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It’s believed that L’Heure Bleue by Guerlain is a melancholic perfume. Created by Jacques Guerlain, he said he was influenced by the Parisian twilight. The blue he saw in the sky one day, walking by the Seine, sparked his imagination. Ever since 1912, the perfume has been popular, and is now considered a classic. The Paris of Guerlain’s time may no longer exist, at least not completely. However, even with the modern perfume, it holds the memory of a lost city.

Which makes one wonder…how are perfumes not some sort of potent time travel spell?

Scent as a Portal to the Past

Taking the example of L’Heure Bleue, it’s shy at first sniff, almost otherworldly. It’s not sweet like many modern perfumes but is briefly animalic. A wave of violet takes one to a vanity in 1910s Paris, and the harmony of notes that follow creates a vivid picture of French haute couture.

Then, the almond, liqueur, and vanilla flood in, casting a time travel spell that takes you to a night of carriages, furs, dark mirrors, and the great Parisian hotels. You feel warm and cosseted in pastis and silk, wrapped in an evening dress and opulence.

The Proustian Hypothesis of Scent

The connection between memory and scent started after Marcel Proust wrote À la recherche du temps perdu. Translated into In search of lost time, you can assume that scents are like how to go back in time spells. In an excerpt, a character begins to recall forgotten memories from his youth after smelling a Madeline biscuit soaked in tea–

“I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me.”

You can consider Proust at the forefront of scent time travel magic. Today, we know scent triggers our memories, taking us back in time. A whiff of a rose perfume might make you think of the garden your grandmother once lovingly tended. Or the rich, buttery aroma of a tea-soaked biscuit reminds you of your childhood. As Proust wrote in Time Regained–

“Yet a single sound, a single Scent, already heard or breathed long ago, may once again, both in the present and the past, be real without being present, ideal without being abstract, as soon as the permanent and habitually hidden essence of things is liberated, and our true self, which may sometimes have seemed to be long dead, but never was entirely, is re-awoken and re-animated when it receives the heavenly food that is brought to it.”

The Connection Between Time Travel and Proust, Einstein, and H.G. Wells

Marcel Proust, Albert Einstein, and H.G. Wells framed time travel at the same time, relatively.

Have you ever wished to use a go back in time spell? H.G. Wells, perhaps, considered the same when he wrote The Time Machine in 1895. Meanwhile, Albert Einstein developed the special relativity theory in 1905, which is nearly the same time when Proust wrote À la recherche du temps perdu.

Einstein said that each object traveling through time in the universe is an astounding implication. Scent molecules are the same. The instant one is sprayed to the time it’s absorbed, only the observer can sense the time passing. They take us back in time, to a moment in the past. 

Travelling Forward in Time With Scent

Can scent take us to a memory in the future? Some claim that sleeping with or burning bay leaves enhances psychic abilities. Perhaps you can gain insight into your future after you buy a magic spell online.

We still don’t know if that’s true, but we do know scent can change our psychological and emotional state. It can take you back, but can it send you forward? Well, that’s up for you to decide.

Stay Safe Online

When dabbling with tricky magic like time travel, always do your research. Only buy spells from reputable and authentic spell casters online, like Jessica Black’s Spell Collections.

Backwards or forwards, scent is special. It’s the way you can travel back in time, cherish a beloved memory, and maybe, find some sort of resolution.