7-day jar candles, plain glass

How to Use It

Hoodoo & Rootwork

• Dressing a jar: make three or five holes in the wax with a skewer, drop in a condition oil and sprinkle a pinch of herbs on top.
• Petitions: write on the glass with a marker or tape a written petition and a photo to the outside.
• Reading the burn: a clean glass and an even flame are read as the work going well; heavy black soot is read as resistance.

Folk Catholicism & Spiritism

• Saint candles: attach a printed image of a saint and light the jar with a prayer before their statue or picture.
• Ancestor lights: keep a white jar burning on an ancestor shelf alongside a glass of water.

Santería & Lucumí

• Seven-colour candles are commonly lit in botánica practice for the Seven African Powers, the grouping of Orishas found on many printed candles and prayer cards.

A Simple Working

• Choose a green jar for money work.
• Wipe the glass clean and write your name and your aim on it with a marker.
• Make three small holes in the top of the wax with a skewer.
• Drop a little money-drawing oil into each hole and add a pinch of ground cinnamon.
• Set the jar on a plate on top of a written petition.
• Light it with a short spoken prayer and leave it burning over the following days, keeping it in a safe spot.
• When it finishes, keep the petition in your wallet and recycle the glass.

Pairs Well With

• Condition oils: for dressing the top of the wax.
• A saint or Orisha image: to turn a plain jar into a devotional light.
• A marker pen: for writing petitions directly on the glass.
• Dried herbs: a pinch on the wax to match the work.

What You Receive

A 7-day candle poured in plain glass, about 8″ tall and 2 1/2″ across. Available in white, red, pink, purple, blue, green, orange, seven-colour, and seven-colour layered.

Origin & Lore

Glass-encased candles grew out of Catholic devotional candles lit before saints, often for a novena of prayer. In the 20th century, candle makers began pouring tall jars that burn steadily for several days, and spiritual-supply shops sold them plain or printed. A plain jar lets the worker add their own image, petition or dressing.

Plain glass is a blank page: rootworkers, botánica customers and witches all write on it, glue seals to it and pour their oils through the open top.

The Seven African Powers is a popular grouping that appears on botánica candles and prints, usually naming Elegguá, Obatalá, Changó, Oggún, Orunmila, Yemayá and Oshún, though the line-up varies. It belongs to the popular devotional market around Santería rather than to formal initiatory practice.