A solemn hymn to nature and an ode to slowness

Barefoot in the fresh dew of a morning already full of sunshine, moved by a precise intention, Sylvie picks roses, one by one, with quartz crystals. "The flower is picked when it is ready to be picked, in its full bloom, at its optimal potential for transformation, at the ideal time and day dictated by the position of the stars."

If harvesting involves awareness, attention and rigor, following the biodynamic calendar, the preparation of oils, tinctures, incense and floral elixirs praises slowness. The plants are sometimes distilled in rainwater collected on a stormy night, loaded with nitrogen and electromagnetic properties, sometimes in dew water, collected on the full moon of spring before sunrise, preserved in a glass carboy. For twenty-one days, or even up to thirty days, they will infuse in the oils in the sun and in the shade, according to a soli-lunar rhythm. "The spirit of the plant infuses".

Sylvie picks. There is the caress of the wind, the soft velvet of the petals, the song of the world whispering its secrets. "Everything is a wave in the universe," she explains. It is the rite of summer, fullness. The soul on the edge of her lips, her whole being vibrates. Silent prayer. She is whole, calm and collected, her state of consciousness harmonized with that of the flower.

A vocation

To get there, Sylvie followed a long process of academic, personal and professional development. Years of training, hermetic readings, initiatory journeys and quests. Totally invested in her universe, on the edge of the mysterious, the sacred, the magic of the Living.

The call was strong. “At eight years old, I already saw myself in a laboratory, surrounded by glassware and stills. I was fascinated by nature. I always dreamed of having a spiritual master. I started concocting all kinds of products with plants: alcohols, old medicinal wines, natural remedies to treat my children, and cosmetics.”

Sylvie became a herbalist, then a phytotherapist. She worked in a clinic for many years. She also discovered an ease in transmitting her passion, first to children, perhaps more real, then to older ones, teaching anthroposophical botany, the development of medicinal, edible and aromatic plant gardens, according to the principles of sacred geometry, and the transformation of mineral and plant matter. For more than two decades, she has been creating absolutely unique care products, with ancestral manufacturing methods, in harmony with nature.

It was a meeting with a French alchemist in 1999 that would seal his vocation. “I drank in his words. He was amazing. He was truly the spark that lit the flame of alchemy in my heart; since then, it has never gone out. I prepared myself for several years, blossoming from the inside out in order to be able to honor the beauty and perfection of the Living. You have to be able to raise your consciousness, in all humility and solemnity, in reverence for the laws of Nature, to be worthy of practicing alchemy.”

The quest for quintessence

To extract the maximum potential from the plants, Sylvie proceeds in several stages, separating the different parts, in multiple ways. She purifies them, then reunites them, magnified, in order to reach the ultimate degree of perfection of the material. A true work of a monk, or an alchemist. Spagyrics at its best, like a vibrational medicine. Sylvie has managed to perfect an ancestral art, plant alchemy, a combination of chemistry and botany enveloped in a particular aura, a je-ne-sais-quoi of incantatory. "In front of my still, I hear notes with each drop that flows."

This is not esotericism, but an extraordinary knowledge of life, an incredible ability to transform nature according to very precise rules. Sylvie worked alone for a long time in her laboratory, her cathedral. "My spagyric products carry a high frequency, a high level of purity. Before working, I create a sacred space to vibrate in harmony with what is there. It is a place of alchemy and rectification, but also of meditation. In short, a place from which true co-creations emerge. This explains why my cosmetics have a profound effect on beings, and why they magnify both external and internal beauty."

High cosmetology

In its Rose d'or range, there is twenty-four carat liquid gold and more than nine rose extracts: its hydrosol, its essential oil, its absolute, the cellular extracts of its leaves and extracts of its buds and petals. Married, they are then the quintessence of the rose.

Sylvie put everything aside to devote herself entirely to her work. She had help to set up an online store and a brand image that reflects her. Her training courses arouse curiosity and wonder, on both sides of the Atlantic. More than half of her clientele is now on the old continent, where the principles of alchemy, better known, took root in the Middle Ages.

While it is difficult to approach her manufacturing methods, almost to the limit of the unspeakable, we can say of Sylvie Gargiulo that she is an enlightened entrepreneur, at the service of something greater than herself. In a world in search of benchmarks and a return to nature, where the holistic vision of health takes on its meaning more than ever, the meticulous and inspired work of this great herbalist and alchemist can only arouse admiration and reverence.