Rewrite and translate this title How to smell like a witch: The best perfumes to tap into your inner magic to Japanese between 50 and 60 characters. Do not include any introductory or extra text; return only the title in Japanese.

Combining an intense knowledge of scents, smells and alchemical creation with a deep understanding of how to create desire, disgust and everything in between, perfume-making is inherently witchy. Smell plays with memory, perception and the unconscious, tapping into an unseen world of enchantment.

“A witch is a woman who shapes her reality,” Jungian psychoanalyst Jessica Rossett tells me. “She understands that life doesn’t simply happen to her. Instead, everything originates from within.” Rossett found herself innately drawn to Herbology and Astro Herbalism while studying psychoanalysis. Her perfume line Velvet Venus harnesses an ancient practice called Medicinal Astrology – the correspondences that plants have with planets – to create 12 zodiac scents that work with the connections between herbs and zodiac signs. “For me, a ‘witchy’ perfume’s essence lies in its composition and the intention behind its creation,” she says. “Scents can act as spells, in the sense that they leave an impression, allowing us to influence or manifest an effect in another person or environment through fragrance.”

For Camryn, the ethereal fragrance influencer of @cammyreviews, what makes a perfume feel magical is people making things in small batches with a lot of intentionality. Echoing Rossett’s thoughts on scent as a form of spell casting, she names her ultimate witchy perfume as Coven by Andrea Maack. “It really brings you into a dark enchanted forest. It’s loamy, like earthy damp moss. When I’ve done things like full moon spell casting with my friends at 3am, and the moon is at its peak and we are sitting around a cauldron, it evokes an experience like that.”

@cammyreviews Replying to @Henryhell some scents that will shroud you in ancient magic 🗡️🖤 Aura by @Nose of Gatsby Blanche Bete by Liquides Imaginaires Coven by @Andrea Maack Bare Sentient Nocturnal by @WILE SCENTS #nichefragrance #perfumerecommendations #perfumetok #fragrancetiktok #fragrancetok #fragrances #witchyperfume #witchtok #mysticism #magic #potions #beauty #fypp #foryou ♬ Calm – Safar Music

Intrigued, I set up a call with Maack. In the meantime, a bottle of Coven arrives at my door. On the first try, it makes me feel slightly uncomfortable. Intense fresh greenness that then dries down to soil and something that reminds me of the underside of a damp log on the forest floor: it is earthy, moist, and strangely comforting in a way that feels primaeval. The initial unease turns to a new obsession, as the autumn leaves fall and looming Samhain pulls me into a desire to smell spooky and evocative.

Maack credits witchcraft as one of the forces behind Coven’s creation. After packing everything in her native Iceland to move to Milan to start her perfume brand, homesickness called Maack to work on a perfume to evoke home. “I had this idea of a memory of mine, picking potatoes from the dirt in the rain at a family cabin. There was nothing witchy about it in the beginning. The idea was just the potatoes and the dirt.” She was told by her manufacturer that it wouldn’t sell, but Coven rapidly found a diehard fanbase. It is now the brand’s bestseller, with a worldwide following known as The Covenant. “I think Coven helped people bring out their inner witch. It’s witchy and it’s dirt but it’s really fabulous as well. You’re scared to wear something that’s a little bit out there, but with fragrance you can hint that you know what you really like.” 

I tell Maack that her story of Coven’s creation reminds me of the ancient myth of Vasilisa the Wise. Considered a ‘long lost fairy tale’, it tells the story of Vasalia, who is given a tiny doll by her dying mother and told to ask it for guidance when she needs help. When her wicked stepmother sends her into the forest to retrieve fire from the ancient witch Baba Yaga, they expect her to die in the dark forest, but by surrendering to her innate wild knowledge of the women before her, personified by the doll, she returns back safe with the fire. She surrenders to the darkness, testing her feminine instincts completely, becoming a wise and powerful witch. There’s a perfume for this, too: a heady, animalic apothecary concoction called Baba Yaga by Fantôme, a brand run by a lesbian couple who met exchanging ghost stories.

