plumb the depths of this one quite yet. It’s really impossible to evaluate something this complex after just a sitting, but this will certainly be out right next to the heater over the next month. Some of the most recent kyphis strike me almost like drier wines compared to the sweeter ones, if you need an overall take. Forest Honey seems like a new experimental merging of two of her lines (say Sweet Medicine and Wild Wood for example) and is quite a bit different from Kat’s usual green holiday mix and a welcome variation. As always you get that great balance that allows you to experience both sides of the scent. But once again, I still need to dig out the time to really sit with it. Similarly with the Jasmine Dreams. I spend a lot of time both reviewing and evaluating and largely getting really fatigued by jasmine incenses over the last year, so it was great to get back to one that really highlights how good it can be. Perhaps part of the reason is this has a lot of green frankincense and repeat customers generally know how high quality this frankincense can be from Mermade. But this has a real nice peach note (resin seems to help bring this out) that you can often get out of the better jasmines and it seems like a perfect match with the better frankincense. So overall and as usual, it’s impossible not to recommend all these new treats, not to mention that it looks like Mermade has several Esprit de la Nature goodies in as well which always go really fast. I haven’t tried any of these but they’re always great as well. I would bet Bonnie probably has more at her site!
So with that said while there are probably a few more reviews in the wing to go, we’re reaching the end of the current “season.” This year is unique particularly in that there’s also very little in the current queue to review as well. I think we’ve debating internally that there are things like Satya incenses that I’ve sort of had on the table, but with less time to really review things of late it can be difficult to force yourself to take a look at incenses better worth avoiding. There’s a Review Information link at the top left if you’d like us to review your incenses, just let us know. Happy New Year everyone!
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January 27, 2022 at 3:22 pm (Agarwood / Aloeswood / Eaglewood, Amber, Balsam, Benzoin (Loban), Black Currant, Cakes, Canada, Cedar, Esprit de la Nature, Frankincense, Galbanum, Honey, Incense, Juniper, Kneaded Incense (Nerikoh), Kyphi, Labdanum, Mermade Magickal Arts, Mike, Myrrh, Night Scented Stock, Oud, Palo Santo, Patchouli, Propolis, Resins, Rose, Rosewood, Spice (Cinnamon Clove Nutmeg etc.), Styrax Liquidambar, Tobacco, United States, Vanilla)
It seems like with the new kyphi mechanism in play that there’s been a substantial creative outburst at Mermade in the winter months. Combine that with ORS being in something of a downtime, it can be really hard to keep up and deeply go into some of these new and wonderful scents that Katlyn has been whipping up in winter months, so I thought I’d do my best to try and do some sort of overview to catch up on some things. As I’ve mentioned before, the catalog window for a lot of Mermade goodies is short and often ORS reviews can shorten them a bit more, and even when I start a review page in draft, I have to keep tabs on what is still live or not by the time I’m ready to publish something. And this too, of course, goes for the Espirit de la Nature incenses that show up. It’s often like watching a car zip by.
So let’s start with the Mermade kyphis. I covered Kyphi #2, Goddess Temple, here. I believe the #3 was the green Emerald Temple variant and the #4 was the Amber Kyphi (pictured left), all of which are now gone, at least for the present. If you read the #2 review then you will realize these are largely intriguing variants of the same sort of kyphi base with a new front. All of them are wonderfully etched in detail and I’m just generally of the opinion that if you see a Mermade kyphi go up for a sale then it’s a good idea to start planning an order. The amber variant did not last long at all and it is a really wonderful incense, with the back half connected through this kyphi lineage and the front a wonderfully perfect amber scent, distinct and almost definitive. And I think the #5 variant here (coming soon, will link when live) will be Goddess Temple with Oud (pictured right). I just have a few early samples of this one from Katlyn’s last package but I might have to separate this one from the “usually special and magnificent” to the “particularly special and magnificent” category. I love the way the oud in this one sort of tinges and modifies the kyphi lineage of all these previous incenses. It does so in a way that might create the most significant change of this line of incense. It feels less like it has a new top note and more like the oud has just deeply infused itself into all aspects of the scent. When you think of kyphi as this sort of aged melange of ingredients that all add up to something like an aromatic vintage, the #5 seems to be a really cool leap sideways that might make you feel like you’re trying kyphi all over again.
