black and white Candle ritual

This is a ritual for a new beginning after sorrow or loss. You can carry out this ritual for yourself or someone you know who is grieving or unhappy after a betrayal.


It is especially healing if you are feeling angry over unjust or cruel treatment, because it can stop any guilt, blame or pain turning inwards and slowing the healing process. You may need to repeat the experience many times.

This is an essentially private ritual, but if you are doing it on behalf of someone else, then you might like to invite them to share the experience.

The best time to use this magick is towards the end of the waning moon cycle, late in the evening before the Moon has risen. * Take a small black candle and a large white one and place them side by side in your cauldron, on a metal tray or in a sand-filled, heatproof bowl.

* On the black candle, etch a symbol or word to represent your sorrow or anger about a third of the way down the candle. As you do so, send all the negative feelings into the wax.

* Light the candle and say:

"Burn, burn, sorrow turn, melt away, do not stay. Go in peace, trouble cease."

* Burn pieces of black wool, cut from a large ball with a knife, not scissors, naming each aspect of your grief and watching it bum away, piece by piece.

* When you have finished naming the sorrows, sit quietly in the candlelight, seeing the negativity flowing away in the stream of black wax. Make positive plans for the future and write a list of daily actions or short breaks from work that will make you happy. Even if these are of necessity very small, the cumulative effects of a number of minor pleasures can change the balance of your life for the better once a moon cycle has passed.

* Once the symbol has melted away, use a taper to carry the flame from the black candle to the white one. This is important, for new beginnings do not come out of nothing, but from the transformation of endings into positive energies.

* Once the white candle is alight, blow out the black candle and dispose of it in an environmentally friendly way.

* Sit for a few moments, looking into the flame of your white candle, letting thoughts and images appear within either the flame or your mind's vision.

* Carry the candle carefully into the bathroom and add to your bath water a few drops of essential oil of rose or lavender for self-love and let the light make pools in the water. Lie in the bath until you feel rested.

* When you feel completely relaxed, get out of the bath and swirl the water as it rushes down the plug hole, saying:

"Flow far, flow free, flow in peace and harmony."

* Spend the rest of the evening in quiet but pleasurable activity, until your white candle is burned down.

* Finally, etch in the wax a new symbol of hope and keep it in your special place until it crumbles, by which time it will hopefully no longer be needed.

If the problem is really deep-seated, you can repeat the ritual monthly, each time using a smaller black candle and a larger white one until there are no black energies left.