The oily drip, drip of candlewax was particularly soothing, for he was in the dungeon hideout making candles. The tapers dipped of their own accord into a wooden vat of hot wax over which they had been levitated. They weren't ordinary candles, of course: The hot wax had been imbued with some powerful potions and spells.
He should be studying for his OWLs and not making candles, but it was a fascinating new aspect of potion-making that recently had him enthralled; and besides, he would be paid in galleons –- quite a few of them -- for this particular batch of candles. . . .
She noticed the candles immediately. They were scarlet tapers, hanging by their wicks over a vat of solidified wax.
Candle-making? That was something Lily associated with home crafts and such-like; but knowing Severus, they would not be as innocent as they looked. . . .
"I see you've been making candles," Lily said, more to break the silence than anything else.
He glanced over at the batch of scarlet tapers. "So it seems," he said succinctly. "They're special, of course."
"How 'special'?" she said, the note of doubt in her voice unmistakeable, "Oh, you're using this book, aren't you?" She pulled one out from the pile called Magical Candles. Opening it randomly, she found herself looking at a Chapter titled Poisoned Candles. She almost dropped the book.
"Is this what you're doing?" she asked hoarsely, feeling a cold dread clench around her heart. She should have known!
"Always quick to jump to such conclusions, aren't you?" Severus answered, his eyes glaring at her darkly from beneath lowered brows. "No, I'm not making poisoned candles. The ones over there have been commissioned by a seventh-year for his own use, actually, so they're definitely not poisoned."
"I – I'm sorry, Sev. But with your fascination for such stuff . . . and I know you could be expelled for preparing poisons! If the rumours about Sirius's cousin, Bellatrix, are true, she was almost expelled for trying to poison –"
"But I do find them fascinating, very fascinating!" Severus cut across her jumbled apology rather harshly, as though to make it quite clear that he would not hear anything more against it. "They combine the properties of Potion-making with that of enchantments, but unlike a normal potion, their effect is not instantaneous: It is slower, more insidious, lasting as long as the candle burns. . . ."
His voice grew lower, more intense, as he described his new-found magical interest, and she found herself drawn to its deep, velvety quality, and the barely-suppressed excitement born of new discoveries that she could never resist. . . .
"They're not all poisoned, Lily: And whatever the effect they produce, you'd never think of blaming something as innocuous as a candle, unless you expressly know of its presence in the room. The candle flame would just release the potion, slowly but surely, and you would breath it in, and then. . . ."
He placed his hands on the desk, leaning closer, his intense dark eyes holding her spell-bound.
". . . .and then you start feeling the effects, so slowly you are not aware of it at first. The ingredients are fascinating. . . ."
--- from Lily and the Half-Blood Prince, Ch. 133
We don't often think of candles and potions together.
Buckland's Candle Magick and similar books detail how to use candles in spells, paired with tools like annointing oils, sigils, and pure intention; Aromatherapy or scented candles and their recipes abound. More rarely, dried herbs, crystals and the like are directly incorporated into candles. Occasionally, I find this type on the market: a few of these contain just a few "magical" ingredients but are sold for $20 or more apiece under some catchy woo brand name. Please. Magic hour, my ass. More like empty wallet.
This excerpt, from one of my two all-time favorite fan fiction pieces, elucidates more closely how I view this craft: That a candle, prepared a certain way, is a type of "frozen potion" . . . for good, or ill. In Chamber of Secrets, we heard --- for the first and last time --- a brief reference to poisoned candles in Knockturn Alley. (So many twists and possibilities went unexplored, thanks to subsequent reams of angsty drivel and typical schoolkid idiocy! Thank goodness for fan fiction! And for Snape himself, whose point of view tends to be less, well, doofus!) This fic simply expanded that theme, be it fair or foul, at the hands of a young Severus Snape.
Long before this, however, I had designs on unusual or "special" candles. Years ago, some old book I'd found led me to try my hand at making candles with colored flames, as much for kicks and mood as for magick (and subsequently weathering my parents' snarky comments).
Thanks to the Internet, this information is easily available compared to that day long ago, when I stirred copper salts I'd nicked from my college Geochemistry lab into the simmering wax. The results weren't too impressive; a few had flames that sparked and stuttered a faint green, but I'd been hoping for something a little more, well, flamboyant. Many years would pass before I made candles again, perhaps because they're a bit involved (and, I can be lazy).
Like Sev's candles, mine were slightly poisonous, but only due to their copper compounds rather rhan intentionally. Want to make a poisoned candle? Try sulfur! Pure sulfur melts and burns with a gorgeous blue flame; it'll also take your breath away, with no extra curses needed.