It seems that the true core of a witchy perfume is the ability to communicate a secret knowledge that can both protect you and empower you, embracing that which is both good and maybe slightly more malevolent. Hexensalbe by Stora Skuggan is the cauldron-stirring crone to Coven’s green forest witch. “Intriguing, dark, sensual and cocky but still transparent” is how the perfume’s nose Anna Barkne describes the scent. With notes of wormwood, liquorice, belladonna and lichen, the perfume is named after a hallucinogenic salve, also known as witches’ fly ointment, that was used in witchcraft in the Middle Ages.

Made from extremely poisonous ingredients, the salve produced feelings of flying, images of otherworldly creatures and a primal sexual hunger. The salve was toxic to eat and was often applied by rubbing on the genitals with a phallic object or end of a broom. Drying down to a botanical scent, Hexensalbe smells like something herbal and medicinal that you would find in a bubbling cauldron.

@scoutdixonwest Incarnate an opulent incense for those whose highest virtue is beauty. It is available this Friday, 9/13. Sign up for the mailing list for early access. Top: Violet Leaf, White Pepper, Amyris Middle: Olibanum, Vanilla, Labdanum Base: Patchouli, Musk, Sandalwood #perfume #perfumetiktok #scoutdixonwest ♬ original sound – SCOUT DIXON WEST

There is also LES LUNATIQUES by Lvnea. A term rooted in misogyny, ‘lunacy’ literally translates to ‘of the moon’, prescribing madness to those who change their behaviour with the waxing and waning of the lunar cycle. Inspired by folklore, natural history and magic Lvnea crafted the scent with absinthe, copal and sandalwood to evoke lunar opalescence. 

For those wanting to take their witchiness to another level, there’s also the eternal question of ‘love spells’. What would be the most effective perfume for this? Maack recommends her scent Pavilion, an intoxicating blend of honey, oud, rose and vanilla. Camryn’s love potion is Incarnate by Scout Dixon West, describing it as “a mix of churchy incense and airy, sugary cloud that surrounds you and envelops you like a spell.” (I’ve done some field work and can attest to both of these having a captivating romantic effect.) Rossett’s love spell is oud but, in the spirit of true witchiness, recommends something a step further than simply wearing it. “Create a self-love ritual – bathe in rose petals, oud, and other love symbols, with the intention of becoming the person ready to attract that love.”

Combining an intense knowledge of scents, smells and alchemical creation with a deep understanding of how to create desire, disgust and everything in between, perfume-making is inherently witchy. Smell plays with memory, perception and the unconscious, tapping into an unseen world of enchantment.

“A witch is a woman who shapes her reality,” Jungian psychoanalyst Jessica Rossett tells me. “She understands that life doesn’t simply happen to her. Instead, everything originates from within.” Rossett found herself innately drawn to Herbology and Astro Herbalism while studying psychoanalysis. Her perfume line Velvet Venus harnesses an ancient practice called Medicinal Astrology – the correspondences that plants have with planets – to create 12 zodiac scents that work with the connections between herbs and zodiac signs. “For me, a ‘witchy’ perfume’s essence lies in its composition and the intention behind its creation,” she says. “Scents can act as spells, in the sense that they leave an impression, allowing us to influence or manifest an effect in another person or environment through fragrance.”

For Camryn, the ethereal fragrance influencer of @cammyreviews, what makes a perfume feel magical is people making things in small batches with a lot of intentionality. Echoing Rossett’s thoughts on scent as a form of spell casting, she names her ultimate witchy perfume as Coven by Andrea Maack. “It really brings you into a dark enchanted forest. It’s loamy, like earthy damp moss. When I’ve done things like full moon spell casting with my friends at 3am, and the moon is at its peak and we are sitting around a cauldron, it evokes an experience like that.”

@cammyreviews Replying to @Henryhell some scents that will shroud you in ancient magic 🗡️🖤 Aura by @Nose of Gatsby Blanche Bete by Liquides Imaginaires Coven by @Andrea Maack Bare Sentient Nocturnal by @WILE SCENTS #nichefragrance #perfumerecommendations #perfumetok #fragrancetiktok #fragrancetok #fragrances #witchyperfume #witchtok #mysticism #magic #potions #beauty #fypp #foryou ♬ Calm – Safar Music

Intrigued, I set up a call with Maack. In the meantime, a bottle of Coven arrives at my door. On the first try, it makes me feel slightly uncomfortable. Intense fresh greenness that then dries down to soil and something that reminds me of the underside of a damp log on the forest floor: it is earthy, moist, and strangely comforting in a way that feels primaeval. The initial unease turns to a new obsession, as the autumn leaves fall and looming Samhain pulls me into a desire to smell spooky and evocative.

