Libertine fragrance is a niche perfume brand from Canada, created and launched by Joshua Smith. This brand creates unique and memorable scents with the highest quality materials in simple beautiful bottles, and with daring and attractive names.
Today I review Eros Fig Libertine fragrance, mysterious and heady scent, and try to figure out, why figs play so important role in world mythology.
The Sacred tree
Fig tree with its leaves and fruits is a symbol of abundance, desire, knowledge, and enlightenment. It also symbolizes love, lust, marriage, fertility, life, and unity of women and men.
In many religions, the fig tree plays an important role. Sometimes this tree is considered to be the bible tree of knowledge of good and evil. The fig leaf was the first cloth of Adam and Eva after they tried the forbidden fruit, and realized that they were sinners.
Serpent in fig tree. Roman fresco from the Casa del Frutteto in Pompeii
In Buddhism, the fig tree is a symbol of enlightenment. Under the fig tree, the prince Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha) has reached the deepest knowledge of the essence of life as the overcoming of earthly sufferings.
In Antiquity figs and grape bones were as attributes of the god Dionysus (Roman equivalent Bacchus), and also of his son the phallic god of fertility Priapus.
Click here to read my perfume review of Smoked Bloom Libertine fragrance
Dionysus
In Ancient Greek religion and mythology, Dionysus was the god of grape harvest, winemaking, fertility, theater and religious ecstasy.
He has replaced the wise and restraint religion of Apollo and has deeply changed the life of people. He has filled it with the freedom, ecstasy, wine and also some madness.
The Dionysian Mysteries (rituals) were intended to release people from social and moral restrictions, in order to bring them back to their nature and to the god.
Caravaggio, Bacchus, 1595
The female followers of Dionysus were called maenads. Several times a year they gathered and run to the forests and mountains, leaving their husbands, children, and families.
They made orgies or Bacchanalias, which were filled with wine, different intoxicants, dancing, singing, and sacrifice.
Women with their hair down, half-naked with the skin of animal as clothes, were in total religious ecstasy. At the end of their Bacchanalias, they tore a bull (symbol of Dionysus) apart with their bare hands.
The goal was to pay a tribute to their god Dionysus and to release their souls from bodies in order to connect with him.
Eros and Fig
Even if the fig tree was a symbol of Dionysus, who if not the Eros can also be associated with this carnal and passionate fruit?
Eros was the god of love, passion, and attraction in Greek mythology. He had power even over Zeus, Poseidon, and Apollo. Who could resist his arrows of love and passion?
The term eros in philosophy is also used as an equivalent of life energy because love and sexual energy move everything in our world. And fig tree is a symbol of energy between woman and man, sexual energy that is the essence of creation.
Maybe here we can find an answer why fig tree is the sacred tree. But we could only guess…
And the best place for it is deep in the woods, where the sounds of drums and flutes сome from…
Perfume review of Eros Fig Libertine fragrance
If Philosykos by Diptyque, about which I wrote earlier, is a secret garden of harmony, Eros Fig by Libertine fragrance is a hidden place somewhere in the forest, where people come to feel themselves more freely.
It is a place that is full of freedom and love to everything around. Eros Fig is also very harmonious but in a special way. This harmony is more сarnal and more sensual. It is not only about a spiritual part, but also about harmony in our bodies and cognition of the universe with this.
William-Adolphe Bouguereau, The Youth of Bacchus, 1884
Eros fig is very heady, deep and exciting perfume. It smells very natural, like a meadow in the summer, that is heated by the sun. But the sun goes down, and the summer night is coming.
The scent of bitter warm grass, spices, and a little freshness appears. Everything is ready for the great magic night. A basket with the dried in the sun figs stand on the ground, that is covered with hay.
The ground should be soft to walk on it with bare feet.
Amphoras of wine and honey for this wine are already here. People with beautiful flower wreaths are coming. Sometimes, they add to their wreaths some green fig leaves.
They begin to dance and sing around the fire. Music of drums and flutes awaken nature. And it seems like forest, grass, sky, and fire are dancing too. The bodies, movements, music and nature pulse in unison.
The sweetness of freedom, enjoyment, and harmony is in the air. This night is full of sensuality, love, and passion.
In the morning it seems, that it was just a dream. But the spilled wine, wreaths on the grass and light smoke from the fire say otherwise…
Eros fig is very beautiful unisex fragrance. It begins with the strong scent of grass and spices, and it ends with the deep woody scent with the sweet nuances. This fragrance is soft and not too loud. The main accent of Eros Fig Libertine fragrance is grassy-fruity.
It is very pleasant and enveloping scent, but it also has something ardent, intimate and hidden from the view. Something that is very important for an understanding of our nature, energy and its power…
This scent reflects its name in a very special way and brings some thoughtfulness.
Notes: Citrus, Spices, Black Currant, Green Fig leaf, Dried Fig, Coconut, Sandalwood, Egyptian Rose, Benzoin, Honey, Ambrette seed.
If it were a place, it would be a hidden place in the forest.
If it were a color it would be a soft green and the color of straw.
If it were one word, it would be the unity.
P.S. What was the goal of Dionysus and at times cruel bacchanalias in his honor? Why Eros and his arrows spared and spare no one? And what is the real meaning of the fig tree?
Maybe, it is all about a powerful force, that is hidden in us and that is the essence of creation and Universe. And until we can find the answers to all questions, maybe it is time to lie down on the grass and to feel the sweetness of wine with honey and enjoy the beautiful perfume Eros Fig.
“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.”
William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
It was my perfume review of Eros Fig Libertine fragrance, and I hope you enjoyed it.
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