by Tina Whittle
There’s spring around here somewhere, that’s for sure. The sunshine here in South Georgia is the golden-yellow of clover honey, and the forsythia is erupting in matching blossoms. Soon the dogwood will bud and bloom, the azaleas too, in giddy profusion. I can hear the honeybees in the holly tree, and I hum along with them as I work.
I am making candles from rolled beeswax. I began the first set during the Pisces New Moon and finished them during the Virgo Full Moon – twenty of them, lavender in color and scented with lavender oil – and mailed them to New Hampshire, where they wait for me and the rest of my Witchcraft Five classmates. The ones I make today are for my altar here, as I finish the work on my final projects, tie the knots in my witch’s ladder, and braid my five cords together into a single strand.
Red, green, blue, yellow, and now black, one for each class, each graduation, each initiation. And now this, the final one.
Of course I know it is not an ending. Of course I know it is a beginning. I walk labyrinths, after all, so I am not fooled into thinking that paths just suddenly stop. And yet there is a bittersweetness as I make these final candles, the ones that my classmates and I will light together at the Temple’s home flame after our graduation. My fellow witches and I have journeyed long and far over the past five years, and I am making candles not only to connect us to the light of the Temple, but to the light that is within each of us, and the collective light that we have kindled and tended during our time together.
So I warm the beeswax between my hands, and I say, “I call upon the Holy Spirit, and upon the Two Who Move As One, the Goddess and the God, to cleanse, consecrate and dedicate these candles to their purpose – connecting those of us graduating together from the Temple’s Witchcraft Five class. As we finish our work, let us do so in gratitude to our teachers and mentors of the Temple, to our guides and guardians, and to each other for the support and sustenance shared throughout our work together.
I come before You during this Ostara season of renewal and fresh beginnings, when the Sun moves yet again from Pisces into Aries, from the energy of the collective to the energy of the individual. I call upon the energies of the waxing Virgo moon, that we may each turn ourselves now to our highest service – for ourselves, our Temple community, and all whose lives touch ours whether in intention, thought, word or deed.
I come in gratitude to the spirit of the bee, the melissae, they who leave the hive to move through the world, sharing the spring from bud to blossom to flower, returning to bless their hive with sweetness.
Let this Temple light pass to each of us and not be diminished in the passing. Let it move within us, kindling our connection here. Let it move through us, into this world and all worlds. Let it be a beacon of Highest Love, Will, and Wisdom.
Blessed be.”