Sam Wise

If you follow my social media, you know that I am currently recovering from surgery. If you’ve been a member of the online witch/pagan community for a while, you also know that doing magick while sick or injured is kind of a controversial subject. Some people believe that doing magick while sick “pollutes” the energy of your working, while others believe that doing magick uses up energy that your body should be using to heal itself. What’s a sick/injured witch to do?

Why, you prep your spell ahead of time, of course. It’s similar to the concept of meal prepping — instead of cooking when you’re hungry and exhausted after a long day at work, you cook on your day off and save the food for future meals. Similarly, I put together a healing candle spell while I was healthy, then saved it for when I needed it.

This spell is very flexible, and you can adapt it to cater to whatever specific medical condition you are dealing with. Or you could just charge your candle with general healing energy and keep it on hand for all the random headaches and sore throats that rear their ugly little heads.

Components You Will Need:

• a white pillar candle
• a glass candle holder, jar, or some other container
• lavender essential oil OR olive oil infused with lavender (to promote a soothing and peaceful healing process)
• ground frankincense resin (for purification and sanctification — frankincense is traditionally believed to dispel illness when burned as incense)
• red sandalwood powder (for protection, healing, and exorcising negative energy)
• angelica/dong quai root (strongly protective and popular in healing and blessing magick, especially for women’s health)
• black tourmaline chips (said to convert negative energy into positive energy and to be very protective)
• a crystal connected to the part of the body that needs healing (For example, for women’s reproductive health, you could use moonstone; for strep throat, you could use sodalite or another stone associated with the throat chakra; for stomach ulcers you could use citrine or another stone associated with the solar plexus chakra, etc.)
• a small selenite crystal (selenite is a self-cleansing crystal, and will keep your candle from picking up any unwanted environmental energy after it has been charged)

Putting Together the Candle:

• I began by cleansing my space. I did this by burning Palo Santo wood, which is my current favorite cleansing herb. (Note: make sure you have a window or door open when you cleanse an area — the energy being chased out needs somewhere to go!)
• Next, I dressed the candle with my lavender-infused oil. The motion you use to anoint your candle depends on whether you are focused on bringing in healing or on chasing out bad health. Traditionally, if you want to bring something towards you, you would rub the oil into the candle from bottom to top, while if you want to repel something, you would move from the top to the bottom.
• Next, I set the candle in its holder and began sprinkling it with the frankincense, red sandalwood, and angelica root. As I added each herb to the candle, I focused on what that ingredient was bringing to the spell, adding a new layer to the candle’s energy.
• After adding the herbs, I placed my crystal chips in the candle holder, around the base of the candle. Once again, I focused on the new energy each crystal was bringing to the spell.
• In a normal spell, this would be the point where I would light the candle. But since I knew I wanted to save this candle to burn during my actual recovery, I left it unlit.
• I placed my hands on the candle and felt the energy of my intention moving through me, out of my hands, and into the candle. During this phase, you may find it helpful to use a prayer or incantation related to the specific type of healing you want to receive. Repeat these words over and over, until you fall into a rhythm. You should be able to feel the energy of the spell building up.
• Typically in spellwork, once the energy reaches its peak, it is released to go out into the world and do whatever it needs to do. But because this is a spell I was saving for later, I instead visualized the energy sinking deep into the candle and resting there, like a magickal battery. Lighting the candle at a later date will allow the energy to find release, which is when the spell will actually go into effect.
• I stored the candle with a small selenite crystal, just to make sure that it didn’t pick up any energy besides what I had charged it with. Selenite is a self-cleansing crystal, and this cleansing is said to extend to the objects immediately around it. A magickal object left unattended naturally picks up some of the ambient energy in its environment — similar to an object picking up dust. The selenite crystal helps prevent this from happening.

I lit this candle after I came home from the hospital, and let it burn down next to me for the first couple of days after my recovery.