Months ago, as a treat, I ordered some fancy candles from the delightful and eldritch BlueForestBlackMoon… which arrived this week. As usual, results for buying scented things online vary — of the three, one smells like men’s aftershave — a nice men’s aftershave, but still. One smells like an elegant brunch in 17th century Versailles — champagne and grapefruit and vanilla sugar sprinkled liberally on delicate pastries — lovely, but not in keeping with the season. So I am burning the third, called Conjure, rich with the odor of thistles and rosewater, and labeled with a heart. Not the heart of Valentine’s Day or tourist bureaus — but a human heart. The kind that chugs away deep in my own chest.
It’s the season where the life of the natural world starts to pare down above ground, and we humans sometimes follow suit. More happens out of the light, roots expanding and exploring out of sight. As days shorten and nights lengthen in this hemisphere, many of us are drawn to things of shadow — folk tale, ghost story (see below), incantation and conjuration. We light candles.
I feel this pull especially this year, as I hang between two worlds, waiting to move — literally and figuratively — into a new space. I pray that a good path forward opens for all who seek home. It’s wearisome, keeping the house tidy for showings (“You fool, don’t make toast, you’ll leave CRUMBS!”), and the cats eye me with ill-disguised resentment as they crawl into their invisibility spots, as I whisk around putting personal items away… knowing STRANGERS will come.
What can the light of a little candle, even one smelling of rosewater and thistles, show me when so much is dark?
Once my spiritual director used the phrase “following the energy,” which stuck with me as a good divining rod (if you translate “energy” to mean “what lights you up”). My brain, faithful and good, can tell me that a course of action is appropriate, even exemplary. But if my heart sits still like a lump of clay when I count the advantages, I know it isn’t the right thing. My brain makes its decisions by daylight. But a good chunk of our lives is dark, and we need to use senses that are better in the dark.
So. I light a candle, a mediator between light and darkness, and I invite in magic. Not the magic of working my own will with poppets and charms, but the magic of life itself, already abounding in an unending collaboration between the spirit and the senses, too swift and too complex for my mind to follow. That lights the path forward, the light that dances, flickering with promise.
(***Ghost stories! This is my annual jumping up and down to recommend the ghost stories of Edith Wharton! Especially “Kerfol” and “Miss Mary Pask”…)