Maack credits witchcraft as one of the forces behind Coven’s creation. After packing everything in her native Iceland to move to Milan to start her perfume brand, homesickness called Maack to work on a perfume to evoke home. “I had this idea of a memory of mine, picking potatoes from the dirt in the rain at a family cabin. There was nothing witchy about it in the beginning. The idea was just the potatoes and the dirt.” She was told by her manufacturer that it wouldn’t sell, but Coven rapidly found a diehard fanbase. It is now the brand’s bestseller, with a worldwide following known as The Covenant. “I think Coven helped people bring out their inner witch. It’s witchy and it’s dirt but it’s really fabulous as well. You’re scared to wear something that’s a little bit out there, but with fragrance you can hint that you know what you really like.” 

I tell Maack that her story of Coven’s creation reminds me of the ancient myth of Vasilisa the Wise. Considered a ‘long lost fairy tale’, it tells the story of Vasalia, who is given a tiny doll by her dying mother and told to ask it for guidance when she needs help. When her wicked stepmother sends her into the forest to retrieve fire from the ancient witch Baba Yaga, they expect her to die in the dark forest, but by surrendering to her innate wild knowledge of the women before her, personified by the doll, she returns back safe with the fire. She surrenders to the darkness, testing her feminine instincts completely, becoming a wise and powerful witch. There’s a perfume for this, too: a heady, animalic apothecary concoction called Baba Yaga by Fantôme, a brand run by a lesbian couple who met exchanging ghost stories.

It seems that the true core of a witchy perfume is the ability to communicate a secret knowledge that can both protect you and empower you, embracing that which is both good and maybe slightly more malevolent. Hexensalbe by Stora Skuggan is the cauldron-stirring crone to Coven’s green forest witch. “Intriguing, dark, sensual and cocky but still transparent” is how the perfume’s nose Anna Barkne describes the scent. With notes of wormwood, liquorice, belladonna and lichen, the perfume is named after a hallucinogenic salve, also known as witches’ fly ointment, that was used in witchcraft in the Middle Ages.

Made from extremely poisonous ingredients, the salve produced feelings of flying, images of otherworldly creatures and a primal sexual hunger. The salve was toxic to eat and was often applied by rubbing on the genitals with a phallic object or end of a broom. Drying down to a botanical scent, Hexensalbe smells like something herbal and medicinal that you would find in a bubbling cauldron.

@scoutdixonwest Incarnate an opulent incense for those whose highest virtue is beauty. It is available this Friday, 9/13. Sign up for the mailing list for early access. Top: Violet Leaf, White Pepper, Amyris Middle: Olibanum, Vanilla, Labdanum Base: Patchouli, Musk, Sandalwood #perfume #perfumetiktok #scoutdixonwest ♬ original sound – SCOUT DIXON WEST

There is also LES LUNATIQUES by Lvnea. A term rooted in misogyny, ‘lunacy’ literally translates to ‘of the moon’, prescribing madness to those who change their behaviour with the waxing and waning of the lunar cycle. Inspired by folklore, natural history and magic Lvnea crafted the scent with absinthe, copal and sandalwood to evoke lunar opalescence. 

For those wanting to take their witchiness to another level, there’s also the eternal question of ‘love spells’. What would be the most effective perfume for this? Maack recommends her scent Pavilion, an intoxicating blend of honey, oud, rose and vanilla. Camryn’s love potion is Incarnate by Scout Dixon West, describing it as “a mix of churchy incense and airy, sugary cloud that surrounds you and envelops you like a spell.” (I’ve done some field work and can attest to both of these having a captivating romantic effect.) Rossett’s love spell is oud but, in the spirit of true witchiness, recommends something a step further than simply wearing it. “Create a self-love ritual – bathe in rose petals, oud, and other love symbols, with the intention of becoming the person ready to attract that love.”