David Seth Moltz created Mississippi Medicine for his brand D.S. & Durga in 2011. It was inspired by the funerary rituals of the proto-Mississippian death cult of the 1200s that extended from the Great Lakes area all the way down to Florida and over as far as Texas.Where there’s a funeral rite, there’s smoke, and I am all in.

On me, it opens with a note of red cedar that’s herbaceous and resinous, joined by aldehydes that add sparkling freshness to the wood. The combination gives Mississippi Medicine a heady camphourous, medicinal quality that I love - like a tingle looking for a spine. Frankincense, one of the scents deeply associated with spiritual ritual, is smoky, warm and woody, and it rounds out the opening beautifully. As it evolves, cypress root, from the tree the Romans believed was the tree of death, comes forward - green, earthy, and camphoric. A note ofsweet, green and grassy wild viola follows as a note of cool, crisp and balsamy black pine appears. Cascarilla bark adds spicy warmth and hints of smoke and herbs to the heart. At the base, incense picks up the smokiness and brings forth a note of Spanish cade. This stuff is intensely smoky, sticky, tar-like, and camphorous. It’s deep, dark, rugged, and wild, evoking the primal scent of a campfire. It transitions to a note of potent, smoky, and burnt-wood-tinged birch tar, amplifying the campfire scent.  

This is what it smells like, but the atmosphere it evokes is brooding, dark and mysterious: branches, twigs, roots, herbs and bark are gathered from a damp, cool evergreen forest floor for a pyre. Smoke rising from the lit wood threads throughout the fragrance, carrying traces of muddy grass, burnt leaves and camphourous conifers with it.

It curls up slowly at first like a smoke signal, before the wood bursts into flames, making the base notes stronger, so that tongues of red flame and crimson cinders dance through heavy swirls of smoke. It is the smoke of ritual and transformation, healing and magic.

Mississippi Medicine dries down to a potent, smoky, woody, haunting fragrance that is flat-out sexy. This is a fragrance that was meant to be inhaled.

Mississippi Medicine isn’t everybody’s cup of tea, but I like the magic that happens when I smell Mississippi Medicine on a man.

Notes: Red cedar, aldehydes, frankincense, cypress root, black pine, wild viola, cascarilla bark, incense, Spanish cade and birch tar.