The Chemistry Of Love – Discover Its Belief System
Introduction
The Chemistry Of Love: The following introduction requires an open mind. Women, put your feminist beliefs on ice for the time being. The first time I wrote it, the editor, publisher, and two women in my office DEMANDED that I remove it. They were outraged. I thought about it and decided to wait until now to use it. Basically their reaction underscored how vitally different belief systems are from culture to culture. Belief systems are LEARNED and they differ.
One is not more right than another. They are just different. However, our field, aromatherapy, spans cultures. It is truly a worldwide practice. There is a reason why it is a new phenomenon in this country and yet an ancient practice in others. The reason is cultural beliefs and worldview. So, as I said, read with an open mind. Because truly, the information is fascinating.
An Introduction to the Role of the Sense of Smell in Human Sexuality
This article is the third in a series intended to reintroduce information that has been previously lost, misunderstood, or clouded in ancient secrecy. That is quite a statement, and may appear a bit ambitious. However, our author, a Coptic Egyptian perfumer and passionate, brilliant researcher, is determined to do just that.
When he arrived in the United States just a few years ago, he was mystified by the American citizen’s apparent lack of awareness of the sense of smell and the uses of scent in daily life. Throughout his travels all over this country— 63,000 miles a year, he repeatedly observed that this lack of awareness had a drastic effect on the daily lives of ordinary people.
Soon after his arrival in this country, he and his wife were standing in a very long line at a bank awaiting their turn at the teller window. They could see from their vantage point that the male teller next to the female teller was harassing her repeatedly. He was literally “all over her” and quite sexually aroused. She was obviously embarrassed and very irritated that he would not leave her alone, especially since she had so many people waiting in line to see her.
The Chemistry Of Love: When the author and his wife arrived closer, they believed they understood the cause of the problem. The woman was wearing a perfume with a scent that was designed to arouse a man that “one only wears late at night, when alone with a partner.” The male teller responded to this scent in the manner in which it was intended, but in the wrong place and at the wrong time. The female teller was completely unaware that her fragrance could have any effect at all on another person other than the fact that he or she might like the smell.
They Should Develop The Sense Of Smell
Americans would view this situation quite differently. We would blame or praise the man (depending on our gender) and find him fully responsible for his actions. For us, the scent itself would play no role in the behavior. We never consider scent at all other than what we either like or don’t like it. We do not realize how far-reaching the effects of smell are because we simply do not consider them to be important in any way. Far-reaching they are.
The Chemistry Of Love: The Sense Of Smell
The Chemistry Of Love: Fragrance is a fully developed language of nonverbal communication where messages are exchanged between people to carry fully developed ideas, emotions, and feelings to each other. The challenge in this global age is that some civilizations did not develop the sense of smell as fully as they developed their other senses. Some cultures developed the sense of smell, others developed touch and taste, and still others, such as those in the United States, are primarily visual.
The Origin Of Beliefs
Where did this all begin? Where do our beliefs come from that influence our thinking? So often we believe that certain things are truths, and we do not consider that all beliefs are learned and that the thought originated somewhere. Philosophers, scientists, and religious leaders have all influenced our thinking, some more recently than others.
The German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) sought examples of what he considered to be superior human beings. He thought that by totally ignoring the sense of smell, he would be able to define and specify a human ideal. He claimed that suggesting that odors might influence human emotions and behavior would be to deny human free will and the ability to have absolute control over urges. To him, being human meant being fully conscious and above the kind of gross reflex reactions that animals experience. Kant assumed that we only have one mind. That mind is conscious, thinking and analytical with absolute freedom of choice. He believed that lower animals could not experience such consciousness.
Kant ignored the possibility that the brain or mind that animals use to process and react to information from their bodies and surrounding environment might persist and comfortably co-exist with the conscious brain and free will unique to humans. In actuality, odors have an impact on the emotional circuits of the limbic system in all animals and the hard-wired system of the brainstem or reptilian brain (“smell brain”) in all animals with internal skeletons, including humans.
While they operate below the level of consciousness, the reptilian brain and the limbic system control all the life sustaining reflexes of feeding, fighting, fleeing, and mating. Without such primitive triggers as touch, taste, and smell sparking our automatic, hard-wired behaviors and emotions, we would not be humans but disembodied spirits. For our very survival as humans, we need to be able to adapt to rapid changes in our environment. In emergencies, human beings need to be able to make rapid decisions without wasting time in analyzing the situation and weighing different options. Therefore, human beings have two levels of consciousness—reptilian and rational Kant claimed that humans had only the rational mind.
Odors Powerfully Influence Human Sexuality
Kant was a philosopher. He was not a man of science who would attempt to experiment and prove his theory right or wrong, with or against reality. Today, on the other hand, we have considerable scientific research to prove the ancient Egyptian belief that odors powerfully influence human sexual development and behavior.
