Candle Magic - The Meaning of Colors
Within the spells we find within a wide range of books and literature bout candle magic, we often see that the author calls for candles of a specific color to achieve the desired results, but often there is no explanation as to why these particular colors are suggested. In candle magic, just as within all forms of magic, the state of mind that we are in has a great deal of impact upon the results that we achieve when we cast a spell. The color of the candle influences this, helping you achieve a state of mind and helping to provide an energy that will aid you in achieving your desired goals. So what do the colors mean? Below is a list of some of the more common colors used within candle magic, along with the traditionally accepted meaning behind them.
Red Candles - Red is the color of fire, providing the warmth of vitality to your magic. Use it when you are seeking strength and courage to overcome or face whatever is before you. Fire also burns hungrily; making red candles a wonderful tool for inciting passion, whether you are seeking lust, ambition, or rage.
Orange Candles - Orange candles offer an abundance of energy to your magic, particularly when you are seeking a sort of physical vigor. Use them to inspire energetic ambition, or to help yourself or another get through a time that is physically draining.
Pink Candles - Pink candles are widely viewed as being able to bring compassion and love to your ritual magic. For this reason they are commonly used in love spells, but pink candles can also be used to inspire compassion, and to help heal emotional trauma and broken hearts.
Yellow Candles - Yellow candles are used within candle magic for communication, and to access awareness and understanding. This makes them great for divination, where they can help you interpret and understand the signs that guide you to your answers. They are also a potent aid in working with spirits, or even blessing with travel, where their energy can help in understanding that which you summon or being aware of your environment.
Green Candles ¬- Green candles are perhaps most famously used in spells of money drawing and prosperity. Green is the color of fertility and abundance, representing the harvest and the bounty of the earth. Use them when you are in your job search to help you find employment, when you are seeking fertile growth in any circumstance, or when you could simply use a little extra cash.
Blue Candles - Blue candles are used when you are invoking healing energies within your candle magic, or you are seeking peace and serenity. Blue is also the color of twilight, and the serenity between day and night, as well as the realm of dreams, making blue candles a valuable tool when you are seeking to work dream magic as well.
Purple Candles - Purple Candles are associated with all things spiritual. They are commonly used when seeking to develop and build upon psychic abilities, intuition, and similar such qualities. They might also be used during meditation and prayer when seeking deep, spiritual wisdom.
Brown Candles - Brown candles are deeply rooted in the energies of the natural earth. They are often used when seeking to influence, or be influenced by, the natural world and the animals within it. They are also wonderful tools for grounding, and seeking balance.
White Candles - White candles are all purpose candles, as the color white actually contains all of the colors that exist within the spectrum. In more specific terms however, white candles are also associated with the moon, making them apt representations of the Goddess. They are also used in purification magic, and protection, where they help bring positive energies.
Black Candles - Black Candles are often used for banishing and protection. As black is the absence of all colors, it can be used to banish the energies you desire. Similarly, it is sometimes used to absorb within candle magic practice, and transform it to another purpose. Black candles are also sometimes used to initiate the ending of a cycle, such as a bad habit or a stage of your life that you wish to move on from, so that a new beginning can take place.
Dressing Candles
Dressing candles, or anointing candles as it is also often called, is a time-honored practice of preparing a candle to be used within your ritual magic. Within this magical practice, you use an anointing oil - chosen for the specific purpose you have in mind - to coat the candle in a ritualistic manner, imbuing the candle with energy and intent so that it can help you with your spell when it is burned, releasing all of the focused intent and desire with the energy of the flame, the oil, and the candle itself to help you achieve your goals.
With all of the traditions of candle magic in the world, you will find that many explore this art and that few describe the exact same way of how it should be done. Among all of the traditions, you must first choose your candle and your oil. Often the candle is chosen for its color, with the color that will help you the most within your magical practice being used to add to your spell. The oil itself will vary a great deal. Take time and explore the oils that you have available to you, and find one that feels right to your purpose. Rose oil, for example, can be used in blessings of peace and love. Dragon's Blood oil might be used to empower spells. Eucalyptus oil might be used for purification and cleansing. And so on.
