Quite an interesting shrub, not much going on magically, but what we do have is very powerful. With scents that both repel and attract, it’s a coy trickster, good for some, disaster for others.
Let’s start with the good scent, a heady, sweet perfume that creeps right into your soul. You’ll feel it tickle those gaps between bone and emotion. Between what’s solid and what’s ephemeral. It’ll draw you in, get you feeling a little slippery, loose, might start to lose yourself a bit, swaying to nothing, like you’re a blade of grass in the breeze. It’s pleasant, a little weird when the wind changes and you can’t remember what you’re standing there for, but I say enjoy it while it lasts.
Breathe it in deeper and you’ll get dizzy, visions of your own blood running through your veins, your own cells dividing and pulsing with life, visions of disease, of cancer, of imbalances will waver before you. It’s a scary, disorienting, panic-inducing health check, but cheaper than a doctor.
This only works if you’re standing under or near the shrub, picked flowers lose all inward eyesight, but they still smell nice.
The bad scent dwells within the wood. This tree does not like to be cut or pruned… or eaten. It likes to keep what it’s made of, keep itself intact. Harvest seeds only, and only once they’ve dropped from the tree. No amount of begging will get you out of the consequences of cutting P. tobira. You cannot whisper it sweet lovelies. You cannot flatter it, or caress it until it forgives you. It will not forgive you. It will haunt you with fetid nightmares and the feeling that there’s always someone looking over your shoulder. You’ll just never feel right in your skin again.
However, you must cut it in order to obtain its most potent magic, so how does one safely do this? First, an apotropaic, walk widdershins nine times around the shrub, you’ll unwind some of its hostility. It will still want to protect itself, however, so you’ll want to douse your pruning knife in rosemary oil. This oil serves the dual purpose of protecting you from the shrub, and helping the shrub feel protected as well. Open wounds on any plant are entry points for disease and pests, so it’s easy to understand why this one is unwilling to be wounded. (It’s taste for vengeance is less understandable…) Rosemary oil will keep it safe. Now, it will still be very angry with you. So after you’ve taken what you need AND NO MORE, light some incense, stick it in the ground (being wary of fire season and ignitable debris of course), and use the smoke to obscure your escape.
Now you have your stinking bit of shrub, what do you do with it? The foul smell contains a powerful spirit repellent (I mean no one really likes it, but spirits are physically repelled). To that end you can do a lot with it, hang it over your door like the Japanese, wear it in an amulet bag, put it in your pocket, in your hair, in your car, doesn’t really matter. Just know that once the scent wears off, you’re going to get attacked. Those bad spirits will be kept out of scent range, but not gone for good.
Gone for good is a whole different entry….
Mosquitoes also hate it, but that’s not really magic, just good to know.