Dancing with Water Flowers
Birth, Death, and Rebirth
Water is life. According to Egyptian mythology, in the beginning was water, chaos unbound. Darkness ruled. Then came the lotus, rising from out of the shadows of the abyss. As its petals opened, out stepped Ra, The Sun, The Creator, his fragrance and light dispelling the darkness. As Ra slept at the end of each day, the flower’s petals would close, and chaos would reign once again… until next morning, when the Sun would again rise, driving out the darkness anew. Realizing his solitude, Ra decided to create others to join him, calling out their names, willing them to be. From there, life as we know it began…
To the Egyptians, water flowers symbolized creation, to the Buddhists purity, to the Hindus fertility… their floating dream-like beauty forever immortalized by Monet. With water flowers, I am like the dragonfly hovering above, first dancing, then bouncing, mesmerized by their soft fragrant embrace.
In perfumery, water flowers remain elusive. While certain species are born gifted with the most beautiful aromas, these same aquatic gems unfortunately yield no usable fragrance oil. When processed by standard means (i.e. distillation), they produce nothing. Instead, we can only try to recreate their olfactory magic through headspace capture and analysis.
“Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,
And slips into the bosom of the lake;
So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip
Into my bosom, and be lost in me.“
— A. Tennyson, The Princess
