Last year, I brought my mom with me to a dinner party full of friends and colleagues — all twenty-something, single, living in Brooklyn, and into astrology. It was the kind of table set-up where you can really only talk to the people seated on either side of you, so someone suggested we start off the meal by going around one by one and sharing our Sun, Moon, and Rising signs.
Take a moment to imagine the time it takes 15 or so people to list their signs, talk about the degree to which they relate to them, and get interrupted by a drunk person who knows someone who knows someone whose brother was a Leo rising and, well, he's in jail for murder now, so maybe they're not all trustworthy, you know? Now imagine a mom, wildly impatient and skeptical by nature (she's a Cancer, btw), who does not get this whole New Age millennial crystal thing at all.
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By the third person, she was very audibly sighing; by the sixth, she was muttering, "Oh, we're actually doing this. This is for real, okay, wow." I shushed her, said she was being rude, but secretly, I felt the same. Because here's the hard truth: I don't give a shit about your horoscope. I don't care what you think is "off" about your love life because Mercury is in retrograde. I don't want to know what's in your gratitude journal. But I continue to talk about it with people ad nauseam.
Which is why I hate how irresistible I find spiritual beauty products. "Gemstone-infused" is the sexiest phrase in the beauty lexicon; just reading "promotes a sense of peace" on a label is enough to make me feel a little calmer. A neat set of tiny essential oil vials in a rainbow of colors that promises to center all seven chakras and comes with a guide book that tells, in the simplest possible terms, how best to use each? Yep, fuck, I'm in.
First, I posed the oils against palm fronds and crystals for Instagram (I may not be sure which planet rules Sagittarius, but I know exactly how many followers I have at any given moment and it's never enough), then I rolled Third Eye, which governs wisdom and intuition, along my forehead, and Heart around my chest. I turned away from all the screens, closed my eyes, and took a few deep breaths. And... it worked. I felt immediately less end-of-day-headache-y and on edge, and all I had really done was hit pause on reading about how much Kylie's Fendi stroller costs.
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I've been using the oils regularly throughout the day — sometimes I follow the booklet's instructions, sometimes I just grab a random one and hold it to my nose. I'm not, like, about to pay for a tarot card reading any time soon, but I do feel comforted by my Root rollerball, a little less prone to find everything annoying. Maybe I'll lend my mom Throat the next time she comes to visit — it's supposed to make you a better listener.
Baiser Beauty The Chakra Box, $180, available at Baiser Beauty.