Another project Katlyn is working on is “incense cakes.” There are three different ones that are all very recent, Cakes for the Queen of Heaven, Rose of Isis and Dionysos. These are all essentially a mix of resins, woods, herbs and spices that are all formulated into small little discs with a stamp applied and mostly mixed in with another natural ingredient. The first blend is subtitled a Mesopotamian incense and includes cedar wood and essential oil; Suhul and Yemeni myrrh; Iranian galbanum; styrax – liquidambar; labdanum resin and absolute; black frankincense; and juniper herb and berries. Not sure if my botany is up to this guess and it’s not in the ingredients, but the cakes look mixed in with eucalyptus leaves or something visually similar. You can actually really suss out the specific ingredients in this mix and one thing I like about it is that a lot of these are not as common in available incenses so you really feel like the styrax and labdanum are quite forward here and the evergreens give it all a more herbal quality than a green one. It all adds up to a nicely mysterious mix that reveals a cool creative take on a regional scent.
Rose of Isis is a bit more straight forward a blend, with the rose and sandalwood mix out in front. The rose comes from three different absolutes, and the sandalwood is the quality Mysore, but in addition there’s Sahul myrrh, Saigon cinnamon, Hougary frankincense, and benzoin; the mix dusted with agarwood powder. I’ve long understood Katlyn to have a really deep connection with Isis energy and have experienced a number of her crafts in this vein both on and off the market to know she is a vessel for it. The rose here is lovely and powerful, redolent even in the fresh tin, in the way that a friendly rose absolute can lead to it being a bit like valentine’s day candy. But there’s not just that element, but a really genuine scent of the actual rose flower that is paired with that. As the heat continues the rose note will tend to fade into the background more, with the myrrh and cinnamon comng in louder towards the late heat. The sandalwood seems a bit milder than you might expect, mostly due to the powerful rose front, but it tends to tie everything together in the background.
Dionysos is something of an incense cake version of one of Katlyn’s older incenses with the same name. In fact this review is still probably fairly spot on in many ways and here you can get this almost vintage spirits sort of vibe just over the fresh cakes in the tin. Part of this I believe is the black currant bud absolute. As a kid who grew up in England in the 70s, black currant was almost ubiquitous in sweets and I loved it. Here it’s modified by some of the other ingredients into kyphi-like age, like a fine intoxicating spirit. There’s classic incense resins (undoubtedly part of what carries the currant), agarwood, juniper berries, sweet tobacco absolute, cassis (also black currant), galbanum and a pinch or two of sativa. I sort of roughly classify this kind of incense into Katlyn’s later summer blends, there’s this sort of feeling of heat and harvest at work, ripe berries, hay and herb. One you definitely would want to pull out at a party, an event much richer with the god of wine in attendance.
There were also a couple new Encense du Monde incenses in the Mermade catalog of late but one blew out incredibly fast and the other might be gone by the time I get this incense live (3 left! Going, going..). This last one left (well they both were!), Giroflee Ordorante, is naturally up to Bonnie’s incredible talent, an incense that boasts a very involved ingredients list: “Matthiola longipeta ssp bicornis enfleuraged [night-scented stock] while still on the stem into benzoin, palo santo and tolu balsam resins, propolis, rose extract, palo santo wood, sandalwood, rosewood, cloves, cinnamon, vanilla, patchouli. Bound with reduced organic honey. Powdered with monarde fistulosa- rose variety.” What I immediately notice with this Nerikoh style blend is the mintiness and balsamic qualities combined, but it’s sort of the layer a lot of complexity sits on, a complexity I am not sure I’d even have the time to get into before this very original blend disappears. I’m not even familiar with what appears to be the main note, the night-scented stock, so I can’t place it in the aroma exactly. So in many ways Giroflee Ordorante is certainly unlike any nerikoh style incense I’ve tried in a Japanese catalog, but it stretches the form in quite the innovative way. These little pellets pack both a massive and quiet aromatic punch with that almost trademark creative touch Bonnie has that feels like fractals disappearing into infinity.
And I’d be amiss to not mention that the latest batch of WildWood is in stock, and while I haven’t tried this latest one yet, it’s certainly in a lineage where I have loved every single one and it is something you’d have to consider a Mermade evergreen classic.
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December 13, 2021 at 4:35 pm (Amanita Muscaria, Artemisia (Mugwort, Wormwood), Balsam, Benzoin (Loban), Cedar, Copal, Elderberry, Esprit de la Nature, Fir, Frankincense, Juniper, Mastic, Mead, Hydromel, Mermade Magickal Arts, Mike, Rosemary, Spruce, United States)
So right about when we turned to ORS holiday time, Mermade Magickal Arts went all festive on us and released a bunch of really yummy new treats. I love all of Katlyn’s work but I might have particular favorites in the whole axis of evergreen/green/winter seasonal incenses that she does and so it was impossible for me not to make an order, and then when I got everything wonderful in, I’m like oh my god how do I share what I am experiencing and write about these on holiday time when a lot of Mermade blends rocket out the door in a few weeks time (or sometimes before I can even write anything). Well I’ll give at least these first two a shot, and although this might not be up to usual review standards, for sure these incenses are up to the usual high Mermade (and Esprit de la Nature) standards. These are two really wonderful incenses.
