More on Candle Dressing: an addendum~~~

 Hello Dear Readers,

Being so pre-occupied with all the astronomical happenings, as well as family doings, I’ve not really had a chance to return and post more information on my blog.   And to top it off we are having a “Hellacious” Heat Wave, breaking records all over the place.

Well of course one need not get into the Eclipse and the meteor showers, and some of the family members are helping out with donations raising funds and things like clothing for the victims of Hurricane Harvey, according to many weather folks, it has been the worst storm even more devastating than Hurricane Katrina and Harvey has done damage again in Louisiana. 

Donating to the Red Cross is good, and I understand that organizations like the Lion’s Club are helping out as well, do see if your local church is helping by sending donations of clothing and food to Harvey’s victims.

We have been busy at my home as well, family has been gathering for family visiting before most of the children go back to school, but this Labor Day weekend is going to be another big celebration, I and my husband are great-Aunt and Uncle again to a beautiful Baby girl, a new addition to the family, Mother and Daughter are doing fine,  Daddy fainted, it is their first born.   And even now since there is space here at the house, preparations for a big family bar-be-que is now being set up.   I do not have to do the work or the clean-up, all taken care of.

But as I said in a previous post, my niece and another family member have been “cataloguing” my books (author, title, subject---lots of subjects) as well as news articles that I have clipped over the years on different paranormal or bizarre events.  

  It’s nice to see things getting a bit organized, and what I find fascinating is the fact they found some old library card catalog drawer cabinet in oak, and can order from Demco and one other place the old style cards with the hole to slide the holding rod through.  

My niece confessed to me that it will be the only way to keep the collection intact for those family members that are taking up the practice.   I do wish you could have seen my eyebrows raise up to my hairline when she said that.   I truly was not aware of such an interest but it seems there is.

But what I was going to talk about is a stray page from my granny’s writings that really is a preamble to how to dress candles for ritual work.   How it got separated from the rest of the papers I don’t know, Gremlins or Trolls maybe.  

 But the minute I read it I was carried back to when I was a child and Granny would tell me to get out the old white bowl, prior to doing any candle dressing, I still have that bowl, but over the years the reason for it sort of faded away until I read this paper notation.

Now I’ve got to make it clear, I did write information in my 4 part postings of the Art of Candle Talk, but this paper that got separated from the rest is really the Preamble to Dressing one’s candle.

In Granny’s notes in this preamble, she referred to cleansing one’s hands before anointing either oneself, or another or even ritual candles, with a tea made of Hyssop.

Granny wrote: to make a tea by boiling fresh or dry Hyssop in pure water, not water that has been run through a metal pipe (aka from the kitchen sink) so it had to be water from a spring, river or lake or even rain water.    If you make enough of it, bottle it and keep it refrigerated or on ice in your ice box (she wrote this before we got an electric refrigerator), then prior to dressing a candle, or doing an anointing, your hands should be rinsed with this tea to purify them and to recite the 51 psalm as you do it.   If you are going to anoint someone substitute that person’s name instead of saying “me”.  If you are going to anoint yourself prior to ritual work or before preparing a candle or installing an altar or new ritual tool then use the correct word “me”.

Now I for some reason I fell into washing my hands using oatmeal soap, before working with a candle or doing spell work and to wash the hands in between if I was using different oils, to not confuse the oils.  

But Granny wrote than in a pinch bottled drinking water from a spring with slices of lemon floating in it will work just as well, especially if obtaining hyssop is not possible.   And then after all the ritual work was done to wash the hands with oatmeal soap.  And toss the used tea onto the base of a tree. Over the years I got it confused.   I’m still putting the blame on trolls.

Well when I read that preamble it put a whole new spin on dressing candles, especially if done in a ritual manner.  And it makes sense really, for those who practice witchcraft or Wicca, it’s important to properly clean yourself prior to doing a ritual (a shower for instance)  but back then in doing “the work” it was not really practical to do a complete body cleaning, there for it makes sense before doing “the work” it’s best to make sure that your hands are clean and not contaminated with the daily workings of the mundane world, and then sprinkle yourself with the hyssop tea or Holy Water to remove any negative energy, Granny also had a dress that she would only wear when doing “the work”, and I have a caftan for that same purpose.  Also when I needed to wash it, it would be washed separately from the rest of the laundry.

