L’aromathérapie peut bien n’être qu’un placebo. Pour l’industrie des cosmétiques, ça n’a aucune importance : l’important, c’est d’y croire.

witch-products

Pacific Standard

In recent years, though, a pseudo-holistic beauty product to end all pseudo-holistic beauty products has arisen with gusto, and that is the mighty Essential Oil. It does everything. Suggested use for this blend, by MAC, includes: “Dab a dot on your temples to unwind” (?) or “apply to bare skin to add a healthy glow.” (I mean, it is oil.) Some uses for lemon oil: “Add a few drops to your shampoo to clarify hair and make it appear shinier. To help alleviate flu symptoms, add a few drops of lemon essential oil and honey to a mug of warm water. Place a few drops into unrefined coconut oil to help reduce the appearance of cellulite.” Do you then put the lemon-coconut oil … on, or can it just sit there? Be honest with me, Internet: Does it really even make a difference?

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Many people believed essential oils had antiseptic properties, reduced pain, improved skin and brain function, and induced relaxation, among other things.

But many, if not all, of these benefits have been suggested as more likely resulting from the manner of delivery (massage) than the oils themselves. Massages are relaxing and pain-reducing, and relaxing is good for our skin and brain function, and so on. “Aerial diffusion,” another form of aromatherapy (smelling the oils) might “work” in the sense that smelling nice things is a nice, if brief, feeling, but little to no evidence has supported any effect beyond the extremely short-term: A 2000 study published in the British Journal of General Practice surveyed the aromatherapy literature and found 11 experiments that had previously asserted positive health benefits in the use of essential oils. What they found was erratic methodology, insufficient sample size, and side effects that were both negligible and fleeting. The authors, in minimal concession, write that “Aromatherapy is pleasant and relatively safe compared with many other ways of spending an hour or so and £20 to £45,” and that was all the scientific support I needed to go buy some oil from a witch store in the East Village.

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They recommend wearing the oil as a perfume, and/or burn a few drops of it in a candle. I’m told a white one would be best, as white candles are also good for uncrossing, letting go of negativity. The process of this stuff—how or why it’s supposed to work—is as vague and elusive as it ever is with essential oils, no more or less so because we happen to be buying it from a witchcraft supply store. And though I don’t believe in the oil itself, I do believe in placebos, and symbolic gestures, and the camaraderie of the young woman selling it to me. “It’s just good if you’re feeling, like, you know,” she says, somehow shrugging in the kindest way I’ve ever seen. And I do.