Sulfur candles were once used more frequently to fumigate buildings of pest bugs. Advanced Potistry assignment? Combine the right mix of essential oils to mask the rotten-egg reek of sulfur, thereby disguising its presence when burning. . . .
Add a good hex, and you're all set! Not for sale to under-seventeens. Yes, I admit, I'm a Slytherin.
Again on the Internet, there's lots of advice about how to make magickal candles, how to incorporate different herbs, stones, oils, and so forth. (Typical combinations on the Web seem to center on the Four Elements, the Chakras, or common worldly goals like love and money.) That basic kenning, fortunately, is something I already have under my belt. Once you get a feel for how various colors, oils, herbs, planetary movements, and stones correspond to each other, and have a good set of crafty talents that you know how to adapt well (cooking, cutting, carving, mixing, sculpting, re-purposing, measuring, estimating, timing, a sense of when and how to add different materials together to "engineer" a project or goal, etc. etc. etc.), you can focus on the magick itself --- both before the "jump-off" moment, and during the making or cooking of the project.
So it was, circumstances favored my making candles once more. I'd amassed a stash of both herbs and oils. I'd gathered some discount wicking and wax from Scrap. Finally, I had a fortuitous set of times to work with: Palindrome week, specifically the date 8/18/18, and no less than seven planets in retrograde --- a good energy for going inward, reviewing, and rewriting life changes. One problem I've noticed with this planetary spirit-work and astrology spell stuff is that you've got a nice day, but you have to work, and the Moon's only in Aries for like two days, and then Uranus is making a trine to... and... and... and...
As I see it, candles are a convenient tool for addressing this, because as with an alcohol-based or other preserved potion, they don't go "bad". Their energy might get a little stale after, oh, years; but they can retain the properties and celestial alignments with which they were made, until they are burned. For this application, less than for a tea or tincture, a candle is ideal for "freezing" a particular energy or time, so you can revisit it later for future work. In this case, I was aiming for "higher" life-path magick, of a type like spiritual alchemy. But there's no reason you couldn't make a more prosaic, pragmatic, results-here-and-now sort of candle --- the way Severus did!
And so I began my work. Grabbing all my materials, I hauled ass downstairs and set up about the kitchen stove. I wanted to use my pendulum, to divine ingredients, but there's a problem when you live in an AirBnb --- guests. Two girls were working at the kitchen island, and while they were sweet and friendly, I didn't want to appear all Fullmetal Potion Master in front of them; I had no issue making candles in their presence, but, if only to avoid diluting my own power, I chose to keep the magickal nature of my work on the down-low . . . and a pendulum certainly does appear "woo".
It took awhile for the wax to melt, using a tin can as a rudimentary (and disposable, due to messiness) double boiler. Hey, I said I brewed potions in a tin-can, alley cat style!! I ended up with a hybrid beeswax-parafin-soya wax mix, because frankly, that's what my budget begat --- beeswax is expensive. I'm saving a larger, pure chunk of beeswax in case I make salves or ointments; whereas candles, not being used on the body, can be made of recycled wax, or stuff that's a little grunge.
Meanwhile, I chose and finely-cut my herbs. Just by instinct; I figured it's actually good to go with the gut sometimes, and not get too reliant on a pendulum. Alas, no mortar and pestle, either --- mine are packed. This herb blend I set aside. Pure reasoning told me to leave a large wax core in the candles, then add the herbs toward the outermost dipped layers. I couldn't make too many candles, due to limited wax. And dipped tapers are, let's face it, tedious. I settled on eight, or four pairs, with a pair per wick.
Herbal Powder Blend, 8.18.18 Candles
1/2 teaspoon Rose petals, i.e. rose, sunflower petal et. al. Potpourri mix (from art class), cut to tiny pieces
1/2-1 tsp. Mugwort
1/4-1/2 tsp. White Sage
1 tsp. Perovskia (Russian Sage)
1/8 tsp. (or a dash) Opoponax resin
1 pinch - 1 dash Asafoetida
1/4 tsp. Wisteria, or a few petals cut to tiny pieces
1/8-1/4 tsp. Hornet Nest paper, cut or torn to small pieces
If no mortar and pestle, place in bowl, then grind and mix for awhile with fingers, enchanting blend as you do so.
With the base wax melted (and extra wax to add as the pool in the tin can depleted), I began to dip. The wicks had to be straightened the first few times, and I cooled them each time in a glass pan of cold water, then dried them. A wax mass formed, golden-colored like the beeswax, which suited my Sun-and-Mercury-in-Leo, ego-reprogramming magickal goals just fine. Layer by layer, the "infant" candles began to grow thicker. . . .
