New limited scents for Valentine’s Day!
As we exit the holiday season, we here at Selana Ways are bracing ourselves for the remainder of the winter months. To us, that which will greatly aid our efforts to battle the relentless chill and isolation of these melancholy months is the small reprieve that is Valentine’s Day.
Like most, we at Selana do not wait for this festive day to celebrate love of all forms, ignoring it for the rest of the year. But we do think it is important to carve out a few days of the year and focus our attention on what it means to love and be loved.
Love in myths
In Greek mythology, the concept of love features prominently in many instances. Arguably one of the most famous goddesses of the Greek pantheon, Aphrodite was believed to embody and represent Love, Beauty, Pleasure, and Procreation.
She is often described as ‘Laughter-Loving’ and was considered to be a formidable goddess by the Ancient Greeks. They believed that her power to incite passion and love could surpass fate.
Aphrodite riding goose
It is no secret, that even the almighty Zeus himself was unable to ignore the pull.
In one of the longer Homeric Hymns, composed sometime between the 7th to 4th centuries B.C., Aphrodite is described as she who “stirs up sweet passion in the gods and subdues the tribes of mortal men and birds that fly in air and all the many creatures that the dry land rears, and all [that] the sea [rears] […]” (Homeric Hymn 5 to Aphrodite, translation by Evelyn-White).
Aphrodite is the goddess with the ability to tame all living things, as her Homeric Hymn informs us; even gods fear her power, because the desire for another being can be so strong that it overrides logic and blinds the person experiencing her power.
The power of love
Aphrodite is often surrounded by various companions and consorts. The three Graces are mentioned accompanying her many times in Greek mythology, as well as Peitho (Persuasion) and Himeros (Lust). Most famously, she is often referred to as the mother of Eros, her strongest and most unruly child.
The Ancients had a plethora of words all pertaining to one aspect of love, like philia, which was friendly love, or agape, which was that state of unconditional love for another, most often attributed to a family member.
But eros, that feeling of dying sweetly, as the Ancients talked about it, is loosely translated to ‘passionate love’. It is a form of desire which urges one to seek out and unite with another, physically and spiritually.
Eros is Aphrodite’s strongest attribute. It is what made her a popular goddess among the ancient Greeks, who all loved to experience her gifts, oftentimes so sweet and pleasing that made life worth living.
This comes to us as no surprise, because as many people-in-love will attest to these days , love gives new meaning to life as it makes us think about something other than ourselves. It urges us to surpass our innate selfishness.
Yet, eros was also Aphrodite’s strongest weapon. Greek mythology is full of stories showing the dark side of eros, the pain and grief it can cause while simultaneously being sweet and pleasurable.
Here at Selana Ways we find this paradox of eros to be fascinating.
Our inspiration
Thus, we thought we would share with you some ancient Greek myths featuring gods and mortals and their trials in eros. Aside from the deliciously tragic and sweetly inspirational character of these stories, we wanted to use some of these as an opportunity to present to you three new Signature Scents that will only be available for the period leading up to this year’s Valentine’s Day.
If you’re considering celebrating the holiday this year with your loved one you may want to have one or all three scents in order to give your space the right vibe.
We hope you are as excited as we are to let them suffuse your space with all the heady, musky, and earthily raw vibes, whether you’re planning on celebrating Valentine’s Day or not. We here at Selana Ways view this day as an opportunity to appreciate the love we have in our lives, in whatever form we can find it.
This year’s Valentine limited edition will feature: Phyllis, the Bittersweet; Endymion of the Dreamscape; and the florally fragrant Eros and Psyche.
These three candles were inspired by three of the stories we will be posting in our blog and will be available in the coming days.
We hope that these candles might make you feel like the all-powerful goddess who inspired so many stories of lust, passion, love, grief, and pain.
Consider inviting into your home the echoes of the power of the Shining Aphrodite, the Foam-Born, Richly-Crowned Mother of Desire.
Wherever she goes, victory follows soon after.