Once you have gathered these two items, it is time to anoint your candle. Dab your finger in the oil and then use it to apply the oil directly to the candle. This creates a personal connection between you and the candle, and can help you channel your energy, the energy of the goddess, and whatever else you visualize, desire, and focus upon into the candle as you dress it. In some traditions, the direction that you use to spread the oil does not matter at all. In some, it becomes very specific. For example, some describe using your finger to draw the oil around the candle in a clockwise motion to draw something to you, while the widdershins, or counter clockwise motion, is used to send things away. Similarly, drawing a line of oil downward from the top and upward from the bottom, toward the middle of the candle, is used to bring something to you while drawing the oil outward is used to banish.
While doing this, some will aid their concentration by speaking a prayer or chanting an incantation, or the words of the spell to help maintain and develop a focus of the energy and intent that you are pouring into the candle. Some may also stay silent, preferring a more inward focus as they prepare their ritual candle, while others might speak at specific times, such as when they begin to dress their candle or when they have finished. The exact process is, as always, the best way that you find for yourself.
And, just that easy, you have dressed your candle. It is now ready to be used along with more elaborate ritual, or all by itself as a spell candle to help achieve whatever goals you have prepared it for.
The Pentagram
The pentagram is a symbol that we can find everywhere in modern culture. It appears on album covers, posters, in movies, and video games. It is a symbol of faith and mysticism, invoking for some a sense of purity in faith and closeness to one’s god or goddess, while for others it triggers a knee-jerk reaction or fear that it is a symbol only associated with evil – a common misconception that did not exist for the thousands of years that it has appeared within human history. So what does it mean?
Dating back thousands of years to the cradles of civilization, the pentagram can be found quite literally etched in stone. It was a symbol used by the ancient Sumerians and Egyptians, Gnostics and Hebrew mystics, and later among influential occultists of the mid-ages and present day, who even now debate and explore its use within the arts of magic.
Among several of the more ancient cultures of the world, it was highly revered for different reasons. Among the Sumerians, it was actually a pictogram for their word UB. This has come to be interpreted as a symbol for the five planets they could observe, as well as the goddess whom they revered as the Queen of Heaven, Ishtar. The Pythagoreans also took up the symbol and praised it as they explored it in their sciences, viewing it as a symbol of mathematical perfection as well as associating it with the physical elements. Within ancient Hebrew scripture, the pentagram also appears as sacred. There it is spoken of as the first seal of God, and perhaps one of the most important seals so bestowed. It is there that the pentagram is spoken of first as appearing on Solomon’s Ring, which Solomon used to command and bind spirits to build his temple.
In later eras, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa and Eliphas Levi explored then nature of the pentagram within their works on occult practice. Agrippa famously depicted the image of man within the pentagram, and borrowed from the Pythagoreans in describing the pentagram as a representation of the four elements, with the top most point representing the spirit, or the divine. It is worth noting that during this time, contemporary Christians would often wear the pentagram symbol as an amulet that offered protection, much as they might carry or pray before the bones of saints. Eliphas Levi, some hundreds of years later, also brought the pentagram into notoriety. In his explorations of magic, it was he who first suggested that the inverted pentagram might be a symbol of evil intent, describing such symbolism as an expression of the natural order being turned on end.
In modern mysticism, all of these traditions have blended in the melting pot of Western Mystery Tradition. You can find spiritual communities speaking the praises of the pentagram, and even using it in ritual practice as part of seals, summoning circles, and banishing rituals such as the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram. Even the inverted pentagram sees ritual use, where it is sometimes a symbol of banishing in response to the pentagram’s symbol of evocation or invocation. In modern Wicca, it is often viewed as a symbol of faith – a symbol often worn to stay close to the Goddess and one’s mystic tradition. It is the center of controversy, and is sometimes feared, and its mean has been obscured by its appearance in many cultures and having been reinterpreted throughout the march of history, but it has become a symbol deeply part of the history of man and our study of mysticism.
Using Amulets and Talismans
Amulets and talismans are some of the post popular tools utilized within ritual magic, ranging from simple amulets using roots and charms for good luck and protection to intricate seals, used as talismans to aid and empower your magic. But often the understanding of how a specific seal, charm, or amulet is much more difficult to find than mention of simply using them in your spell. How do they work, and how can you incorporate them in the spells that you create? Let's some of the varieties of these charms that we might find, and then explore how we can use them.