A few layers in, I added a blend of oils, drop by drop into the wax. I selected them on a basis of scent, celestial association, and numerology. I included two oil blends, as well, due to my phase in life and spiritual work: my retrograde Capricorn banishing and cleansing oil I made some weeks previously, and the Road Opener blend I bought at Moonshadow.
Oil Blend, 8.18.18 Potion Candles
5 drops Vetivert
5 drops Lime
5 drops Rose
4 drops Cinnamon
4 drops Tangerine
3 drops Banishing blend
1 drop Red Dragon Road Opener blend
Note: These add up to 27 drops, a power number. My basic candle formula suggests 10-20 drops of oil.
I stirred the wax well, then started dipping again, periodically monitoring the stove's gas flame. If a candle started getting lumpy, I smoothed it out by rolling it on a piece of parchment paper. I also trimmed the candles' bases, where excess drips built up.
Finally it was time for the herbs. I didn't want to add them to the wax. Instead I dumped the powdery, piquant mixture from its bowl and spread it out evenly on the parchment paper. Then I dipped each candle a good long one and --- quickly, before the wax hardened --- rolled it in the mixture. After the herb roll, I gave each candle a further roll on the parchment paper to press the herbs into the wax and smooth it out.
As in the photos, I now had candles coated in a powdery, tattered blanket of herbal material. This comes off easily, so a few more coats of wax seemed a good idea. The wax can was low again, so now I added more --- except, I added some pinky-red chunks of wax, plus a handful of small, concentrated red wax dye pellets. This turned the batch a warm peach color, again suited to the magick I was working.
When this fresh batch had all melted and integrated, I began dipping again, starting with one quick, careful dip to seal in the herbs --- I didn't want them all falling off in my wax can. The above photo shows bare herbed candles next to candles with the first of these sealing coats on, and thus just a hint of peachy overtint.
I continued to add a few, literally four or so, more coats of wax, leading to the increasingly peach-colored hue of the candles: Three stages of this are shown above. More care and parchment-rolling (due to drips) were needed as the candles grew in girth; soon I had to tip the can as I dipped, for the wax diminished quickly. The process smelled delicious, though, and it was a pleasure to witness the candles evolve. When I felt the candles not only had the herbs properly sealed in but were also fat enough, I stopped dipping.
Dipped tapers can take a loooong time. When I finished, and our sweet guests had finished making their commemorative trail-running video (so cute! Go girls!) and peeked over to admire my work while on their last nighttime toilet runs, three hours had gone by; Magic Moment 8/18/18 at 8:18 p.m. had slipped unnoticed, but not unplanned, into the candles, likely when I was mixing and stirring in the oils. This was also an eleven day in Numerology, and 11:11 probably came and went while I fussed with the coats of herbal powder. So much work, for eight candles! With my current setup, they're not cost-effective; but I did it for personal magick and experimentation, not profit.
It's also worth noting that because the process of dipping tapers requires a deep reservoir of wax, I had wax left over --- quite a bit. I'd planned ahead for this, too. Along with the wax and wicks and other junk from Scrap, I'd bought a used ice-cube tray, which I cleaned and greased with olive oil beforehand. When I was finished, I poured the tin can out into the tray, making perfect little reserve cubes of enchanted wax! Even if I run out of my special candles, I've got a stash of wax in the hole.
Both times I've made candles, I've done dip tapers. It occurs to me that molded candles would be, like, thirty times quicker to make, and I wouldn't have to deal with the leftover wax reservoir problem; nor even the mess, such as I kept it to a minimum (though I'd probably still melt my wax in a tin can). All I'd have to do is melt and pour, maybe stir in some herbs or add an herby layer --- not dip, roll and cool for three hours.
But dip candles offer extra potential for enchantment because each layer, or group of layers, can be tailored differently --- be it inscribed with sigils, imbued with a planetary oil, spiked with an herbal blend and so on. The candle thus releases a sequence of enchantments as it burns. I suppose an alternative to dipping this type of candle is a multi-pour molded pillar, each layer imbued with different colors, herbs, or potions.
So! With a finished creation in hand, what shall I do with these beautiful candles? Burn them, of course, but certainly not all at once. First I'll empower them, then I'll employ one when I revisit the work I want to explore more deeply. My last couple of summer weeks will no doubt be busy, and I'm not one to rush the magick --- especially if it's, well, deep spiritual stuff.
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