We were drawn towards a mystical journey in Bosnia once in 2019. Some of you may know there is a hillside place in Visoko, which is considered (as well as rejected) to be an ancient complex of underground tunnels and pyramids. I felt we needed to walk the road connecting all three monuments – the pyramid of the Sun, the Moon, and the Dragon – to bring the Heart, a heart-shaped stone from our place, into the center of this great triangle. Now, I can retrospectively see that this journey led by a strong intuition opened the gates to a timeless theme of an Eternal Triangle or the number three. After Initiation into the ancient mystery, O3 was born and revealed. Jurgita made me a natural perfume for the following birthday that deeply touched my soul. I felt suddenly awakened and was able to understand the things in my life that I couldn’t explain before.
After the birth and first expression of the scent, many synchronistic experiences followed its growth. The mandala of spread wings and the serpent inside with a triple lotus showed up. It led us to integrate its symbols deeper and guided our way toward the Mayan world. We visited Mexico, the pyramid of Kukulkan, which is known as the Feathered Serpent. It was the second Initiation into the mystery of O3.. We had a memorable time discovering how everything to ancient people was interconnected. The knowledge which comes from the sky, is reaching only when you are centered inside, and listening to the whispering of your intuition from the deepest chambers of the inner pyramid…
I would never dare to think that this scent would ever be more widely available than just to the person for whom it was intended. I think it’s amazing that Rugilė decided to share her story, her experience, and the scent which was created for her, giving others the opportunity to touch her insights into the myth of Ozone through the mystery of scent. Since I created this perfume for her and about her, I can’t fail to mention that her sense of inner courage and freedom may have influenced the structure of the scent I create for her as well. The scent was born through a subconscious flow, without a description and prior knowledge of what it would be and how that scent should smell. When choosing materials and creating chords, I did not try to fit into any frames; I created with intuition and, in the end, I noticed that the scent was not quite fully composed in its structure. Therefore, even when she said “this is it”, from a professional point of view, I was not one hundred percent satisfied with the result, so I tried several times to adjust and improve the smell. The need to correct the odor was also partially due to the fact that the perfume needed to comply with the IFRA recommended limits for certain natural molecules, which we slightly exceeded in our creation.
Rugilė was firm in her determination that the original scent was the best and that we shouldn’t change anything to fit the set standards. She said the symbolic essence of perfume would be lost – the courage and inner freedom to live by listening to the voice of your heart, giving up efforts to adapt and remake yourself. Her certainty allowed me to accept the smell as finite. I was relieved when we ordered tests for possible allergic reactions and received excellent results and evaluation.
We didn’t change the original composition of the odor, but we did face the following challenges. In particular, we discovered that some of the natural materials we’d selected were not only very expensive but very rare and difficult to access. It’s even harder to buy them if you’re not a wholesaler, so we had a lot of trouble initially until we found suppliers, selected materials and received all the necessary documents.
Another interesting moment during the process was when we noticed the color of the original odor was different from what we saw in the following tests. Natural scents are alive and changeable, so it’s common for the dynamics of the scent to change, but we had a very unexpected change in the scent’s color. The original sample was an indescribably beautiful emerald green, but in the following experiments that green was replaced by an equally amazing olive green. We tried to research as to why this happened: was it due to the interaction with light, or with the temperature of the air, or something else? But the scent left us with an unanswered secret of its color transformation, which I think gives the process even more life and charm.
I’ve revealed only a small part of the twists and turns of our creative process, but what was born in it is definitely worth sharing with you ….