Candle Magick for Beginners

Every time you make a wish and blow out your birthday candles, you're doing candle magick. It's folk magick so familiar that most people never notice it.

Candles are a huge part of my own practice. Most of my workings involve one, and for a lot of witches, a single well-chosen candle is the whole spell. They're cheap, easy to find, and powerful. They also involve open flame in your home, so let's cover how to choose one, how to prepare it, how to burn it safely, and what it might be telling you as it burns.

Why Candles Work

A candle carries two kinds of energy at once. Its flame is the element of fire, and it also represents spirit, the force that activates a spell. As it burns, the candle transforms, and whatever you've put into it is released.

Candles also do something simpler that matters just as much: they give your mind a focal point. The soft, flickering light helps quiet your thoughts and shift you out of ordinary awareness and into a magickal headspace.

Candle magick as we know it is fairly new. For most of history, real candles were expensive. Beeswax was a luxury, and most everyday candles were made from tallow (animal fat), which is why oil lamps were the more common magickal tool. Today's cheap paraffin candles made candle magick one of the most accessible forms of spellwork there is. Natural waxes like beeswax, bayberry, and candelilla are considered more powerful, but they cost more, and a plain paraffin candle still works.

Choosing a Candle

The shape and size of your candle should match the kind of work you're doing.

• Chime candles: Small and quick, burning down in about an hour or two. They're ideal for focused, one-sitting spells.
• Votives and pillars: The standard choice for most spellwork. They burn steadily and are easy to carve and dress.
• Tapers: Tall and elegant, traditional for altar work and formal ritual.
• Glass jar candles: Practical for long burns and ambient energy in a space. Seven-day candles come in glass sleeves and are designed to burn over about a week.
• Knob candles: Shaped with seven sections. You burn one knob a day, so a single candle carries a spell over seven days.
• Figure candles: Shaped like people, animals, skulls, or other forms to match the target or intention of a working.

A good rule: if a spell has to burn in one sitting, choose a smaller candle. If it's meant to burn a little each day, choose a larger one.

Candle Color Meanings

Color is one of the most important choices in candle magick. Colors carry symbolic meaning and affect us psychologically and emotionally, which makes them a direct line to your intention. (It's the Law of Similars at work.) Each color is also tied to a planet and a day of the week, so you can layer your timing too.

• White: The universal candle. Purity, new beginnings, cleansing, peace, creativity, and lunar magick. When in doubt, use white. It can stand in for any other color. Moon, Monday.
• Black: One of the strongest colors for protection. Banishing, breaking hexes, absorbing negative energy, binding, reversing spells sent against you, and ending bad habits. Saturn, Saturday.
• Red: Vital life force. Passion and sexual love, courage, strength, fast action, vitality, and fierce, active protection. Mars, Tuesday.
• Pink: Gentle love. Self-love, self-confidence, friendship, sweet new romance, family harmony, emotional healing, and blessings for children. Venus and the Moon.
• Orange: Success, encouragement, adaptability, creativity, and positive change. It's known as a fast-acting color, so be ready for things to move. The Sun and Mercury.
• Yellow: The mind. Communication, study, learning, mental clarity, confidence, and warm, joyful connection. Mercury, Wednesday, and the Sun, Sunday.
• Green: Growth. Money, prosperity, jobs, fertility, physical healing, and new ventures. Venus, Friday.
• Blue: Calm and healing. Emotional and psychic healing, peace, truth, protection, wisdom, and trust. The shade matters: light blue leans toward peace and healing, while royal blue leans toward expansion and luck. Jupiter, Thursday.
• Purple: Power. Personal authority, confidence, psychic ability, spiritual protection, and ambition. It's a very powerful color, so use it with care. Jupiter, Thursday.
• Brown: Grounding and the material world. Stability, justice and legal matters, steady prosperity, property, and finding lost objects. Earth and Saturn.
• Gold and silver: Gold draws prosperity and solar energy. Silver connects to the moon, intuition, and money as well.

You can also burn multiple candles of different colors, or a candle with more than one color, to layer intentions in a single working. Green and brown together, for example, are used for stable, lasting financial security.

Preparing Your Candle

Before you light anything, there are three steps that turn an ordinary candle into a spell.

Charge It

Hold the candle in both hands and focus completely on the goal of your spell. Feel your energy moving through your hands and into the wax. You're telling the candle exactly what its job is.

Carve It

Use anything with a sharp point to carve your intention into the wax: a name, a word, a date, a sigil, or the symbol of a planet that supports your goal. A rose thorn is a traditional carving tool. If you use something else, keep it just for magickal work, since it carries the energy of everything you've carved with it.

