For our final episode of the deep dive into Planets Perfumery, we're back with our co-founder and perfumer Mauricio Garcia to talk all things Mercury. Mercury as a chthonic archetype? Hermes as Hades in disguise? Mercury as mycelium? Ancient texts and medicinal herbs? As expected, this episode uncovers many faces of the Messenger of the Gods as we discuss our understanding of the planet of consciousness, truth, and disguise.

For the next episode of our Planets series, we have Goddess of Love, Archetype of Beauty, The Great Connector, The Divine Resonance, Essence of Harmony and Pleasure, and all things to do with the senses...Venus. We're still joined by our co-founder and perfumer, Mauricio Garcia, as we dive deep into our understanding of Venus from all angels, as well as discuss in depth the process through which she incarnated into her perfume. Up next is Mercury, stay tuned!

The next three episodes will be a collaborative deep dive into the archetypes and corresponding fragrances of Mars, Venus, and Mercury. Jenna, Coco, and Mauricio (who you met in episode 4) of Planets Perfumery dive into Mars in this first episode, discussing the planet from every angle, our associated mythologies, the curation of the fragrance, and the ways we have been working with and honoring the perfume in our own lives. You can pre-order all three scents at www.planetsperfumery.com, and follow us on Instagram at @ planetsperfumery

Mauricio Garcia is a Bay Area animistic perfumer, aroma therapist, witch, founder of Herbcraft Perfumery, co-founder of the mountain butterfly collective, and co-founder of the coalition of sustainable perfumery. He's also the perfumer we've been working with for Planets Perfumery, our fragrance line inspired by the archetypal essences of the planets, set to be released May 22! Mauricio is an olfactive creative genius, and we can't wait for you all to meet him and be as inspired as we are. Our conversation covers everything from a deep dive into his natal chart, to sustainability in perfumery, to mythology across cultures, to his background in herbalism and perfumery, his ritualistic approach to fragrance, and so much more.

Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa (1942-2004) was a Poet, Bruja, Chicana Feminist Theorist, Alchemist, Philosopher, and Spiritual Activist. In this episode, we discuss her life growing up on the Texas-Mexico border, her chronic illness and its relationship to her body and her writing, her deep study of alchemy, astrology, depth psychology, and the occult, her revolutionary work Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, and more, along with many notable points of her natal chart.Sources: Texas State Historical Association (tshaonline.org) · National Women's History Museum (womenshistory.org) · Wikipedia, "Gloria Anzaldúa" · NowComment, "Three Biographies of Gloria E. Anzaldúa" · Ms. Magazine · Emory University Postcolonial Studies Blog · EBSCO Research Starters · Literary Ladies Guide · Annenberg Learner · Amy Poehler's Smart Girls/shift7 · I Am Subject (iamsubject.com) · Journal of Jungian Scholarly Studies, "Depth Psychology in Gloria Anzaldúa's Borderlands/La Frontera" · Santa Clara University, "Assessing Gloria Anzaldúa's Light in the Dark" · Gloria Anzaldúa, Interviews/Entrevistas, ed. AnaLouise Keating, Routledge, 2000.

Leonora Carrington (1917-2011) was an imaginative, rebellious, and otherworldly surrealist painter, writer, mother, and activist. She emigrated from England to Mexico during WWII where she spent the remaining five decades of her life, painting over 2000 works, writing 2 novels, a memoir, and several short stories and plays. Though her legacy is often overshadowed by her male contemporaries (specifically by her love affair with Max Ernst), her influence remains massively significant as one of the most famous artists out of Mexico. Sources:https://gallerywendinorris.com/video/20-wendi-norris-introduction-leonora-carrington-the-story-the-life-and-influence-of-leonora-carrington-a/https://www.moonlight-consulting.net/blog/tarot-art-and-magic-of-leonora-carringtonhttps://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/12/28/how-leonora-carrington-feminized-surrealismhttps://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=f92db7dcec5b925e&udm=7&sxsrf=ANbL-n60_Xa_LQ1yrtZRvCghKQOyiR4JbA:1773550259289&q=leonora+carrington+documentary&sa=X&sqi=2&ved=2ahUKEwir0sjJjaGTAxU0MDQIHbnDK0IQ8ccDKAR6BAgzEAY&biw=1470&bih=832&dpr=2#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:98cfbc31,vid:cE0BqbS2n6M,st:0https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2026/02/leonora-carrington-paintings-retrospective-musee-du-luxembourg/https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02639904.2023.2180940?scroll=top&needAccess=true#abstracthttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaLRRMMr2xkhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonora_Carringtonhttps://www.google.com/search?q=leonora+carrington+documentary&oq=leonor&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqDAgAECMYJxiABBiKBTIMCAAQIxgnGIAEGIoFMgwIARAuGEMYgAQYigUyDggCEEUYJxg7GIAEGIoFMgYIAxBFGDsyDwgEEAAYQxixAxiABBiKBTIGCAUQRRg5MgYIBhBFGDwyBggHEEUYPNIBCDEwMDZqMGo3qAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:326e7b13,vid:ikH3g9fkJn8,st:0https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4aooKLEHQg