Sexual attraction, which we have intellectualized and romanticized, may really be a response to an invisible silent stimulus—a primal animal scent. A Frenchman, Auguste Galopin in his book Le Parfum de La Femme said: “… the mutual interaction of odors constitutes the essences of sexual love…the purest marriage that can be contracted between a man and a woman is that engendered by olfaction and sanctioned by common assimilation in the brain of animated molecules due to the secretion and evaporation of the two bodies in contact and sympathy.”
The Chemistry Of Love: Odors of Desire
Our sense of smell and certain specific odors influence how we develop as sexual beings: how we choose our mates; how and why we bond with certain people and reject others; even why bonds develop between certain children and family members and not others.
Our sexuality actually starts when we are fetuses in the womb. After birth nursing at the breast exposes the infant to maternal pheromones from apocrine and sebaceous glands in the under arms and in the dark tissue around the nipples. These pheromones may well create lasting memories of sensual pleasure, security, and love in the erotic circuits in the infant’s brain. These will be stored and awakened years later with sexual maturity when the individual encounters similar pheromones in a lover. This is true for both male and females. Smells are imprinted on the limbic memory circuits, and they are associated with sexual arousal and satisfaction around the time of puberty.
We are profoundly influenced both physiologically and psychologically by the volatile secretions of others. Body odors prepare a lover to open up to the other person—to listen to what they say or to be totally close or completely distant emotionally and mentally. This goes beyond the way a person looks or the experiences that they have together. The very word for kissing in many countries means smelling—the nose being directly over the mouth so that when we kiss we also smell. Kissing is not just kissing and dancing is not just dancing. They are both methods of communication between partners mainly to share natural body odors which will serve as a sexual lure.
The Chemistry Of Love: Psychology Of Sex
Each human body has a personal odor signature as unique and distinctive as fingerprints. Havelock Ellis, in his studies on the psychology of sex, mentioned that our individual odor signature is actually the combination of several different odors.
The most important were:
- The general skin odor
- The smell of the hair and scalp
- The odor of the breath
- The armpit odor
- The foot odor
- The perineal odor
- In the male, the odor of smegma under the penile foreskin
- In the female, the odor of the mons veneris—the smegma of the clitoris, vaginal mucus and menstrual odor.
These are the constituents of the sengers or odors that convey informa-human body odor. One of the strongest human odors is called androstenone which is a major component in the acid gamey smell of perspiration. It is a particularly strongly scented, pheromonely active secretion of the apocrine glands associated with the hair follicles all over the body but concentrated in the armpits and groin. Androstenone triggers the receptivity to mate.
The Chemistry Of Love: The Smell Messages
It is proven that women silently emit an unconscious, subliminal message of willingness and readiness when they are affected by the smell of sweat of a male who is sexually aroused. Smell messages have been traced to the region of the human brain linked to hormonal control of reproductive function and sexual behavior.
Thus, odors influence the choice of people we choose to have sex with and how often we choose to do this. Odors even determine the amount of sexual contact that one desires. Desire differs markedly from one sexual partner to another irrespective of that person’s appearance or emotional feelings because of odor.
Pheromones: The Biology of Love
Pheromones are the chemical messengers or odors that convey information subliminally (below the threshold of consciousness) between two or more individuals of the same species. Some of these pheromones affect our sexual behavior, and we consider them sex attractants. Pheromones influence genes in nerve cells that secrete a hormone that regulates the sexual development and sexual behavior of animals in all the animal kingdoms, including humans. In most animals, especially mammals, olfactory sexual messages dominate all the other senses.
Pheromones have two distinct but related effects. In the hypothalamus, they influence the production of gonadotropin releasing hormone (GnRH) that is responsible for starting the cascade of pulses and cycles of sex hormones. originating in the pituitary gland involving the adrenal glands, ovaries, and testes. The hormone cascade affects all sexual development: physiology and behavior. Pheromones are usually only effective with other members of the same species. Testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, growth hormone, and insulin obtained from other animals, however, may be used to treat human hormone disorders or deficiencies.
The Chemistry Of Love: Musk - Universal Aphrodisiac
Musk, civet, and castoreum-animal secretions-are exceptions to the character of species specific pheromones as they are effectively used in perfumes. Musk, as an example, was well known and universally used in Egypt, Arabia, Persia, and China as an aphrodisiac and as a widely effective medicine dealing with the circulatory and reproductive systems.
Musk is the secretion of a gland under the skin of the abdomen of the male musk deer. Among the natural perfumes, musk assumes the status of universal aphrodisiac. The tribes that live at the foothills of the Himalayas Live a life of self-sufficiency where the musk deer plays a major part in their diet, clothing, medicine, and more. They hunt the musk deer in a special season to maintain ecological balance.
They capture the musk gland from the belly of the deer. It is not imperative that the deer needs to be killed, but the hunters still have to make an incision to obtain that musk gland.
The musk deer must be at least 3 years old, and sometimes more, for the gland to be totally mature. The size of the gland in one deer is equal to one-half a chestnut. The process of manufacturing the musk oil is actually a process of dilution. The smell of that musk gland in its natural form is very repulsive.