But let’s first start with one that a periodical and greatly admired contributor to the Mermade catalog has created. As many may be aware of, Be en Foret of Esprit de La Nature is also one of the great artists of heatable incense out there and her new blend The Mothers – Ancient Winter Remembrance is an absolute triumph of the style, one of the finest conifer incense blends ever made. I am still marveling over the complexity, beauty and triumph of this stunning incense, it is literally not to be missed. Look at these ingredients: balsam fir (Abies balsamea) bark, needles, resin, extract; Amanita muscaria mushroom; juniper (Juniperus virginiana) berries; spruce (Picea rubra) needles; hemlock (Tsuga canadensis) needles and extract; cedar (Thuja occidentalis) tips; mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) flowering tops; rosemary (Salvia rosmarinus) leaf extract; tree mosses (Psuedoevernia spp and Usnea spp); pinion pine (Pinus edulis) resin; and poplar (Populus tremoides) buds. All of these ingredients are bound with black elderberries (Sambucus nigra) and homemade hydromel (mead) and mixed with the Amanita muscaria mushrooms.
So the first thing one must look at is that in the overall sense of things we’re usually used to pine scents, perhaps balsamic scents and so forth when we talk about evergreens and conifers. It’s that experience of walking through a forest in cool mountainous air and experiencing the whole unified scent that so many plants combine to create. But there are so many different sorts of plants being used in this one that the aroma becomes so complex it actually starts to become somewhat kyphi-esque in its profile. I mean just sitting here after a second heat and trying to describe everything that goes through my head as I experience this is virtually impossible. First without any listing of something like frankincense, this still has a very resinous scent that one must chalk up to the various tree extracts and materials. The Mothers has a very pleasant, somewhat spicy fruitiness in the mix that is amazingly enjoyable, but this mix isn’t facile, it is deeply complex, aged and beautiful. I smell orange peel and marmalade, caramel, honey and wine, and where Katlyn’s green incenses tend to speak the voice of the Sierra Nevadas with a much greener finish, Be’s has its own unique character that is separate enough that you are likely to find both different species of the same genus. I’m not sure I can speak quite to how something like the amanita speaks through the scent, but the incense does feel like a conglomerate of smaller voices and there is a slightly psychedelic edge on all of this that adds to the choir’s unity. It is that sense of mycorrhizal fungi as a symbiosis of plant and fungi and, as the aroma spreads, human life as well.
Sort of in the reverse (or maybe inverse?) direction of this is Katlyn’s Emerald Temple, a “green” kyphi. One of the reasons I found this fascinating in the description is I sort of imagine kyphis more as brown, purple, or maroon, so I really liked the idea, given Kat’s skill with greeny goodness. The ingredients on this one, always a big list with kyphis, include fir balsam raw resin, green frankincense (Sacra of Oman), copal blanco, fir balsam Absolute, Cedar (Thuja) essential oil, Benzoin Essential oil (molecular distillation), and Chios Mastic. All dusted in green fragrant Arbor vitae (green cedar) powder. I would guess this kyphi is made with the production techniques of the previous kyphi we reviewed. Like some green mixes this also crosses over into lime-like territory, particularly due to the green frankincense and some element of the copal. My grandmother and a few other members of my family used to live in Key Largo for many years and could whip up a great key lime pie, which is what this scent reminds me a lot of with that mix of lime and sweetness. Even something like a lime Jolly Rancher kind of captures that front note. Of course this notable green frankincense note is really just the lead for that typical melange of caramel, wine-like, raisin tinged kyphi base, something that tends to remind me of autumn, except the lime pushes it all into different territory. It’s a nice little divergence from the kyphi norm and a cool little experiment that’s well worth looking into if you like the kyphis that come out of this venerable outfit.
But even as I come to a close here, I really want to remind folks to act fast. I just realized that Katlyn’s stupendously great Lord of the Rings inspired incense Elvish has already gone out of stock, and I can only imagine these two and the wonderful Southern/Central/native American inspired Lucida and the Tibetan inspired Golden Tara are soon to follow. These incenses, as always, show Mermade on the very cutting edge of cross-cultural experimentation with incense scent and culture and I often can not write fast enough to keep up with their demand and in many ways that’s a good thing as it shows their great appeal.
