9 min read

First Quarter: Hail to the candlemakers

A small, lit candle in a dark container sits on some dark fabric near a white scarf and two sprigs of American holly.
Not my candle, not my berries, not my scarf. Generic free cozy candle image.

Hello. It's Friday, and unfortunately a busy one, so I don't expect I can be as thorough with this post as I'd like — but it's not so busy that I can't write to you at all. So I will get down to it: candles.

I am not yet a candlemaker, and if I become one it will likely be more a hobby than a calling like, say, fiber arts. Some time ago I bought a candlemaking "starter kit" of sorts along with some bricks of beeswax, and now everything sits unused while I wait to feel the specific motivation to test it. This waiting process will probably involve my owner (also curious) feeling the motivation first, and then me overcoming more of my lifelong pyrophobia; I am proud to finally have felt capable for the last couple years of sometimes burning candles in my home, but beeswax's melting point is relatively close to its flash point, albeit not dangerously so if you know what you're doing. For those unaware, however, the flash point of a wax or oil is the temperature at which it can (and will) spontaneously set on fire without an ignition source. Prior to buying the kit, I had only dealt with beeswax enough to make a hag's taper[1] and I still confronted much paranoia in doing so.

Nonetheless, I know just enough about wax types to understand just how many options are available besides beeswax, with their own safety pros and cons. And regardless of the material, I would like to become competent at making candles, for several reasons: survival purposes, preservation of traditional knowledge, having a steady supply of candles for wax play in kink, and of course ritual use. In turn, I hope that this skill could be one more way for me to build a relationship with fire and transmute my fear of it to healthy caution and respect. And I thought that given this dark time of year when so much human-made light is necessary, now is a good moment to praise the candlemakers of past and present — and to reflect on the social function of anyone who helps keep light-fires burning.

The physics of candles

I used to think that when someone burns a candle, it is the wick that's burning while the wax holds the wick upright. This could not be more opposite than reality. In truth, although the wick is where the ignition flame must be directed, and although the wick is necessarily consumed over time: the wick is not the main fuel source for the new flame that flickers above it.

The fuel is actually the wax. By providing the initial flame on the top of the wick, the air over the wax in that area is heated to a point where the wax melts and in liquid form is drawn up the wick by capillary action; the wax at the wick's tip also reaches its flash point and ignites, keeping a fire continuously burning. The rest of the wax is left as a future fuel supply to be drawn into the wick over time, but it stays cold enough that it doesn't all melt or ignite immediately.

Thus the wax burns while the wick holds it and guides it. And humankind has known this for a good deal of our existence. When we first made fire, we probably only had materials like wood and resin, but within the Paleolithic period we had already learned that a wick kept floating in oil or fat could be a steadier light source. To make oil lamps or solid candles with any regularity would require materials that relied more on the development of agriculture in the Neolithic; but before that, we had to understand capillary action, without modern science giving the process that name.

Light & shadow outside of electricity

I say outside of electricity rather than before because although candles and oil lamps are considerably older than electricity, they are still necessities in many parts of the world where people lack a grid, generators, or batteries. And likewise, even for those of us who are accustomed to electricity, a candle supply or a basic lamp with a tub of oil can be important to store for the chance of power failures; flashlights and solar or crank lamps are safer, but imagine you need to commit batteries to something else, your lamp didn't get enough sunlight, or you just only have so many lamps. Candles and oil also dwindle over time, but it's easier to source the requisite materials on your own than to make a AAA battery from scratch, and long-term those materials are more sustainable.[2] Hence my interest in candlemaking for survival needs.

But of course, looking back into the past it's clear that the candlemaker was once much more important to every community than they are now. The candlemaker had a well-paid trade and would be visited by most people at some point or kept on hand by the elite. The equivalent today might well be a union electrician, even if electricians deal in more than lighting. Not having enough candles would have once been a safety hazard and a detriment to getting basic tasks done, no different than a power outage; if you were lucky enough to have a hearth in every room (or poor enough to only live in one room), you might work by that light instead, but not if you need to stand in the further corners of the room, and meanwhile squandering life-saving heating fuel if you didn't need it would be ill-advised, and you could forget the whole thing if you just lived with a stove.

Most crucially, any hearthlight workarounds for a candle or oil shortage only matter indoors. For any peoples living at temperate or polar latitudes, there are stretches of the year when not enough sunlight shines outdoors to travel or labor anywhere without a light source, given our species' woefully ill-adapted night vision unless we are blessed by the Full Moon.[3] Thus, if it was safe to work or venture outside in winter at all, our ancestors in those places needed candles or oil in portable lanterns for many activities outside midday, and depending on the task these technologies were needed in spring and autumn as well.

Whether relying on sunlight outdoors or indoors, in some places this led to actual holidays linked to the significance of candles. The most prominent example I can think of arose in Christian medieval Europe. At Michaelmas (September 29th), among other traditions of that date it was customary to regard working by candlelight as acceptable. At Candlemas (February 2nd[4]), candles would not be put away altogether, but they were considered no longer necessary for performing actual work. All of this says a great deal about how much work those ancestors thought was appropriate to perform in one day as opposed to simply relaxing and enjoying life.