For our first episode of season 4, we welcome natural perfume pioneer, author, and educator, the absolutely iconic Mandy Aftel. In this episode we look at her natal chart, discuss her past life as a counsellor, get virtual a tour of her scent organ, learn about bibliomancy, dive into her latest book, Symbolorum, and hear all about her journey into the world of natural fragrance creation. If you're in the Bay Area, do yourself a favor and visit her museum, the Aftel Archive of Curious Scents, in Berkley.

Arabella Thais is a philosopher, writer, and researcher whose work explores the metaphysics of time, symbolic systems, and the aesthetic structure of reality. She is a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy and physics at the California Institute of Integral Studies, lectures internationally, and serves as a peer reviewer for the Journal of Theoretical and Applied Physics. Her research engages with retrocausality, depth psychology, and sacred number—drawing on influences from Heidegger to Hildegard von Bingen. Arabella is also the founder of The Temple of Truth, a mystery school devoted to consciousness, cosmology, and high-frequency living.We were honored to virtually sit down Arabella for our season finale, and as expected, this conversation was so rich and inspiring. We discussed a wide range of topics, from her perspectives of time, to chaos theory, to addiction, to petrichor as a state of consciousness, to her upcoming book "On Being and Becoming", to aspects in her own natal chart and so much more.

Clarice Lispector (1920-1977) was a linguistic alchemist, translator of the invisible, and stream of consciousness poet, best known for her novels, Agua Viva, Near to the Wild Heart, and The Passion According to G.H. Often compared to eccentric existential authors such as Albert Camus and stream of consciousness royalty like Virginia Woolf, Lispector remains undefinable, opting to linger in the land of the intangible and formless. The Ukrainian-born, Brazilian-raised writer left a legacy behind as a household name in much of Brazil, while remaining relatively obscure in the American zeitgeist. In this episode we discuss her natal chart, her limitless attitude, her trance like writing, her tumultuous upbringing, her natural genius, and her incredibly inspiring unbothered demeanor. Sources:https://site.claricelispector.ims.com.br/en/https://bohemianbookslut.substack.com/p/the-witchcraft-of-clarice-lispectorhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IiGkkQAcAghttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1zwGLBpULshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMn0oigmfYUhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Nipf2pMtZYhttps://www.thenation.com/article/culture/clarice-lispector-apple-dark/#https://medium.com/@afmeurer/how-clarice-lispectors-literature-destabilizes-existentialist-philosophy-5f8dbfc2dfcehttps://site.claricelispector.ims.com.br/en/2024/05/27/me-a-witch/https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/jewish-history/14738/i-am-an-object-loved-by-god-rereading-clarice-lispector/#https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/18/obituaries/clarice-lispector-overlooked.html#:~:text=lispector%2Doverlooked.html-,Overlooked%20No%20More%3A%20Clarice%20Lispector%2C%20Novelist%20Who%20Captivated%20Brazil,welcome%20the%20attention%20she%20received.

In this episode we had the pleasure to sit down with our mentor and professor, Becca Tarnas. Becca is a scholar, artist, and archetypal astrologer. She is currently a professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies, where she wrote her doctoral dissertation on the Red Books of Carl Jung and J.R.R Tolkien. She's also the author of Journey to the Imaginal Realm: A Reader’s Guide to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, an editor of Archai: The Journal of Archetypal Cosmology, and is working on a biography of transpersonal psychology legend, Stanislav Grof. In this conversation, we discuss everything from the history of archetypes and mythology, to her research on Stan Grof, to motherhood and the lens shift that followed, to her own natal chart, to her experiences being raised by the iconic archetypal astrologer and historian Rick Tarnas (author of "Cosmos and Psyche"), to the complexities of binaries, to the Witch vs the Wizard, and so much more.