[images description: first image: a dressed and lit brown candle on a plate on a table with around a jar of salt, a vintage bottle of moon water, a jar of cinnamon and a honey jar with rose petals; on the table there's also a jar lid, a pen and a used matchstick. Second image: the same dressed candle on the same plate but in front of an open laptop]
What does a witch to launch his business website? A candle spell!
I made this candle spell, lit the candle and then clicked on the buttoon that officially launched my website. It's the very first candle spell that I create myself, without following a tutorial, and it includes:
moon water to oint the candle bc I was out of oil
a brown candle (brown for grounding, since the goal was also to implement that this project is grounded in my reality, not a whimsical dream)
cinnamon, for luck and abundance
salt for protection
rose petals for self love (and bc they're the very first herb that I harvested, so I tend to incorporate them when it's a particularly meaningful occasion)
coffee to remove blockages, energy and grounding
I took the candle, put moon water on it and then added on it cinnamon, salt, rose and coffee. I put the candle on a plate and lit it, then launched my website and let the candle burn completely (reminder! keep it away from everything that could burn & let fresh air in!)
While Santa Muerte and her followers have yet to make headlines here in the United States, the extent to which her cult has expanded here in the past few years is astonishing. When I started thinking about her growing presence in this country, I assumed that I would have to head to the border or to cities such as Los Angeles and Houston to find the White Sister being venerated by her Mexican and Central American adherents. From my home in central Virginia I figured the closest I might find the skeleton saint would be in the Washington, DC, area, ninety miles to the north. And sure enough, on one of my recent trips to the capital city I found her fairly easily in the hip Adams-Morgan neighborhood. Sharing vibrant 18th Street with an Ethiopian, Peruvian, and even a Oaxacan restaurant, Botanica Yemaya y Chango carries a wide selection of Saint Death paraphernalia, including a two-feet-tall statue in which the saint’s robe is made of a patchwork of miniature hundred-dollar bills. The old Panamanian woman … told me that in the past three or four years the Skinny Lady has taken over more and more shelf space at the expense of Yemaya, Chango, and the other orishas (spirits) of this Cuban-born religion. The well-heeled young hipsters who wine and dine in Adams-Morgan occasionally stop in the shop to check out the religious exotica, but it is the Latino, mostly Salvadoran, residents of the neighborhood who purchase the hundred-dollar-bill-draped Santa Muerte and other articles that they pray will bring them, health, wealth, and love.
The easy discovery of the Powerful Lady in DC led me to rethink my dismissal of the possibility of finding her in the former capital of the Confederacy. Perhaps there were enough Salvadoran and Mexican immigrants in Richmond for me at least to find a few votive candles for sale at a local Latino grocery. The more I thought about the prospect of finding her here, the more excited I became. For to discover her here in central Virginia, where the Latino population is under 5 percent, would be really significant. It would mean that the Pretty Girl had moved beyond the barrios of the big cities and the border and into the American heartland. And sure enough, the two Latino grocery stores on the same block as my favorite Vietnamese restaurant, on Richmond’s West End, were selling an assortment of votive candles, and even a few figurines at the Salvadoran-run market. Even more impressive, though, was the discovery that the skeleton saint had a semi-public altar in my new hometown. Lupe (short for Guadalupe), the mother of one of my wife’s third-grade students and a new devotee of Saint Death, told me to check out Botica El Ángel where she gets all her devotional paraphernalia.
Wearing a flashy gold medallion of Santa Muerte on her chest, Cristina, the energetic owner of the religious esoterica shop on the city’s hardscrabble south side, gave me a tour of Botica El Ángel. A Salvadoran immigrant, she hadn’t heard of the saint of death in her homeland, but became a believer in 2005 when she started to sell Santa Muerte merchandise at her newly opened shop. While looking for a Saint Death book in English for me, an item I hadn’t requested, she enthusiastically stated that the Grim Reapress accounts for approximately 40 percent of her total sales. Santa Muerte candles, incense, and figurines outsell the other Catholic and Santería paraphernalia at the well-stocked little store. After a lengthy search, Cristina produced an overpriced bilingual devotional manual that she carries for her Jamaican and African American clientele. This was the first and is still the only reference to non-Latino devotees that I’ve come across. I wondered how many English-speaking believers in the White Girl had left dollar bills in the bony hands of the four-foot statue in the center of the altar at the back of the shop. Politely declining her twenty-two-dollar English/Spanish booklet, I instead opted for a bilingual red jar candle. A former middle school spelling bee champion, I was naturally drawn to the misspelling at the base of the glass candle jar, right beneath Santa Muerte’s bony feet. Manufactured in North Hollywood, California, by the General Wax Company, my candle and all the bilingual candles on the shelf read “Holly Death.”
(R. Andrew Chestnut, Devoted to Death, pages 47-49)
🌸💫 Self Love Spell Jar + Forgiveness Altar 💫🌸 this is pretty specific for me me because i’ve been struggling with shame and issues with self love/confidence but i figured it might help another secular witch looking for a pretty basic altar starting point + i’m proud of my first real altar/spell jar. small jar sealed with pink candle (self love) : - brown candle wax (grounding) - rose angel water (protection, relieves anger/fear) - pink rose petals (self love, heart chakra, protection) - sea salt (protect, purification) altar: - sea salt circle (protection, purification) - pink rose petals (self love, heart chakra, protection) - quartz (purification) - tiger’s eye (self worth, protection, zodiac Gemini) - rose quartz (self love, heart chakra, protection) - brown candle (grounding) - blue candle (forgiveness) - white candle (purification) mantra/meditation: “forgive and love, heal and learn. dispel shame expel anxiety. i feel love i feel forgiveness. with my will, it is. so may it be.”
My dog is in the hospital with AIHA, he was doing well before his red blood cell count dropped again today. I took a brown candle, carved AIHA into the wax and lit it. The flame is staying strong, tall and solid.
