The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Dawn Spencer Hurwitz built DSH Perfumes around an unusual premise: treat fragrance like visual art. Each bottle is a sketch, not a statement. Become the Shaman arrived in 2017 as part of the CaFleureBon Project Talisman, a collection that treated scent itself as a talisman, a tool for intention. The name is direct. This isn't a fragrance that asks permission. It asks you to lean in.
The choice of milkweed and gray sagewort as opening notes is unexpected, American botanicals rather than the citrus or herbal standards of traditional incense compositions. Milkweed carries a sappy, almost sticky green quality that the perfumer clearly leaned into rather than refined away. Gray sagewort adds a camphorated herbal edge that keeps the opening grounded in plant territory rather than atmospheric smoke. These are not decorative top notes. They're a statement of botanical intent.
The evolution
Gray sagewort arrives first, camphorated, herbal, cutting through whatever space you've entered. The milkweed follows with that sappy green snap, unexpected in a composition built around smoke. Together they prevent Become the Shaman from becoming a one-note incense statement. The smoke is there from the start, but these botanicals keep it honest. Palo santo takes over the heart. This is where the shamanic dimension lives, the spiritual cleansing wood, luminous copal resin adding sweetness beneath. Amyris and guaiac wood provide a waxy creaminess that rounds the smoke instead of competing with it. This middle phase holds for hours, meditative and warm. The drydown introduces Peru balsam's sticky vanillic richness, tobacco absolute's darker animalic depth, and cedarwood's dry pencil-shaving finish. Tonka bean adds a powdery counterpoint. The smoke never fully disappears, it lingers in the base, soft and round, present on fabric the next morning.
Cultural impact
Become the Shaman attracts wearers who want fragrance to function as something more than pleasant ambient scent. Its inclusion in CaFleureBon's Project Talisman collection positioned it within a community that treats scent as a tool for intention and self-knowledge. The composition appeals to those drawn to the spiritual and ritual dimensions of smell, palo santo's traditional use for cleansing and grounding finds an unexpected translate onto skin.
