PARFUMS QUARTANA celebrates the coming Winter Solstice with our latest parfum extrait, IEROFANTE, a fragrant invocation of Persephone, goddess of the golden dawn, and her radiant re-emergence from the shadowy depths of the Underworld, where she was taken against her will.
While the longest and darkest night of the year, the Winter Solstice is simultaneously the beginning of the ascent into the light of Spring, as illustrated through her mythological tale. The darkest hour comes before sunrise!
Zeus gives his brother Hades, King of the Underworld, permission to abduct his daughter Persephone. On the Winter Solstice, Hades rises up from a dark hole in the earth, seizes Persephone, and takes her off to the Underworld to be his wife. Ultimately a compromise is reached and she is allowed to spend six months a year with her mother in the upper world, and then must join her husband in the Underworld for the remainder of the year.
The spiritual journey is more than just an ascent into the light; it is also a descent into the shadow world, where we earn the wisdom we need to be lightbearers.
Persephone learned the power of transformation; from death to rebirth, from dark to light, lost to found, chaos to clarity, and fear to transcendence.
The permission given to Hades by Zeus shows that a journey into darkness is not at odds with the will of heaven. Her abduction is a step forward in her growth as a spiritual being, a rite of passage into a fuller life.
It’s possible to find light even in our darkest moments in life. Like Persephone’s underworld, the darkness holds the source of our greatest illumination: Your highest self.
IEROFANTE is a fragrant communion of internal light, a rendezvous with Persephone via rocket ship, reminding us of the light emergent on this, the darkest day of the year.
IEROFANTE is quite simply, out of this world.