If you want to align with a planet, carve its symbol. A few to start with:

• The Sun ☉: Success, vitality, confidence, and healing.
• The Moon ☽: Intuition, dreams, emotions, and psychic ability.
• Mercury ☿: Communication, travel, study, and business.
• Venus ♀: Love, beauty, harmony, and attraction.
• Mars ♂: Courage, strength, passion, and protection.
• Jupiter ♃: Abundance, luck, expansion, and justice.
• Saturn ♄: Boundaries, banishing, binding, and endings.

(More on the planets in Astrology for Witches.)

Anoint It

Anointing, also called dressing, means rubbing the candle with an oil that matches your intention. The direction you rub carries meaning:

• Drawing something to you: Rub from the base up toward the wick.
• Sending something away: Rub from the wick down toward the base.
• General workings: Rub from the center outward toward both ends.

For extra power, roll the oiled candle in dried, powdered herbs that share your intention, or a little color-matched glitter. If you're working with a glass jar candle, poke a few small holes in the top of the wax to hold the oil, then sprinkle your herbs on top. (Want to make your own oil? Herbalism for Witches walks through infusing one.)

A Few Extra Techniques

• Mark a release point: Stick a pin into the candle near the top and state that when the flame reaches the pin, the spell is sent into action.
• Carve near the top: A symbol carved close to the wick is released first, as soon as the wax begins to melt.
• Burn a petition: Write your goal on paper and burn it in the candle's flame, seeing your spell sent on its way.
• Time the burn: Burn your candle during the planetary hour that matches your intention, and in the right moon phase. Waxing for growth and drawing in, full for peak power, and waning for banishing and release.

Fire Safety Comes First

No spell is worth a house fire. Candle magick means open flame, often for long stretches, so build these habits from the start.

• Never leave a flame unattended: If you need to leave the room, put the candle out and relight it when you come back. That's exactly why chime candles are so popular for one-sitting spells.
• Use a fireproof base: Set every candle on a heat-safe dish, holder, or tray, and burn petitions and herbs only in a cauldron or fireproof bowl. (What a New Witch Needs covers why a cauldron is worth having.)
• Clear the space: Keep candles away from curtains, books, dried herbs, altar cloths, and anything else that can catch. Leave room above the flame too.
• Watch the pets and kids: Place candles where tails, paws, and small hands can't reach them.
• Mind your dressings: Herbs, oil, and glitter on a candle can flare up or burn unevenly. Use a light hand and keep an eye on dressed candles as they burn.
• Check your glass: Jar candles can get very hot and occasionally crack, especially as they burn low. Don't leave them on surfaces that can scorch.

If you have a long working, like a seven-day candle, a common practice is to set it in a sink, a bathtub, or a large fireproof bowl so it's contained while it burns.

Candle Etiquette

Unless a spell says otherwise, don't blow out a ritual candle. Blowing on the flame is traditionally considered disrespectful to the element of fire, but that's not something you have to subscribe to. Other methods include pinching the wick with your fingers, using a snuffer, or setting a fireproof dish over the flame to deprive it of air. Some witches dedicate their snuffer to the Archangel Michael, who's associated with candle magick and fire safety.

Reading the Flame and the Wax

Any candle you light for any purpose can double as a tool for divination. Reading candles has its own name, lychnomancy, and the flame, the smoke, and the wax can each tell you something. If you're new to this, start by watching just one of them. These are general guidelines, but it's your spell and you need to use your intuition.

The Flame

• Bright and steady: A good sign. The working is moving forward without interference.
• Burning bright and fast: The forces around you are aligned with the spell.
• Shooting high: The spirit or energy you've called on has arrived.
• Low and struggling: Not necessarily failure. It usually means the spell is pushing against strong opposition.
• Guttering or going out: Resistance, interference, or a spirit's absence. If a candle goes out and won't relight, pay attention, and consider whether the working needs to be revisited.

This works best when you compare candles of the same size and type, since they should burn at similar rates. Keep in mind that drafts, air vents, and a wick that needs trimming can also make a flame flicker, so rule those out before you read too much into it.

The Wax

When the candle is done, look at what's left. Wax that pools into recognizable shapes can be read much like tea leaves, so note what you see and what it suggests to you. If a candle burns completely clean, many witches take that as a sign the working went through without obstruction. A large amount of leftover wax can point to a blockage or resistance in the spell.

Write down what you see every time: the flame, the smoke, the shapes, the leftovers. Over time, you'll start to recognize your own patterns. When you're finished, dispose of the remains in a way that fits the working.

Start With One Candle

You don't need a cabinet full of supplies to begin. A white candle, a little oil, and a clear intention are enough for a real spell. Choose your color, charge it, carve it, anoint it, light it somewhere safe, and pay attention to what the flame tells you.