WORDS: AVA GILCHRIST ART: DANÉ STOJANOVIC
From the moment Prometheus stole fire from the Gods and delivered it to mankind, humanity has possessed an intrinsic affinity to this enchanting element. Its allure is inextricable to the evolution of our species, with this “archaic elemental force,” as psychologist and sociologist Dr Joachim Mensing describes it, a primal constitute of our existence. It’s not hyperbolic to refer to fire as a life force, with our ancestors’ cultivation and conquest of this burning inferno being the bridge to modernity. Our contemporary quotidian behaviour calls less on fire in our habitual processes, yet our captivation remains unmatched. The lure of fire is in its polarising qualities.
“It has something calming and meditative about it,” muses Dr Mensing. “At the sight of blazing flames, it almost automatically happens that we get lost in thought and get free for new ideas.”
Since fire is a self-transforming tool, is it possible to harness its mythical qualities to reach our burning desires? In turn, can we utilise the flickering light to kindle creativity?
BURN YOUR WAY TO A BETTER BEING: MANIPULATING CANDLELIGHT FOR MINDFUL CREATIVITY
As I write this, I’m surrounded by the warm embers of a fire. An open flame crackles before me, its raw heat nipping at my skin and inviting my synapses on an indulgent multi-sensorial odyssey into the deepest nooks of my imagination. The alcove from which I’m typing fills with the scent of sultry amber and rich burning wood. As far as my olfactory nerves are concerned, this alchemic cocktail of smoky cinder and flaming logs is flowing from a proverbial open flame sitting in the hearth of the Parisian studio of one of Diptyque’s three co-founders, Desmond Knox-Leet. If I close my eyes, I can visualise myself in his space, writing from his desk and surrounded by his trinkets. Alas, I’m over 16,000 kilometres away in my harbourside apartment in Sydney’s leafy inner-city suburb of Double Bay. The fire at my fingertips isn’t a roaring blaze, but rather a quaint and considered light emanating from the French fragrance Maison’s Feu de Bois (Woodfire) candle – today’s most ubiquitous embodiment of this element.
Indeed, practices involving fire have evolved from taming the element to embracing a miniature version in our homes, with the candle (particularly the ritual of lighting one) symbolic of the comfort and solace of curating an inner sanctum. More than humanity’s inherent fixation with fire, candles possess the incomparable ability of multi-sensorial stimulation through aesthetic and olfactory triggers. It’s this combination of the flame, smoke and perfume emitted from this powerful object that has allowed for the harnessing of mythical qualities. Candles offer a reprieve from external stressors through a soothing sensation. They transport you to familiar destinations by tapping the fragrance-memory connection. And now, through new findings, they’re helping us unlock our higher potential by establishing a routine that harnesses creative energy.
“The ancient healing practice of candle therapy has been used for centuries to restore balance to chakras, helping individuals feel more harmonious in their personal spaces,” explains Yasmin Sewell, the Australian-born, London-based founder of Vyrao, a holistic fragrance brand specialising in perfume and candles injected with energetic properties.
Yes, it’s not supernatural to insist that lighting a candle can conjure creativity. It’s an actuality, with anecdotal biological reasoning and behavioural research to support this hypothesis. Since time immemorial, humanity has been channelling this singular flame for sacred purposes, exploiting the positive energy expelled through the burning process to conjure an inner metamorphosis. With the zeitgeist currently in the midst of a ‘vibe shift’, I subjected myself to my very own energetic experiment: an unconventional attempt to bolster my mood and engage the untapped reservoir of inventiveness contemporary life rarely requires.
“The act of burning is believed to connect the physical world to the spiritual realm,” Sewell says.
“With candles, focusing on flames can help you get into a more calm state of mind which opens up your sacral chakra, the part that is responsible for creativity and expressing emotions.”
Could I light my way to become a better writer? Or, inhale a burning fragrance and become the best version of myself?
A BRIGHT IDEA: DECRYPTING THE ESSENCE OF OUR EMOTIONS
My journey of discovery began quite literally in the limbic system, an anatomical structure nestled deep in the brain underneath the cerebral cortex and responsible for producing our emotional responses. Since the conception of the “Proustian moment” – an occurrence chronicled by French novelist, Marcel Proust, who described the recollection of memory through scent – the connection between a fragrance’s ability to recall a specific milieu, and in turn evoke a raw response, has long been studied. Since fragrance impacts our mood, why not utilise its power to manipulate our mercurial viewpoints? This conditioning is a contrary process, as internationally renowned ‘nose’, scent designer and co-founder of olfactory branding agency 12.29, Dawn Goldworm, explains.
