Please don’t leave lit candles unattended. And don’t light up all your candles the second they arrive. Take some time to prep the set.
There are three choices: You can leave them as they are and display the candles as art and aromatherapy, you can use them for your major ceremonies, or you can use them as a tool for meditation. When the Temple Dragons conduct a candle ceremony, a different dragon lights each candle, and the first one is typically lit by the High Priestess or High Priest, a role that shifts around constantly so that everyone gets a chance to wear the big hat.
Most of what follows is for those wanting to use the candles for meditation, so feel free to ignore or develop your own operation’s manual.
Name each candle and let that name build a bridge between candle and chakra.
Start with the bass note, the red candle, and work your way up to the tallest candle or start with the green candle, the heart chakra.
First, take a cheap ballpoint pen and trace a line over the paper symbols. Press hard enough to leave a faint impression on the wax. Be sure and trace the circle that surrounds each symbol as well. Creativity is certainly encouraged and you are encouraged to invent your own symbols.
After the symbols have been transferred to the candles, gouge a hole where you want to place each gemstone.
The candles should be placed on an altar in the following order, from left to right: red, yellow, blue, white, purple/indigo, green, orange. If you are going to light all candles at the same time I suggest lighting them in the following order: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, white.
Each candle, symbol, scent and stone should be explored individually long before you think of firing up all seven cylinders at once.
After lighting a candle, wait until a pool of molten wax forms a circle around the flame and then hover over it for a few seconds to fully inhale the scent vapor while staring into the pool of colored wax, being careful not to burn your hair. Back away when you feel the blast of heat from the flame.
Don’t allow any contaminated items such as petroleum products on your altar. Water is a very powerful purification tool, especially spring water harvested recently from the earth.
Drink as much as possible and make the drinking of it a ritual event and keep some on the altar in a glass you can drink from during your improvisational ceremonies.
Play a drum or musical instrument, sing and dance in front of your altar. The batteries (gemstones) will store that joyful energy. Use a chime, gong or bell with your candle ceremonies.
If you are having trouble jump-starting your set, I suggest downloading the book, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, which is from 1937 and in the public domain and can be obtained free from various websites in pdf form. Just read the book into your set until you start getting a sense of the power of your own mind.
Your chakra centers emit energies, some of which are telepathic in nature, but our auras have become clogged or even shut down entirely through the disconnection from the natural world of vibrations. If used in a reverential manner, these candles may help restore some of those telepathic energies, while enhancing creativity and injecting a spirit of fun into all your ceremonies.
I find some of the magic being practiced today somewhat backward, although the Catholic Church remains a major repository of ritual magic, despite the current scandals.
After being exposed to the Living Theater, I fell into a little known art form I call Improvisation Ritual Theater. The counterculture is improvisational at heart. So I didn’t need to study someone else’s ideas about magic and spirituality. I just let the spirit flow through me and tried different ways to amplify the energies, which, I learned, come in flavors, or if you prefer, frequencies.
At first, when I was organizing the Cannabis Cup ceremonies, I went to Stephen Gaskin and lived with him for a few weeks while ransacking his written material to assemble a guide to ceremonies that became the book Cannabis Spirituality. I figured as long as I needed to learn how to organize a counterculture ceremony, I might as well turn to a recognized expert.