Cemeteries are too quiet nowadays. Aside from the occasional funeral or those visiting their loved ones, you will find that these sepulchral haunts are frequently deserted. Even cemeteries that boast the graves of famous folks, such as my one-time neighbor Hollywood Forever, receive little foot traffic. Aside from the maintenance crew, I was often one of only a few people perusing the gorgeously landscaped 62 acres.
In the Victorian Era, cemeteries were bustling with the living. The beautiful flora to be found there was a welcomed seduction, serving as a refreshing escape from smelly cities where sewage leaked into basements and onto the streets. After a long, cruel winter, Victorians headed to the spring cemetery, newly emerged from its frozen sleep. They strolled through its lush emerald grounds and had picnics under its fragrant blooms. Even if your March and April will be cloaked in snow, you can channel the lovely smell of the spring cemetery by dousing yourself – or your home – in these olfactory wonders:
Burial by Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab
The Dark Side of Earth: deep, brooding forest scents, including juniper and patchouli. The scent of upturned cemetery loam mingling with floral offerings to the dead. – Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab.
When the cemetery grounds thaw, perhaps the dead thaw with them. This perfume evokes the harmonious mixture of winter potpourri – mottled leaves, moldered wood, and shriveled flowers – and the fragrance of spring’s alchemy.
Graveyard Body Butter by Witch Baby Soap
This rich luxurious butter smells of a freshly dug grave and carefully arranged funeral flowers on a warm spring afternoon. – Witch Baby Soap.
Slather your dry winter skin with this decadent body butter inspired by cemetery flora. The sepulchral enchantment of graveyards in bloom will slowly seep into every pore.
Witch Baby products sell out quickly, but rest assured they are re-stocked just as fast.
Cemetery Gates Candle by Burke & Hare Co
This fragrance is brisk, like newly overturned dirt, with notes of sweet balsam combined with fresh tall grasses and cedar wood. – Burke & Hare Co.
This scent, cemetery darlings, will perfume your home so that you might bring the spring cemetery indoors (especially if you are still in the throes of winter). You will be transported to strolling amongst the long grasses swaying in between the tombs.
Death and Decay Perfume by LUSH
The pure scent of lily mingles with over-ripe tones of indole to give this fragrance a pungent, narcotic headiness. – LUSH
The smell of decay simmers in spring, becoming sweeter as the days grow warmer. This scent embodies the dance between two seasons: of spring and summer; of life and death.
St. Louis Cemetery #1 Perfume Oil by Alkemia
An atmospheric brooding of Spanish moss, crumbling stone, old cement, red clay brick, and graveyard dirt. – Alkemia
St. Louis Cemetery #1 captures the fragrant mouldering of verdure infused with the dead, which is so beautifully portrayed in the ethereal notes of Spanish moss, indicative of the Southern Gothic cemetery. There is also a quiet magic lingering under this scent’s surface – the cemetery for which it is named is home to the Voodoo priestess Marie Laveau.
Spring is a season of transition, when the earth is slowly emerging from the long sleep of winter. What better way to capture it – and what better way to infuse your aura with a fragrant memento mori – than with a scent that evokes the unexpected beauty of the cemetery shedding its frost and coming back to life.
Featured image of Swan Point Cemetery by Loren Rhoads of Cemetery Travel.