So what you do is first make the “tea” with hyssop or if not using hyssop prepare spring water with lemon slices, put this into a ceramic bowl preferably either in white or blue, or clear glass, have it large enough to immerse your hands into the water without it overflowing, rinse your hands in this water and recite the 51 psalm, allow the hands to air dry a bit before doing any anointing, dressing or ritual work.

After you do “the work” in plain water wash your hands with oatmeal soap, this will help “ground you” back into the real world along with sending any energies back into the ground after you thank the (spirits/saints/God-dess/Orisha’s/ancestors, etc).

This cleansing makes sense because to confuse the magickal workings with contamination of the mundane world can and could cause confusion or delays in any magical results, of course you have to remember that sometimes the Universe says to a person ‘that’s not going to happen’, in spite of all your efforts, and it is not wise to argue with the Universe or Divine Presence.

Granny went on to explain what I could best describe as the non-activation and the activation of candles through the anointing of it.   This I was partly able to explain in my 4 postings on Candle Magic i.e. how to dress a candle.   But she gave a further reason for it, again that is why what I’m posting here what should be a preamble to your personal section on candle rituals for any kind of work.

First off one has to remember, it doesn’t matter what the candle color is, or if you’re lighting it at a certain phase of the moon, if you do not activate it then it is just a pretty candle.   And this is something that I mentioned in my post about Dressing Candles because without properly dressing or magnetizing the candle it has no occult or metaphysical use or virtue.  

This is true because in several metaphysical shops I’ve seen people come in and buy candles and ask the shop owners to dress it for them,  a friend of mine did that and she did her spell work but it was a dud.   The next time we went into the shop I told her just to buy what she needed and we’d dress the candles at her home, and this time the ritual worked,  and we at least washed our hands with oatmeal soap.

Now I’m not saying that it’s wrong to ask the shop owners to do the dressing for you, but you do need to be somewhat of an active participant in it.   But if you want to do it right, then just buy what you need and dress the candle yourself.

And Granny was quite firm about how to go about dressing the candles,  and in her writing which diverged a bit from what Louis de Claremont said, with a free standing candle you do have a North and South pole,  and need to decide where is the middle of the candle.

Prior to using the ritual oil to activate the candle for the ritual spell, you first have to “magnetize” it using what is called “magnetic oil” and stroke the candle from the middle to the wick away from you and then stroke it from the middle to the bottom towards you,  in doing this you will have magnetized the candle----but this is only for free standing candles.   

 Which explained to my aging memory why I saw Granny anointing the same candle twice, the first was with the magnet oil the second was the ritual oil or oil of purpose (love, money etc). 

Now this makes perfectly good sense especially if you are using double action candles where you have blunted the end.

But I’ve seen Granny when she was doing a major banishing stroking a free standing candle only in one direction and that was away from her, which also makes sense, you don’t want it, you need to get rid of it so away it goes.   

 However in her preamble note she says to first magnetize the candle (and this was after it has been ritually cleansed) in the north and south direction and then with the oil of purpose or ritual oil stroke it in the direction you want the energy to flow, you want money, stroke the money oil from the wick to the bottom, you want to get rid of something stroke the oil of purpose or banishing oil from the bottom to the top.

But with glass enclosed candles you cannot do that type of stroking, so talk about doing some serious meditating on a hot day (we are having a heat wave) I worked on visualizing what Granny use to do, and again it was two oils, with the magnetic oil it was always clock wise to magnetize it, then using a tiny amount of oil of purpose again going clock wise to bring about something positive, but counter clock wise to banish something.    

