Fire magick is everything we want and need it to be. It is powerful, trans-formative, and life sustaining. Calling a back to a time of primal power it still finds its rightful place in the elemental magicks of today.
I’ve written a lot of controversial posts. Some that I knew were going to be a hotbed, and many that I didn’t even know were going to cause a commotion. However, this post I think might raise a few eyebrows. Being a fire sign, my own particular connection with this element runs deep. I’ve been a fire witch almost since I was old enough to hold a match. I reveled in it’s beauty and strength.
Over the years I have met with a serious amount of resistance when trying to do fire magick, rituals and workings in public. One of the most memorable times was at the 2007 ATHE conference I was presenting at with my friend and colleague Jason Winslade, founder at Tribal Stomp Chicago. We were organizing a public ritual as part of the conference, and an extension of our panel of Dancing at the Crossroads: Intersections of Voodoo Performance and Vodou Practice . The ceremony was to take place in a large major hotel chain, which shall remain nameless. The plan was to have as much of a ritual as we could under the circumstances. There was to be an altar, drumming, dancing, and even a skeptical tourist with a camera and Mardi Gras beads making the rounds. During the first meeting of the team we were given a set of rules. One of which was no open flame was to be used. Yes, you read that correctly. No candles were to be lit. You can see the dilemma. This was in the early days of electric candles and someone suggested we use those. Needless to say I wasn’t too happy, I tried electric candles before on a smaller scale and they were little, if any, help energetically. To those of you saying I should have lit the candles anyway, I probably would have if I thought we could get away with it, but there were at least a hundred or more people in attendance, and I knew that it would not go unnoticed. So we carried on, we did the best we could, but magickally there was a lot lacking. My favorite part was when my dear friend Cayne ( who has since passed ) entered the room to join us and someone came dancing towards her backwards at top speed, not looking where she was going, and promptly crashed into a wall and fell down at Cayne’s feet. You can’t make this stuff up.
If I had any doubt that someone could use electric candles in place of real magickally, that moment proved to me it wasn’t a good idea. I wish there was a different answer to this problem, but there isn’t. While you can’t warm a cup of coffee over an electric flame, you can’t warm a soul fire either. My very own goddaughter came to me this week asking, hoping, she could use electric candles in place of real. She has just arranged to move into a place where the powers that be are very afraid of fire, and prohibit her from using candles. Again I wish there was a different answer, so I texted one of my friends to see if their experience was different… maybe it was just me, I thought. He called me almost immediately to laugh directly at me. Witchcraft is an ancient practice and in this area there are no electric shortcuts. Fire magick … accept no substitute.
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