Mauna

In Sanskrit Mauna means Silence.

The Silence we refer to with the Sanskrit word “Mauna” is not the silence as absence of noises, but the Strength, free of time and space, uncontaminated and a sacred vibration, behind everything, before everything. After all.

We wanted Sanskrit as Language and the Sandalwood as Material to give our tribute to one of the most ancient Traditions; the Ayurvedic One.

Smelling is the closest thing to this kind of Silence that we can do, isn’t it?

When you smell, you feel, you don’t think. You grasp the smell. In that there is Silence. Honesty. Union. You are in the scent; you are the scent. The scent is in you.

How long does this condition last? It is not important. What is important is that it happens. And it does. Anytime you close your eyes, and you smell a scent. There the curtain falls. Silence falls. Facing the intangible. The mind and the smell. An open channel connects us to something that has always been there – and always will be there. If you are open to sense it.

Mauna is Silence. Through Mauna you should listen to your nose as the lighthouse and the entrance to your deepest inside. Stepping stones to be found.

You will pursue it softly without efforts, and it grows from your midst like the budding Lotus on the flacon. Maybe you will access earlier stages, where you felt it. Forgotten in the daily life, but not in the depth of your mind. A well to revisit again and again.

Mauna also comes to remind us that the body is a temple: Go inside. And find the Vibration of Silence. That is what life is all about.

Stefania Squeglia wanted to create and unfold Mauna from the deep layers of Sandalwood that is a world in itself. This determination led her to the Italian perfumer Cristiano Canali, who has long been intensely interested in Sandalwood. Both professionally and personally:

“Of all the subjects, Sandalwood is the one that touched me the deepest, and the encounter with Sandalwood in India has opened my heart to perfumery,” says Cristiano Canali.

The Mauna formulation is an intangible and silent embroidery, a kind of sutra expressed through the Sandalwood and its Dignity.

The philosophical aspects of Mauna made it natural to start the creation from and with various Indian Sandalwood as an at first indissoluble equation leading up to the right balance that you now can enjoy.

There is an ancient Sanskrit text that Stefania has kept in mind during the process of making Mauna:

“…smelling the scent of Sandalwood, the ordinary feeling of indifference disappears and there is (instead) a Vibration that arises in the heart, it is nothing else than Energy of Bliss.”

Tantraloka, Chapter III, 208b-10.

These lines from Tantraloka, one of the most elevated expressions of Tantrism, came from Kashmir by the words of the Master Abhinavagupta (10th-11th Century CE).

The Lotus floating. Waiting to open. Connected to water and air. With a descending root in the depth of the unconscious pond, it represents Mauna spirit. The Tuscan artist Alessandro Reggioli has interpreted the feeling of Stefania in a budding and almost ready Lotus sculptured in Raku Style Ceramic nestled as it is on his hand painted leave that unfolds, when you take the flacon out of its birch wood box. Perhaps more than ever before this expression materialising the spirit and the smell through the artistic presentation has come successfully to life through the close contact and work with Alessandro Reggioli: Thank you Alessandro for continuing to give love and light to Mendittorosa’s creations. And with Mauna indeed more and more.