And I remember Granny using a clean square nail to make a triangle of holes to put in a few drops of the oil of purpose and then a little on her index finger in a clockwise or counter clock wise direction again depending upon the purpose of the spell. 

Now she did not write that down but I remember her seeing her do it and between the different oils she’d rinse her hands in the hyssop tea in the white bowl.    So I told my niece what to write in addition to what was already written by Granny.

But then I began thinking why did Granny push only 3 holes in a triangle formation in the wax of the glass enclosed candles, was it to save oil?  Why not a pentagram, then of course I had that “DUH!!” moment, because Granny wasn’t a Wiccan, she was Catholic and was calling upon the Holy Trinity, and in a way it formed not only a triangle but also a “tooth” and she was very particular about that especially in protection spells.    Which also explained why her cloths on her altars were always triangle in shape and not square or round or rectangle, and the candle was always in the center of the triangle.  

I dug out one of her altar cloths and was sad to see it so fragile and nearly falling apart, but in each corner in small neat hand printing there was words written in Latin with a water resistant paint although flaking and faded, that said   Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti , the father and the son and the holy spirit, but one word in each corner,  and I always heard her say and even I say it now when I light a candle in ritual in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti (in the name of the father, the son and the holy spirit)  and she would also say “I also call upon Mary the Mother of God, to help with this ritual”

So that tossed me back, if Granny was only doing “the work” and it was not based on religion, but spell working, then why was she calling upon the Trinity and Mother Mary?    This was a lot to think about on a hot evening, but I relaxed on that thought and realized that it doesn’t hurt to call upon protection from a higher source, and considering how she grew up and how Mom and I and other family members grew up, it made sense to call upon them. 

I recalled (Imperfectly) an article by Denise Alvarado that mentioned in Early New Orleans a “Code Noir” in which slaves were instructed in the Catholic religion which became intergraded in Hoodoo and Voodoo, she again refers to the integration of Christian practices into it in her book the Hoodoo Voodoo Spellbook.   And I remembered that Mrs. Washington who was from Louisiana as well as the other ladies also called upon that opening phrase.

And Granny would also cover her box of cleaned candles with a cloth that had a triangle on it with those words written on it.  Sadly that particular cloth was lost when one of my uncles who despised what Granny was doing burned it and several other things of hers right after her funeral, but fortunately not everything because my other uncles and my Dad stopped him.  

BOY!!  What a fight that was!!  It was like a “hell in a cell” match from the WWE, and one of my other uncles trying to prevent the garage from burning up.   The whole neighborhood was there for that, and they were helping to put out the fire, but they wanted to see who would win the fight.   But that is a memory for another time.

So are you going to have to do a double dose of oil to magnetize your candles, I’m not sure, I know that I’m going to fall back on doing that to see if it adds “Umph!” to the spell workings.

So how do you make “Magnetic Oil”?

Judika Illes wrote a receipe in her book Element Encyclopedia of 5000 spells.

Here's how to make it:

   Place either 7 or 9 lodestones in a mason jar.

    Sprinkle them with magnetic sand.

    Cover the lodestones with a blend of sweet almond and jojoba oils.

    Close the jar and let the lodestones rest for seven days, exposed to sunlight and moonbeams.

    Pick up the jar and swirl the contents around once a day.

    After 7 days, the oil may be strained and used.

    Transfer the oil to different bottles.

    Feed the lodestones with magnetic sand and use to make more oil.

But Granny preferred doing something simple.

She got two magnets that would attract each other cheap kiddie magnets work or those that you use to hold a pizza delivery menu to your refrigerator,  put it into mineral oil and add iron filings to feed it,  put it into a dark bottle, and she’d shake it and leave it to “marinate” from New Moon to New Moon, then she’d pour a little into a small bottle for her to use, keeping the rest in the dark bottle and adding a little more mineral oil as needed.

So if you want to do the magnetic oil prior to using your oil of purpose at least you know what to do.

Now I’m going to rest,  someone managed to bring ice cream and soda and I’m going to have a root beer float this hot evening.

Bright Blessings,

Ms. Q