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October 19, 2021 at 6:11 am (Agarwood / Aloeswood / Eaglewood, Frankincense, Galbanum, Incense, Jasmine, Kyphi, Labdanum, Mastic, Mermade Magickal Arts, Mike, Myrrh, Okoume, Pine / Pinon, Sandalwood, Spice (Cinnamon Clove Nutmeg etc.), Styrax Liquidambar, United States)
There’s a virtual history of Mermade kyphis being reviewed at ORS going back to 2011 (and a much longer tradition of Mermade making them) if you take a look at our Reviews Index. The Egyptian Temple incenses known as Kyphi are not only some of the world’s most famous historical blends but they are some of the most involved, complex and fascinating as well. One of the things I find most fascinating about them is that in the right hands a kyphi incense can be both simple and complex, creating a composite aroma out of a large ingredients list. The amount of preparation that goes into one of these incenses can be daunting and based on Katlyn’s words at the incense link, she has devised a new way of blending Kyphis to save both time and energy, which will allow the incense to be made more available. Anyone who has tried a Mermade kyphi knows this is a very good thing indeed.
Reviewing a kyphi may not be as difficult as making one, but it’s a scent that is kind of hard to pin down. I’ve always used something like a fine wine or whiskey because the overall bouquet of a kyphi can be so rich and multi-faceted, usually with a distinct sense of age. It rarely feels like something you can just pick the elements out of, it’s more like the elements come together into something new. There are definitely similarities from one kyphi to another (usually for me it’s whatever the raisins and honey do, if they’re in there). However, I think this vintage, Goddess Temple – Katlyn’s Kyphi #2, is a bit different than previous years. It feels like this is more resin heavy overall. The ingredients listed are frankincense (Hougary, Black Sacra, and Honey), Yemeni myrrh, Pinon pine, labdanum, Chios mastic, Saigon cinnamon, Turkish galbanum, and styrax liquidambar, all dusted with agarwood powder. It’s interesting because this feels more like a modern reformulation of a kyphi, one I wouldn’t be quite as sure of if we weren’t in safe hands with a creator who has spun out years of brilliant kyphi vintages, not a one I didn’t love. While it does feel somewhat different from previous Mermade kyphis, and I’m assuming the #2 is marking the occasion, the feeling that this is still in the style with a lot of depth and creativity is still in place. The notes tend to loom larger than the listed mix with quite a bit of interesting floral activity and heavy spice content that becomes even more noticeable as the incense melts on a heater. I’m not sure if there are raisins or anything like that in the incense, but that sort of defining kyphi note is still in the mix somehow, it’s a scent that reminds me of anything from plums to prunes to raisins. I very much like the idea that this is now an “all year around” kyphi as if you’re a fan of loose incenses kyphi is really one of the first incense types I would recommend. So it is a very cool thing indeed that the availability of this has widened. It is still complex, releases all sorts of subnotes along the timeline of the heat, sings with really quality ingredients, and still has that lovely feeling of fine spirits about it.
Katlyn has done a lot of what I would call lunar blends as well (Temple of the Moon, Mermade Moon, Moon Goddess, and Luna all come to mind). These have what I would call western magical correspondences about them, which means they tend to have some up front jasmine notes. Mermade has done a lot of fine work with jasmine and you may not be surprised that Moon is another solid entry of the type. For this blend she has used Tamil heartwood sandalwood and Jasmine Grandiflorum in a base of Yemeni myrrh, kua, black frankincense, and rare okoume resin, with some Chios mastic drops mixed in. The sandal and jasmine mix is really what is out in front on this one, although it’s perhaps not quite as overtly floral as previous lunar Mermades, and I would guess the okoume resin is giving the entire scent an intriguing subnote, a little bit of a slight gravel that I might liken to some copals and that helps the scent not to get too safe. So overall it’s a bit of a different direction for a lunar, a bit more fruity floral overall with some intriguing wood and resin subnotes to top it off. But I think in the end you will want to visit it for the sandalwood and jasmine mix.
Oh and before I close, there’s great news on the “restock” front in that Sweet Medicine is back in stock. I know I’m incredibly happy to see this beautiful honey and sweetgrass scent become a mainstay, it is one of my favorites in a great line up of goodies, so be absolutely sure to pop off and grab some.
