Santa Muerte tin candle

How to Use It

Folk Catholicism & Spiritism

• Offerings: light the candle before her image with a glass of water, an apple, bread, flowers and a cigar or shot of tequila, renewing them regularly.
• Protection: burn it on a nightstand or by the door with a request that she guard the home, the body and the road.
• Undoing work: set the tin on a small mirror before her image and ask her to cut and return whatever was sent against you.

Witchcraft & Folk Magick

• Court and justice: place papers or a name of the opposing party under the tin and ask for her scales to tip fairly in your favour.
• Monthly devotion: many devotees renew candles and offerings on the first day of each month.

A Simple Working

• Set an image or statue of Santa Muerte on a clean cloth.
• Pour her a glass of fresh water and place an apple beside it.
• Light the tin candle and greet her by name.
• Say your request for protection plainly and promise an offering if it is answered.
• Burn the candle for an hour each night, lid on to snuff it, until it is spent.
• Keep your promise, and leave the old apple at the foot of a tree.

Pairs Well With

• A Santa Muerte statue: to give the candle a focus on the altar.
• Tequila or rum: common offerings poured for her.
• A cigar: smoked or left lit as a devotional offering.
• Fresh flowers: set before her image, a regular gift.

What You Receive

One clover-scented Santa Muerte candle with crystal chips, poured in a tin with a lid, 120 g.

Origin & Lore

Santa Muerte, Holy Death, is a Mexican folk saint, the personification of death venerated outside the Catholic Church but in a thoroughly Catholic style, with rosaries, novenas and candles. Devotees ask her for protection, justice, love, money and above all safety, trusting that death, which takes everyone equally, will be fair to them.

She is a skeleton in a bridal gown or a hooded robe, holding a scythe and a globe, and millions call her La Niña Blanca, the White Girl.

Public devotion to Santa Muerte grew rapidly after 2001, when Enriqueta Romero set a life-size image outside her home in Tepito, Mexico City, where a monthly rosary is still said on the first of each month. Her robes come in colours that match petitions, with white for cleansing and purity, red for love, gold for money and black for protection and work against enemies. Senior Catholic clergy have publicly condemned the devotion, which has not slowed its spread through Mexico and the United States.