But I think it says even more about the sustainability mindset that evolves when someone uses such a measurably finite resource as sticks of wax. If there is daylight available, there is no sense burning anything for light at all. And whatever you need that light for, it's wisest to only produce exactly as much light as you need. In this context, of course it would be ideal for candles or any other lighting source to be equitably distributed, but certainly a sign of status once upon a time would have been your ability to light dozens of candles in the same room all at once, compared to a subsistence farmer who might enhance their hearthlight with only one to two candles at any given time. Even one candle would be expensive relative to other household objects of its size.

The economics of fuel

For indeed, fuel has long been one of the most highly prized and coveted resources in the history of our species. Right now we are on the tail end of being able to use fossil fuels, and arguably we never should have done so because of how much they have cost us, well beyond raw currency. Prior to the fossil fuel craze, fuels for heating vs. lighting were often (though not always) separate because the fuel that allows for a hot fire also tends to create smoke, whereas for pure lighting there are fuels that burn cleaner (relatively) but are not realistic for heating purposes; in both cases, though, it has been a natural tendency for people to seek whatever seems like the most efficient option.

This has always led to stratification of high-value fuels vs. gradually deprecated fuels. Without even delving into the history of heating fuels, a few examples of valuable lighting fuels come to mind. Where oil lamps are concerned, olive oil was originally a major trade good across the Mediterranean for far more than use in cooking; and for a good portion of Eurocolonial history before the advent of kerosene, whale blubber was the latest and greatest, never minding that various pan-Arctic indigenous peoples had discovered it much earlier and were whaling much more sustainably than the Captain Ahabs of the world.

For candles, tallow was undoubtedly the most common fuel across Europe, but being made from beef or mutton fat it's long had a notoriously unpleasant odor compared to the scent of beeswax; between this and the relative scarcity of beeswax prior to more modern (and kind) beekeeping techniques, beeswax became the higher-status, vastly more expensive choice. Even today, when soy and paraffin (kerosene) waxes are better-smelling than tallow but still cheap, beeswax carries a certain cachet. During the whaling age, much like the scramble for blubber there was also the scramble for spermaceti, a wax-like material produced in a number of whales' heads but especially sperm whales', and which was sought for bright, clean candles.

Whatever the fuel: when colonial and imperial economics are in play, unfortunately the mindset around sustainability and scarcity that candle use ought to engender seems to slip away. It's no wonder that so-called Westerners are so profligate with our electricity usage, where the limited resources for it are tucked out of sight.

Confronting an aesthetic industry

Anywhere that now largely relies on electricity is a place where the candlemaker largely makes a living through candles crafted for aromatic or symbolic purposes. This is fine in theory, even important in its own right. And I appreciate any way that the old skill can be kept alive while simultaneously integrating new materials and techniques.

But often, a candle is made by a machine, not an artisan; and even when made by an artisan the supply chains are not such that we who buy the candles can match a face to the maker's mark. Among witches and other ritualists, there is a vast market for scented, elaborate ritual candles, and I think that a sad byproduct of creating these candles under late industrial capitalism is that arbitrary meanings and values are imposed on the products because of whatever will sell them, or even if the candles are imbued with more honest ritual functionality there is still the depersonalization caused by, say, ordering that candle to be shipped across an entire continent from a stranger.

Having said that, I also think that as practitioners we can bear this problem in mind and still not fret overmuch. A human candlemaker is a human candlemaker even if odd, de-relational boundaries may be imposed on their sacred labor. And in addition to how I've developed a fondness for scented candles — having attempted an incense habit but finding myself too smoke-sensitive — I have found that if I search in the right towns and shops around me it's not so hard to find candles made by people who at least run smaller operations, sometimes locally, and they work with the best intentions possible.

When I silently miscarried last month and prepared to medicinally complete that process, I bought a candle from the nearest so-called magic shop. It promised a gimmicky "new beginnings" theme, decorating the candle with cheap crystals; but no matter how commercial it felt, I could still sense the candle had been made with creative dedication. And so help me, it smelled wonderful.

I hope that one day I may find my small niche in this ancient art, and I salute those who carry it on today. If you have ever made candles yourself, I would be interested in speaking further.

[1] A stalk of dried great mullein stripped of its leaves, coated (including the flower head) with beeswax. The mullein itself acts as a wick for this giant candle, more like a torch. It's only advisable to use outdoors because although in my experience it's rather clean-burning I've read others' reports claiming it's quite smoky. And again, it is enormous.

[2] Within reason. It is very possible to create candles and related lighting implements with an extractive, imperial mindset. More on this elsewhere in the post.

[3] In some cultures where there is less constant bright electrical lighting, I believe that people often have superior night vision where less-than-full moonlight and starlight can suffice with a clear sky. Even then, this doesn't account for overcast nights or dealing with heavy tree cover and related issues.

[4] Overlapping significantly with pre-Christian observances on the 1st like Imbolc, or fully syncretizing through the Cymric version of Gŵyl Fair y Canhwyllau ("Mary's Festival of the Candles").


Thank you for reading. I hope to have something much more extensive for next week's Jól (Yule) post, but please note this will be for paid subscribers only. The following Friday's post will be public, though, and concern something I've been hoping to discuss for a while: how I currently approach (and don't approach) online life, for purposes of mental health and trauma healing.