The things people ask us

Wu Xing — five movements — is a two-thousand-year-old Chinese way of reading the world as five phases that feed and check one another: wood, fire, earth, metal, water. It was a map of seasons, flavours and temperaments long before anyone put it near a bottle.

We use it as a composition system. Each blend is built around the character of one element, so five bottles cover five different characters rather than five variations on "nice smell". The longer version is in our story.

It's a traditional interpretive lens — a way of organising scent — not a scientific model or a medical system.

Earth · Ground is the finished one — our signature blend. Available early Q4 2026, ฿690 for the 10 ml bottle.

The other four are still in research. Their character is decided; their formulas aren't, and we won't name oils we might still change.

We'd rather release one blend we're sure of than five we're guessing at.

A composition built downward — bright at the top, resinous at the base.

It smells green and slightly camphorous as it opens, softens into something herbal and warm, and settles resinous. A scent for the end of the day.

Because the exact composition is the work — the proportions took the longest and are the easiest thing in the world to copy.

What we always publish: every oil that makes up more than a tenth of the blend, and every oil relevant to skin sensitivity or allergens, however small the amount. That's the part that could matter to you. The rest is craft, and it stays ours.

If you have a specific allergy and want to check before buying, message us — we'll answer straight.

Blends of pure essential oils — several distilled or expressed plant oils composed together. No fragrance oils, no synthetic aroma compounds, no carrier oil bulking out the bottle.

That also means they behave like plant material rather than perfume: batch to batch, a harvest can smell slightly different. We think that's the point.

Blended and bottled by hand in small batches in Thailand.

How the brand started is a longer story than this box deserves.

Pick by the element, not by a problem. Each blend is composed around the character of one of the five:

• Earth · Ground — herbal and settling; grounded, steady, the quiet hour of rest. Our signature.
• Metal · Clear — crisp and dry; clarity, structure, the clean cut.
• Water · Still — cool and quiet; stillness, depth, the slow current.
• Wood · Rise — green and lifting; growth, planning, the will to begin.
• Fire · Hearth — warm and resinous; warmth, light, the nerve to be seen.

Or let the chart choose: the reading points to the element your birth chart is thinnest in, which is a more interesting way to pick than guessing.

No. The reading is free, it takes a minute, and plenty of people ignore it entirely and buy the one that smells best to them. That's a perfectly good method.

No. We make scent, not medicine. Our blends are composed for how they smell and the moment you use them in — nothing more, and we won't tell you otherwise to sell a bottle.

If you're curious about what published research has and hasn't found about aromatherapy oils in general, we keep an honest, cited library — written as third-party reporting, with the weak evidence marked as weak. It describes studies, not our products.

For anything medical, talk to a qualified healthcare professional.

Three. The ritual is three drops on the volcanic stone — a round, porous stone about five centimetres across — set within reach: the desk, the bedside, the arm of the chair. No heat, no water, no plug. The stone takes the drops and gives the scent back slowly, for hours. Three more tomorrow.

If you use an ultrasonic diffuser instead, start with 3 to 5 drops per 100 ml of water and adjust to the room. A scent you stop noticing after ten minutes is doing its job; one that announces itself from the hallway is too much. Run it in a ventilated room, in bursts rather than all day.

No. The volcanic stone is the diffuser: porous stone holds the oil and releases it without heat, which is the gentlest thing you can do to a whole essential oil.

If you prefer a mist, an ultrasonic diffuser (oil on water, cool mist) is kind to the oil. A nebuliser uses no water and throws a much stronger scent — use half as much. Reed diffusers need a carrier base, so these bottles aren't made for them. Avoid open-flame burners: direct heat cooks the lighter top notes off first, and an unattended flame is a fire risk that a stone on a table isn't.

These are composed for diffusing, and that's what we'd recommend. Undiluted essential oils can irritate or sensitise skin — sometimes on the tenth use rather than the first.

If you dilute into a carrier oil anyway, patch-test on your inner forearm first and leave it a day. Keep any citrus oil off skin that's about to see sunlight; several are phototoxic. And keep all of it well away from your eyes.

A 10 ml bottle holds roughly 200 drops — at three drops an evening on the stone, about two months. Ultrasonic diffusers empty a bottle faster than the stone does; nebulisers faster still.

Cap tight, upright, cool and dark. Not a windowsill, not a bathroom shelf, not a car. Light and heat are what age an oil — the frosted amber glass handles the light, you handle the rest.

Unopened, the scent holds for about a year; once opened, about six months. After that nothing goes wrong with the bottle — the scent simply fades, the bright citrus notes first, until there is not much left to smell.

Some essential oils are not advised in pregnancy or breastfeeding, for infants and young children, or for people with asthma or a seizure disorder. This is a real caution, not a legal shrug.

If any of these apply to you or someone sharing the room, ask a qualified healthcare professional before diffusing — and keep the room ventilated and the sessions short.

Be careful. Cats process some plant compounds poorly, birds have very sensitive airways, and neither can leave a closed room. If you diffuse around animals, keep the door open so they can walk away, use less, and stop if an animal seems bothered.

Ask a vet about your specific pet. We'd rather you did that than took our word for it.

Natural oils contain natural allergens — linalool in lavender, limonene in citrus and frankincense among them. We list every allergen-relevant oil in a blend regardless of how little of it there is, and the declarations appear on the label.

If you react to fragrance generally, treat these the same way: ventilate, keep it brief, and stop if your skin or eyes react.

BaZi — the "four pillars" — converts your birth date and time into eight Chinese characters, each carrying an element. Count them and you see which of the five elements your chart is heavy in and which it barely has.

We use that as a way to choose a scent, and nothing else. It's a traditional interpretive lens, not a prediction, not a personality test, and not medicine.

It helps — the hour sets one of the four pillars. Without it you still get the other three, which is enough to see the shape of a chart.

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Shopee Thailand, Lazada Thailand, or directly through Instagram (@elemental.scents), by email at hello@elementalscents.com. Marketplace orders are covered by that platform's checkout and buyer protection; direct orders we pack and send ourselves.

฿690 per 10 ml bottle, the same for every blend as they arrive.

Orders normally leave us within 1–2 business days, then it's the courier's clock. Full detail on the shipping page, including international.

Unopened, yes — within 7 days of delivery. Opened, no — we can't resell an opened aromatic and we won't pretend otherwise. Anything damaged, wrong or missing we replace outright. The returns page spells it out.