>What books do I buy?
Nu-uh. Try the kitchen if you want books with recipes and instructions.
First let's clarify that most potions will affect something the human senses can immediately read, and if this shit were something you could just put in a book and sell for a profit everyone would be doing it already - and obviously, they aren't. Find a reputable feng shui chart or instruction from a Taoist teacher or someone well versed in the study, because you need to know (even further really, like wizard status) how everything is made and where it all comes from, the most natural forms of everything found in the earth to our air and universe. or, you know, read up on all the ingredients you find so you don't end up poisoning yourself or blowing yourself up Also, go all out on those little chemistry vial sets of all sizes and carry an ample vial or two on your person at all times for such occasions.
You can also take a more naturalist approach, starting with herbal combinations of ingredients found in nature mostly greenery and plant life. The kind of shit you'll find in your local health food stores that are cure-alls and remedies for everything from preventing the cold to preventing cancer.
Start making combinations for the senses, starting with smell and taste, for simple pleasures and arousal, curiosity, disgust even. These are your effects, your results, and you should make note of the characteristics of people who are affected in what ways by certain things and so on. Then make yourself some kind of herbal/homemade potion that can do something for the skin, then something for the eyes like make-up, hearing maybe.
Just don't go looking to turn someone into a frog with a potion made from endangered plants and traditional Chinese medicine ingredients when you first start out. Try to have a more realistic approach if you even want to be taken seriously on some remote level. or, don't, it's your life, do what you want, I shouldn't tell you what to do and how to act And most importantly, record all of your findings and results! I personally think the most fun thing to do would be to go searching and gathering ingredients and items like a quest while totally baked, then come home and smack on some homemade meal while listening to some old folk/celtic music or something and fire up my little chemistry set, mixing things here and there with some research tabs printed out about the items properties and chemical make-up. It's not like I'm a biochemist or some chemical engineer in the new line of advanced shampoo products, fucking hydroproxylenicbifulimantiipoids fucking whatever.