Candles are an integral part of any spiritual ritual and especially useful in magic. I decided to craft some of my own to make the use of candles in my ritual that much more powerful because I have placed my own energy not just on the candle but within the candle at the making of it. I bought some high quality paraffin that is specially designed for making candles within glass or ceramic containers. I did not want to purchase molds and decided instead to utilize some very small canning jars and some ceramic cups that I already had as containers.
I fixed wicks within the jars, cut the paraffin into small chunks and placed them into a double boiler. (You can make your own double boiler by placing one stock pot within another). One tip: I used one of my regular cooking stockpots and the wax is difficult to clean completely out of it so I am going to try to find a cheap used stock pot at a thrift store to dedicate to this purpose.
The wax melts very quickly so this process does not take long. When the wax was melted, I added some candle colorant and essential oils to the wax. I made two batches. The first batch I colored green and added cedar, juniper, and rosemary oils. The second batch I added brown coloring and sandalwood, patchouli, and palmarosa oils. One mistake I did make and that is I poured the wax at too high of a temperature. This caused the wax to sink in at the center of the candles. The directions said to pour the wax at 125 degrees and my wax was closer to 150.
I had a lot of fun making these candles. When I picked the colors and oils, I did not have a specific ritual in mind. I picked colors and fragrances that I love. If I did want to do a ritual for a specific purpose; for example: love, money, protection, ect... I would use colors associated with those purposes and fragrances that would support that. (This information can be found in any book on the magical use of herbs such as Scott Cunningham's). I started with 4 lbs of paraffin and ended up with 24 candles!! The warm glow and fragrances are wonderful!
I love those dark bowls you used! Candle making is one of my favorite things to do as well. I like to add in a tiny tiny pinch of herbs to the wax... they're not for scent, just for magic. They usually sink to the bottom of the container. How do you get your wicks to stay in the middle? Mine always topple over even if I use a chopstick to hold them!
ReplyDeleteI dipped the wicks into melted wax and stuck them onto the bottom! Putting herbs into the wax is a great idea!!
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