A symbol of magic
Perhaps one of the most simple concepts is that an amulet or talisman can be a symbol that we use to help us concentrate, focus, and guide the energy that we seek in magical practice, meditation, and any number of other spiritual purposes. This can be a pentagram or cross, that we use as a symbol of faith to help us find personal empowerment, protection, or to simply reinforce our will. Or it might be something like the Wishing Lamp Amulet, that provides you with something to focus on when you are filled with the desire, thoughts, and energy of your wish, helping you to bring that desire into your life as you work to obtain it. Sometimes the symbol can have personal meaning, such as a charm or talisman that reminds you of one you love. This is often more potent for such magics, with the emotions stirred helping to fuel your spells.
A spiritual connection
Other times the symbolic nature of an amulet or talisman provides deeper meaning, and a closer connection to the energies that you are seeking. Often times we see these ritual tools appearing as the images of totem animals, seals intended to bind and utilize specific powers or entities. An amulet like the Spirit Rider Power Amulet might be used to help guide you to a spirit that can protect or guide you while you explore the astral, or the Stag Power Amulet might be used to seek the grace, nobility, and wisdom of the Stag totem within yourself, or within your magic.
Magical Seals
Often used as talismans within ritual magic, Magical Seals or magical workings that combine geometric shapes known to possess power with magical words, the names of Angels, and similar symbols to combine both the aspects of symbols of magic and spiritual connections. The symbolism upon these seals is often enough to invoke a variety of emotion with just a glance, and they are designed to specifically invoke, or evoke, cosmic powers to aid you within your magical craft. The Saturn Seal of Protection for example, is used to evoke the astrological properties of Saturn, a planet named for a Roman God, to aid in protecting those who keep it close or otherwise use it within their magic. The symbols and names inscribed upon the surface of the amulet have been designed specifically or this purpose.
Natural Amulets and Talismans
Most frequently hand crafted, there are a variety of herbs, roots, stones, and crystals that are often used to create magical amulets. Indeed, these were often among the first of such devices. They are commonly chosen for the natural magical properties of the herb or stone, which range from possessing natural energies or vibrations that are good for protection to being items that help attract good spirits.
Using Amulets and Talismans for your spells
We've explored a handful of the ways that amulets might work, but how can we use them within our magical practice? How might such an item be used within our spells?
Perhaps most frequently, you might focus on your charm while you chant, and pour all of the energies of your spell into it along with your intent, desire, and will, creating an object that you can carry, or otherwise use, to bring into effect your spell. This is perhaps most popular with those items that are chosen for their symbolism. From here, such a charged amulet or talisman might then be carried it with you, keeping the magic with you and close to your person as you go about your life. Alternately, you might bury it, allowing the energies to disperse into the world, carrying with your spell with it. These are just a few examples, and the limits are bound only by your creativity
Similarly, when used in a spell in such a way, an amulet might be treated with anointing oil, or given offerings as a symbol of the qualities that you seek in your life. It might still be carried with you within a mojo bag, or perhaps it might be left upon your altar, but in so nurturing the amulet and the qualities it offers, you encourage these qualities to blossom and grow within your life. This is a common practice with tokens of good luck, where the luck is encouraged to grow, seals and talismans to specific spirits, angels, or demons, where the offerings are used to either encourage the spirits influence in your life or empower the magic that keeps them at bay, and sometimes with totem items where one seeks to find and encourage the influence of the totem spirit in question.
In some cases, the amulet or talisman might simply be carried upon your person or placed upon an altar to bring its qualities into your life; an item whose presence alone offers positive influence, protection, good luck, or some other such quality is most commonly chosen for this. Amulets used in wishing magic are used this way sometimes to help seek the presence of that which you wish for. Similarly, talismans using seals to invoke or evoke various powers might be used like this to simply call the presence of that entity into your life
These are just a few of the ways that these items might be used within your magical practice, and by no means the limits of how amulets and talismans might be used. Indeed, all manner of such magical tools exist, and the only real limitations upon how they can influence your spells and magical practice is your own creativity.