marcus bio image

Marcus R. McCoy is the owner and perfumer behind the house of Orpheus. Marcus has dedicated years of his life to the study of the magic of scent. He began his journey with an apprenticeship to a south american shaman, working with exotic amazonian flowers learning how the plants spoke through their scent.

From this beginning he studied the arte of distillation and the extraction of scents from plants. He began learning the alchemical origins of perfuming. Marcus believes that perfuming is a high arte and that like all high arte’s each piece is unique and must be interwoven with something greater, beyond the physical. The perfume must be exalted…

Marcus prides himself in creating scents that transverse liminal boundaries. He named his perfume house after Orpheus, the progenitor of the Orphic mysteries a legendary musician, poet, and prophet. He wrote hymns to the Greek gods and powers, each completed with the burning of a sacred incense. Incense that is the base of many of the perfumes Marcus creates. It is Marcus’s hope that each of his scents will allow you to be stirred and roused by the symphonies of scent he creates.

About the alchemical ingredients:
We do not work with the usual ingredients within most normal perfumes, nor do we add all of the ingredients for their scent. We work with the sulphur and soul of the vegetal, animal, and mineral kingdoms to create ensouled and ensorcered perfumes unlike any other in the world. Many of our oils are masterfully made by Alchemist Marcus McCoy or sourced from other alchemical masters.

What purpose do they play in our perfumes you may wonder?
Each perfume has a theme in its creation, as well as its own purposes. Each perfume an invocation of something powerful that we wear and embody. One might even say each perfume has its own chimeric genius or spirit, composed of the spirits of its sulphurous components. The metallic oils as well as other esoteric ingredients serve to exalt the plant essences within the perfume, working with alchemical correspondences to create a work of Arte that represents not just an aesthetic but the esoteric secrets of creation itself.

CONTACT
Please send emails and inquires for retailing House of Orpheus to…
marcus@houseoforpheus.com