“Perfume is not magic,” Goldworm revealed to me over a Zoom call from New York City. “You can condition yourself through scent, but you have to participate. You can’t convince yourself that you’re relaxed [just because you light a candle]. Have you ever tried to just change your mind? Difficult, right?”
Goldworm explains that this complex relationship between scent and memory results from our olfactory preferences established within the first ten years of our lives. With little input, we’re entrenching these predilections into our subconscious. This omnipresent connection between emotion and scent is one of the most influential in altering our mood, but each aroma possesses a subjective nuance pertaining to specific memories. According to Goldworm, the act of lighting a candle is not merely enough, a specific scent and ritual must be enacted for proper provisions.
“Ingredients can have effects emotionally, however, they’re not universal,” says Goldworm. Contrary to popular belief, lavender, for instance, isn’t a one-size-fits-all fragrance that incites a sense of calm or sleepiness.
“Emotions are conditioned throughout childhood and those are all connected to smells,” she says. “But they vary depending on generation, living environment, and culture.” And as Goldworm previously mentioned, perfume is not magic, so there isn’t a cocktail of top, heart and base notes that can automatically put you in a creative mood – it requires more.
To curate a creative environment – one that enables a space to be psychologically simulated through a combination of scent, light, heat and smoke – my exploration required a moment of introspection. Fragrance has never been a powerful impetus. My earliest memory of perfume came from my grandmother, Nanny Helen, who even in her frailest state clouded rooms with Estée Lauder’s Eau De Private Collection Spray. Even now, I can recollect scenes of her tanned brittle hands punctured with a cannula, spritzing the mist over herself. (In my conjuring, the sounds of Piero Piccioni always accompany the romanticised mementos of my family’s late matriarch).
Truthfully, the ritual of candle lighting had never had the profound effect on me as it seemed to do for others, either. The sense of reprieve came in the act of lighting, symbolising something I had control over in a precarious world. Yet, uncovering the significance of olfaction has made me consider scent as the superlative sense. Goldworm tells me that it’s because, unlike other external stimuli, olfaction is a direct neural pathway.
“When you have input from other senses, they have to go through a variety of different neural processes to get to the part of your brain that processes that sense,” she explains. “You don’t have to do that with olfaction.”
MEMORY, SMILING ALONE IN THE LIGHT: FIXING THE FRAGRANCE-MEMORY CONNECTION
As it was revealed through my exercise, conditioning myself into a state of supreme focus was the easiest part of the method. The most difficult part was knowing where to begin.
“We do it already,” Goldworm tells me when I question how I should approach this guerilla psychological governance. “People don’t realise they’re doing it,” she notes, explaining that there are emotional triggers embedded into our daily routines unbeknown to us.
And therefore, herein lies the secret: since fragrance is transcendental, pinpoint a specific moment when you were at your peak and reap the benefits of tapping into these past sensations. On paper, this concept sounds simple. But as I talk with Goldworm, the more I realise the specific scents I gravitate toward are ones I already had a connection with.
“What year were you born?” Goldworm asks. “1999,” I answer, slightly embarrassed by my youth, and by correlation, my lack of experience.
“That’s a great year to be born!” she replies. “So, because you were born in Sydney, Australia in 1999, your association with scents will differ from someone born in a different city in 1999.”
The scents I naturally gravitate towards are ones associated with the sensation of being free. I find myself most creative on a bluebird day when the scent of summer is in the air, my nose stinging from salt and the sun beating down so heavily that I’m overcome with a great desire to quell a craving and run into the whitewash. These are the factors where I feel the most in touch with myself, and in turn, the best suited to create.
“This emotional experience you have will be an olfactory trigger stored in your memory,” says Goldworm. “It puts you exactly where you need to be.”
In the complex tapestry of my mind, Goldworm says returning to the moments where I felt instilled to create will automatically prompt my body to want to recreate this sensation – and in turn, open myself up to a fully simulated creative environment.
This idée fixe, irrespective of how far-fetched you may believe it to be, is already silently working in the background. My conversation with Goldworm illuminated how these unrecognisable triggers are disabling us from tapping into their higher consciousness as easily. “We do it already,” she tells me, explaining that the scent of our homes triggers “an immediate indication that we’re safe,” while to most of us, our sanctuaries don’t possess a specific scent. You can’t rewire your brain, but you can meticulously organise environments under your complete control to enhance your creative state.
