A candle a day won't chase your monsters away

Found this cute candle holder at www.wulflund.com

I burn candles for other people on a regular basis. I feel it is a great way to add something extra to your best wishes. It is a little extra energy you can send to the Spirit Helpers, for them to use to assist the person you burn the candle for. Always when I light a candle for this purpose, I say a prayer with it. Otherwise, I feel, it is just an empty gesture. Maybe the prayer is more important than the candle itself, which might just be a nice focus point.

Also in case of a disagreement, I will often light a little tea light. Wishing for the well-being of the other person and sending light to the problem, so we might find a way out. Again this is a little extra energy to support the finding of a solution.

For a while I've been surrounded by people who would use candle magic for any given problem. And in case of quarrels they would certainly advise to burn a tea light. An other advise they would give is to let go.
Burn a candle and let go.
"Give it light and forget about it, don't hang on to the problem!" Is the advise I was given repeatedly.
I really tried. And I can tell you it does not work.

Pain needs to be acknowledged, not pushed away. A conflict needs talking, to be resolved and problems need to be faced. Just lighting a candle, is walking away from your responsibility as an adult to handle the difficulties in life.
It might seem like a beautiful spiritual solution, this uplifting your spirit with light. But it can become a base excuse for hiding from everything you don't like.
Let me  quote Jung here:
“There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own Soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious."

If you don't face your problems, if you're not willing to talk about conflict, you are just fooling yourself with your little tea lights. Nothing will be resolved, you will just feel a little better for the moment, while all the 'un-niceness' lies rotting and is growing under its cover.
This is why there are truth commissions in parts of the world where horrific conflicts have to be solved. Darkness has to be faced and talked about, pain needs to be expressed. You will only be ably to really let go and move on, when your story has been heard.

It was nice to learn to work with more light, but I'm very grateful that I had already learned to work with darkness too. You can find TRUE light in the deepest darkness, but only if you dare to go there. Surrounding yourself with candles and hoping that the darkness will go away, is deceiving yourself, and others.

Today while pondering this theme and remembering how I broke with the 'light a candle and let go people' I realized this about myself:
I have a sharp mind, I have sharp eyes, I have a sharp third eye.
And if you piss me of I have a sharp tongue too.
Some people hate me for this, but I'm kinda proud to be able to see darkness in others AND in my self, to talk about it, accept it and then burn a little candle to relieve it.

Morals of the Great Mother

One of my books with stories about Lady Holda

I've been reading a lot about Lady Holda lately, a Goddess who I see as The Great Mother of Northern Europe. All over the internet people have written about who She is on websites and blogs and I won't repeat all that. All I want to write about today are  the folk tales that were still told about Her in the 19th century and the message those stories contain.

These tales are not at all a (re)constructed mythology, written down by poets and priests. These are just stories that tell how common people thought about right and wrong and how a supernatural Female Being would sometimes come and set things right.

When I first read these stories, I thought they were heavily influenced by Christian morality. The good ones are rewarded and the bad ones get punished. But I came to realize that these morals go far beyond Christianity. These values are ancient and show what was common sense for our ancestors.

While reading up on Lady Holda, two modern times messages caught my attention. One was a video going viral on Facebook, about a man with a good heart helping a little boy, who many years later was rewarded for his good deed. The other was an article in a Belgian newspaper about how an employee in a bakery shop was fired, because she had given some leftover cookies to a homeless guy.
One fantasy from Asia and one true story from ‘around the corner’, both retelling the theme of the folk tales about Holda.

Specially the stingy shop keeper reminded me of one of the stories I read about Holda.
It's about a miserly farmer who just hated it that his servant girl gave half of her bread to a poor old lady, who they met daily on their way to the fields. So every day he gave her a smaller piece, but she would always give half of it to the old woman. In the end he gave the girl nothing and she wept bitter tears when she saw the woman and had nothing to give. Other servants found pearls where her tears had fallen on the ground. When the farmer found out, he went back to the place and found a castle where he feasted on lovely foods. He stuffed his pockets with it, but when he came home, it had all turned into cow dung. Realizing what he had been eating, he threw up and flung the content of his pockets to the good girl. She went to the pump to wash it off and heard the tinkling of golden coins...

Many, many stories about this Old Goddess repeat the same message over and over again. Those who have a good heart and are willing to help others, will be rewarded one day. And those who are greedy and cold hearted, will get what is coming to them.
The Great Mother comes to walk among the people to test their hearts. And there is no question about what She does and does not like. It is an ancient value system, the base of any healthy community. It is about the willingness to share and the willingness to help others who are not able to help themselves.

And people nowadays still long for these values. But those are hard to find in this materialistic modern society, where money and short term profit prevail. Hence this YouTube video that everyone loves to share.

I feel this is the reason why more and more people want to get to know The Goddess again. This is why it is time for Her return! It is time to reinstall Her wisdom, with which we can build a healthy society again.


For those who really don't know who Lady Holda is, here is a video I made in Her honor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BF5Xgsj-ZCo