PBP: Week 37- Sacrifice: Candles

Sacrifice is a loaded word for a lot of people. It brings to mind images of blood and death and things that a lot of Pagans are trying to distance themselves from. The Pagan community is working hard to dispel a lot of negative images it maintains, and sacrifice (particularly human and animal) is one of those things that a lot of people think we do.

Sacrifice is a part of our global history. It is a part of the history of almost all religions (I'm seriously drawing a blank here trying to think of one that didn't offer up sacrifices at some point in time). Sacrifices could be human, animal, plant, time, art, or any number of other things that were seen as being pleasing to the gods.

Sacrifice is something a lot of people struggle with. And many of them don't even realize they struggle with it because they shy away from the word sacrifice. If your church requests a tithe, that is a form of sacrifice of money. If you feel you should be doing daily prayer, that is a sacrifice of time. If you give offerings of honey and milk, that is a sacrifice of goods.

What makes sacrifice meaningful isn't that the gods are pleased (although that is definitely a huge part of sacrifice), but that you are giving of yourself. There are levels of giving, and not every sacrifice should be huge. But on the other hand, if you only give the things that it is easy for you to give, then are you truly making a sacrifice?

I think the trend is to associate sacrifice with the huge, grand gestures. And I think there is a place for those. For me, big sacrifices are things that I tend to do at festivals, or if I feel something pivotal is changing in my life. I have never felt that the gods want me to deplete myself, and trying to maintain this high level of sacrifice just isn't viable. Not only that, but if you make the big sacrifices your normal sacrifice, they tend to even out and start to become ordinary.

So on an every day level, there are the smaller sacrifices. Daily offerings and daily prayer and regular observances: these are the things that give a beat to our life, the background music that give structure to the more dramatic sacrifices we give.

What I really want to talk about today is candles. I think that in a lot of ways, we take candles for granted. Pretty much every 101 book talks about candles. Candle magic is one of the first things many of us learned to do. And candles are a very standard part of most forms of practice. Candles can be the focus of a working, or just a way of providing mood lighting.

I think that candles make a perfect representation of small sacrifice for a lot of reasons. They range in sizes, and you can get small ones (like tealights or birthday candles) for very little money, which is good for something you will be using a lot of. If you are strapped for time, you can use birthday candles (which don't take long to burn down) or taper candles (which can be easily lit for just a few minutes at a time without a lot of waste). They come in almost every color imaginable, so can be suited to any purpose. They are easy to carve with minimal tools (you can use a toothpick, pencil, or even your fingernail), and so can be even further fine tuned toward your specific purpose.

Candles are also widely accepted, so even if you are not open about your practices, you can buy and have candles without people looking at you strangely or asking you questions you might not be ready to answer.

And lets look at the process of burning the candle. The candle encompasses all four elements: earth in the solid wax (both before being lit and that which re-solidifies after it is put out), air in the smoke, fire in the flame and water in the melted wax. The act of lighting the candle transforms and consumes it. In the lighting and extinguishing, each of the four elements is both brought into being and destroyed.

I have been fascinated with candles since I was a little girl. When I was in grade school, I was afraid of matches (and lighters). I wanted the candles lit, but I didn't want to light them. My mother told me that we could have candles lit with dinner whenever I wanted, but I had to light them myself. I am so grateful that she did that, because it didn't take me that long to overcome my fear, and my love of both fire and candles started then.

I definitely think there is something innately magical about candles. Perhaps it is the fact that they aren't a part of our modern life. Perhaps it is that they are a much softer light than the electrical ones we are used to. For me, a huge part of it is the smell of them, and not just the scented ones. I use plain white taper candles for my nightly prayer, and they are unscented. They have a feel and smell to them that just screams decadence to me (the ones I am using right now are not cheap candles and you can tell). I also absolutely love the smell of the wick as it is extinguished.

It is easy to take candles for granted. They are cheap, plentiful and often treated like a simple consumable tool: a resource to be used but not as glamorous or important as our other tools. And yet I think that there is something very noble about candles. In order to be a part of their work, they are giving their entire being. They are the epitome of sacrifice, and I think it can only deepen our workings to acknowledge and honor that sacrifice.