Candle Wick Shoppe Blog

Samhain is one of the most important days in the calendar for witches, pagans, and all manner of magical practitioners. It’s a day when the veil between the world of the living and the world of the dead is at its thinnest, making it especially auspicious for some kinds of magical workings.

The image that comes to mind when you hear “teacher” probably depends a lot on your personal experiences; it might call to mind an especially encouraging teacher, or one that put you down in a way you never forgot. You might think of learning a skill at a parent’s side, or an instructor from a yoga class that taught you to enjoy living in your body, or someone in your life that taught you a lesson outside of any kind of formal setting.

“In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” Did you learn this rhyme in school? Columbus Day was first celebrated in 1792 in recognition of 300 years of exploration and development of the North American continent. One of the reasons the holiday continued to be celebrated was to promote the contributions to the American story of Italian immigrants, particularly Catholics, who were often targets of anti-immigrant sentiment.

Ancestor work is one of the oldest, most universal forms of spiritual practice. It includes any way that we acknowledge, honor, or communicate with those that came before us. While ancestor work might be associated in your mind with indigenous cultures, the fact is, we ALL have ancestors – none of us have magically sprung into being! It’s a large part of some mainstream faiths such as Judaism, and anyone can do ancestor work.

I’m grateful that my kids have grown up in a time and place when being openly LBGTQ+ is more widely acceptable than it was when I was growing up. When I was in high school, “gay” was a common insult and being out was scary, dangerous, and almost completely unheard-of.

These planetary shenanigans are getting to me. We are dealing with 7 planets in retrograde; Mercury, Mars, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, and Chiron. At first glance this is worthy of a minor freak out and a loose plan to take a month-long sabbatical, but before you book your flight to Tahiti, let’s take a look at what a retrograde really means.

I read a random question on social media, “Are Pagans addicted to magic?” I found that a fascinating question because it assumes so many things. It assumes that all magical practitioners are pagan, and all pagans practice magic. The comments went to referencing witchcraft and magic and paganism all as the same thing.

I think we are all much more scared than we admit to. We have fears that have hidden themselves in intellectual reasoning. We have fears that mask themselves as common sense (only common to ourselves). We have fears that look like failure or inadequacy.

“Crown of Glory” seems such a self-explanatory title. It gives a sense of being fully vested in your power and reveling in it. “Crown of Success” is equally self-explanatory; giving the sense of activating that power and knocking your goals out of the park.

I love being a witch! I love believing in magic and magic believing in me. I love walking into a room of business executives and telling them that I help them awaken their inner magic. I love that I embrace my challenges with a mix of practicality and witchy-ness.

You may not want to hear it, but once you need protection, the damage has taken root and you are in crisis management. We certainly have a candle (or 5) for that and it works fast, but what if you could avoid having to spend time in recovery? What if you could avoid the attack in the first place?

Are you on team candle or on team oil? I find that many of my customers are committed to using the Coventry candles in their spiritual practice and don’t get how to use the oils, or they are masters of the magical oil and don’t feel the same connection with the candles.

Welcome to 2018 – the year of the collective power. There is going to be a strength in numbers this year as you will find your tribe or hive faster than ever before. People of like mind are actively looking for each other because we know that together we go farther.

“How can it be December when my to-do list is still so full? I have goals I tell ya! I have things I committed to doing in 2017 and I just can’t do it. “

This is the December panic every year.

Let me start this article by saying, I do not have any answers or advice for you. I just know that a large percentage of my friends, customers and family are feeling the stress and anxiety of our social climate right now. I am setting aside all political issues, race issue, sex and orientation issues and I want to get down to the core feeling that I see driving the bus on our collective anxiety.