“You should do it with new scents, so you can condition yourself to be whatever you want,” Goldworm recommends.
In the same way, the Flamingo Estate Roma Heirloom Tomato Candle I light before each meal to stimulate my appetite incites a salivating sensation, this scent can’t then be attached to my creative ritual. In triggering a specific emotional response, Goldworm explains it’s best to condition myself with a concoction explicitly reserved for a singular practice. Though sea salt and fresh honeysuckle are notes that encourage this fervid sense of internal urgency to create, the scent is too prolific to my associations with freedom and leisure to truly have the impact it needs to. That’s where the benefit of location or energy-specific candles, like Vyrao’s light, sound, chant and prayer-infused coloured candles (designed to dispel negativity, as Sewell described) or Diptiqye’s delicately memory-driven candles come into play.
Taking myself to an idealised creative paradise, as a visual writer’s retreat, I discovered that mentally transporting myself through an olfactory ritual became the most potent form of carving a creatively-charged space.
With every flicker of the flame and every second the bright, erect wick melts into charcoal, I’m transcended in this celestial portal of concentration and urgency.
A MASTERCLASS IN STOPPING TO SMELL THE ROSES: HABITS TO CURATE INNER HARMONY
Yet, it’s not just the fragrance alone that enables this powerful paradigm shift. This cognitive reckoning is at its most impactful when elements of light, fire and smoke are also summoned. Candles offer a bespoke and multi-dimensional means of tapping into our creativity.
“In sacred rituals and ceremonies, candles are lit to establish a link with the divine, as if constituting an opening between the visible and invisible, which through the flame, shines onto both the physical and astral planes,” Sewell points out, highlighting that the very conjuring of a flame is a far superior, not superfluous, exercise for tapping into higher consciousness.
“It has to do with our basic nature, going back to Jungian archetypes and what we’re imprinted with,” adds Goldworm. “Candles have this kind of luminescence to them. And you’re creating this ambience aesthetically with your senses. Anytime you can trigger more than one sense, you have a larger impact, not just on the experience, but on your emotional response to it. So scent, because it has the opportunity to be the most acute and powerful emotional response when you marry it with aesthetics – which is what a candle has the opportunity to do – is even more powerful. You just have the opportunity to recreate whatever environment you’re in very easily and seamlessly.”
Olfactory experts maintain that the colour and vessel of your candle are of equal importance to the scent you choose. “Brain research already confirms that the joint processing of visual and olfactory stimuli leads to greatly increased brain activity,” shares Dr Mensing.
Sewell also notes specific hues lead to greater emotional depth through humanity’s attachment. “Black wax can act as a personal cosmic bodyguard,” she explains, while dark blue wax is “a soothing, calming force that connects with your chakras and any emotional wounds that need healing.”
Yes, our primal infatuation with fire and coeval conditioning has proven burning fragrance as an underutilised key for unlocking a reservoir of creativity, stored in the hallways of our memories. It’s Proust who best argued this point.
As Elena Prus argued in her 2015 essay analysing his work published in the Bulletin of Integrative Psychiatry: “Once activated, memory makes us the prisoners of a book which, despite its length, continues to attract us by numerous recollections, reminiscences, revivals. It is exactly here that we find the essence of ‘the lost time’: not the memories as such are important, but the various circumstances of life which release the captive memory, which is now transformed into a creative force capable of retrieving in the poor existence of someone’s genuine, real being.”
Perhaps part of this memory recollection through burning candles isn’t mutually exclusive to the forming of creative environments through olfaction. Rather, the scent-memory connection is the most potent force as it serves as a looking glass to our past selves, or as Proust describes it, a “genuine, real being.”
Yes, you can artificially configure a creative environment by creating a self-perpetuating artistic routine. But, is it more impactful to return to one’s earnest beginnings? The elementary paints of your primary school art room; the scent of the glossy paper as you held your first published work – whatever memory you reserve for your creative condition. Of course, neither of these methods of enacting creativity can be certain, with the only research being predominantly causal. But, with this knowledge in mind, there is merit in actively training your olfactory capabilities. The next time you feel inspired, motivated or in a mood to create, it’s worth taking stock of your surroundings. A masterclass in stopping to smell the roses.
THIS FEATURE IS PUBLISHED IN THE 15TH EDITION OF GRAZIA INTERNATIONAL. ORDER YOUR COPY HERE.