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August 1, 2021 at 7:54 am (Agarwood / Aloeswood / Eaglewood, Benzoin (Loban), Frankincense, Incense, Labdanum, Mermade Magickal Arts, Mike, Myrrh, Resins, United States)
I had to do a little digging to remember the last time I had reviewed Mermade pastilles, and it looks like 2014. I’m assuming I must have missed some interim batches somewhere in between. These pastilles have always been a neat little treasure but I had almost gotten used to thinking of them as variations on resins, although done in a way that they kind of resemble candies. I do remember a Turkish Delight themed incense that I think may have had some relevance to this topic. But I mention all this back history in order to show there’s been quite a bit of creative evolution within this theme as it is. The description of Royal Pastilles includes black frankincense, Yemeni myrrh, Sumatran benzoin … ground finely and carefully melded with labdanum absolute and raw labdanum resin bits. This mixture is “then hand-cut into triangles and dusted with extra fine Agarwood powder.” What strikes me a lot about this particular blend is that these resins almost tend to be a little over to the quieter end compared to the more citrusy green and hougari frankincenses. It creates a lot mellower of a melt overall which doesn’t tend to overpower the woods quite as much, so there feels like kind of nice balance of qualities between both. Once again the way Katlyn has blended the resins and oils to create the main aroma feels almost like some level of bewitching spirit within, I’m almost starting to feel like these are almost potions. There’s just this feeling of some level of brewing and aging within that helps the combination end up being a sum of its parts. In fact this one seems to have some vague hints of Mermade’s Kyphi on a bit lighter of a level. It is fun for me seeing the creativity flourish on such subtle levels.
Which brings me around to something we’ve already talked about for a quick second on ORS and that’s that Mermade finally has the Golden Lotus Heater back in stock again. I’m not sure how long they were out, but it is a wonderful thing that they are finally available again. Ross first reviewed this heater back in 2013. In an era where planned obsolescence is almost a given with electric equipment, my experience with incense heaters is they last a long time (I have a Shoyeido heater and a Golden Lotus and they both still work fantastically 10 and 8 years later) and take this from someone who has left his on overnight accidentally more times than I can have counted through the years. If you’re used to just stick incense and combustibles the world of heated incense is almost an entirely different level and over the years I’ve learned to love all styles pretty warmly, but I will say that you can not beat the way heaters deal with resins, particularly frankincense or multiple resin blends (for my nose there’s always some level of charring going on when frankincense is burned or put on charcoal). There are few specific investments I can recommend on ORS but one of these heaters is definitely one of them (I am also informed that the Subitism burner is well-loved, but it is leagues more expensive and likely to be well outside of many budgets). In fact I’m sure there are creators beyond Mermade such as Esprit de la Nature who may very well designs incenses with the Golden Lotus heater specifically in mind for their creations. The heaters are super easy to use, they make loose incense go for potentially hours and they are perhaps most importantly smoke free and mandatory if you are one of those people who love aromatics but not the smoke. So it’s really an essential purchase for the incense head and I might add that heating stick incense on heaters can also reveal entirely new facets of your incense as well.
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July 25, 2021 at 9:02 am (Artemisia (Mugwort, Wormwood), Fir, Frankincense, Incense, Jasmine, Mastic, Mermade Magickal Arts, Mike, Mint, Resins, Rhododendron, Sandalwood, United States, Violet)
Oh here’s another one … five left at the point I posted this (and Kuan Shi Yin was gone by the end of the day I posted it, so…) Green Faerie, if I was to give it the most simple explanation, is something like an absinthe resin blend. I’ve always really enjoyed the aromatics of a nice absinthe (I don’t partake much of alcohol anymore) so it seems like a very natural and cool idea to transport this sort of almost liquorice-like bouquet to an incense format, especially by a creator who has gotten really good at creating oil blends that often have the depth and intensity of fine wines or spirits. First of all the resins, which is really quite a list: mastic dipped in fir balsam, green frankincense dipped in violet leaf absolute, and Hougary Oman Frankincense. This creates an incredible strong base that honestly lasts for hours and hours, I even left my heater on overnight and got wafts the next morning (it is also very sticky stuff and takes a bit of extra effort to extract from the tin). I really feel like that violet note cuts through nicely, but overall the sum parts of this really set up a nice background to give the more absinthe-particular herbal content a base to exude their strengths in. These are wormwood, tagetes lucida, davana and Egyptian mint. I love the way it feels like these herbs were carefully chosen to bring out that particular absinthe aroma, particularly with the anise/liquorice and minty notes. But that’s not all, there appears to be some jasmine, rhododendron and sandalwood as well, which gives the overall scent some slighter and more complex notes. Anyway I think you’ll know from the word absinthe if this is going to be along your lines. It’s of course quite a bit more than that and the equal or more to any spirit’s aromatics and like all Mermade brews an absolute winner.
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