Musk As An Aid In Fertility
It takes at least 6 whole months for one batch of musk oil to be manufactured. Diluted musk sits in glass flacons, which are put on a rocking table that keeps rocking for six continuous months before the musk oil is ready for sale. Chinese medicine considers musk to be the most important medicine for the heart. China alone controls more than 50 percent of the total world production of the musk; France 25 percent; and the rest of the world’s 200 countries only 25 percent. A pound of musk costs between $15,000 and $30,000.
For normal women, olfactory sensitivity to musk chemicals varies significantly during the menstrual cycle, reaching its peak at the time of ovulation. In certain cultures, such as the Egyptian, musk oil was and is used as a family planning tool. Men and women would abstain from intercourse during the time of ovulation if they wanted to avoid having children or vice versa.
The intensity of that sensitivity in women to musk is from one hundred to one hundred thousand times greater during ovulation than at menstruation when women can not even tolerate the smell of musk. It is this intensity of desire to smell and wear the musk that signals ovulation. The appreciation of the scent slowly escalates from the cessation of menstruation to its peak of about 4 to 5 days at ovulation when it slowly begins to ebb again.
Musk Is Ancient Sanskrit For Testicle
Egyptians believe that women who hate musk were exposed to that scent for the first time in their life during menstruation. Women who have had their ovaries removed are far less sensitive to musk, which is closely related chemically to the male hormone testosterone. However, the majority of these women retained normal acuity when treated with estrogen.
Musk exists in male sweat and female vaginal scents. It has the ability to influence our behavior by priming the production of hormones in the midbrain’s hypothalamus and pituitary. By affecting hormone production, odors can influence the onset of puberty and the timing and length of the menstrual cycle. The Egyptians considered musk a treasured and most divine aphrodisiac. In fact, the word musk is ancient Sanskrit for testicle.
Everywhere in the world, we find musky odors being used to bring males and females together to mate. Some of the constituents of musk exist in the plant world such as in hyacinth, musk mallows, musk orchids, musk rose, musk thistles, and musk seeds.
The Chemistry Of Love: Case Study
A woman who was 40 years old had an irregular menstrual cycle, wanted to have a baby, and had been trying for several years, ever since she got married. Her doctor had informed her that she was infertile and would never be able to conceive. Her sister was introduced to the fact that, for centuries, Egyptian women had used musk to control their fertility and shared this with her. After 3 months of using the musk, she had a regular period and then continued to be regular for a long time. Then suddenly, she didn’t have her period any more and began to believe she was beginning menopause. But she went to the doctor, and the doctor told her she was three months pregnant. She now has a healthy baby boy.
Musk balances the hormonal secretions and controls the estrogen levels in the body. For men, it helps by blanching and controlling the blood pressure, which plays an important role in male sexuality. When blood pressure is high, there is a tendency for men to have premature ejaculation and, in some cases, impotence.
The Price for Sexual Inhibition
The price that people pay for failure to fulfill their own sense of sexuality is enormous. They don’t realize how much it takes from their well-being emotionally, mentally, and physically-even spiritually. For example, those that have been taught by their culture, religion, parents, or personal beliefs that the body is dirty or something to deny or “rise above” would experience inhibitions and a total lack of emotional harmony and balance. Their entire bodily system would be affected including their judgment and perception because of the resulting hormonal imbalances.
The whole body is nothing but chemical constituents. The spirit is the manager of all these chemical changes and interactions. The harmony and balance of our body chemistry allows us to live a harmonious and effective life. When that balance is interrupted, we can expect everything to go wrong-physical diseases, mental exhaustion, emotional disturbance, etc.
Aphrodisiac Oils Of The Nature Of inhibition
We need to expand our thinking about the whole issue of sexuality and grow beyond any heritage of guilt and shame that has been passed down to us from earlier teachings. Early Christians like Indians, saw the whole life on this plane as samsara, the plane of labor work and pain. They saw the hardships of our physical life with all the related states of mind and emotion and thus wanted to search for a way to stop breeding so that no more new generations would have the same ill fate. All the religions that produced monks and preached heavy norms of chastity were, in a way, trying to solve the problem of the misery of the human condition. The monks were trying to find a final solution. Such practices, however, going against nature, created all kinds of problems.
Keep in mind when you are exploring the nature of yourself, your partner, and clients with various aphrodisiac oils of the nature of inhibition. As you begin to unlock doors to sexuality, much repressed emotional material may arise, and conflict and confusion can ensue when people boldly face their sexual potential in the context of complex, inhibitory belief systems. Tread lightly.
About The Author
The Chemistry of Love by Raed Rady
Raed Rady is a Coptic Egyptian from Luxor, Egypt. He is a Perfumer in the Ancient Egyptian sense. His family has been involved in the production of medicinal herbs and oils for thousands of years. As founder of Uttati International in the United States, he produces a line of essential oils that represents true perfumery, which, to him, represents true aromatherapy. He is a much-sought-after speaker and teacher. He gives lectures and seminars all over the United States at various well-known institutions, such as Purdue University Medical School (IUPUI) in Indianapolis, The Veterinary School at Colorado State College in Denver, and Several Massage Schools. He may be reached at (312) 428-5721.
