Candle Magic with Bran Taylor

Whatever your approach , whether you're a witch or not , a witch can be something that's so accessible and so easy to make your own , and today's guest has long been my favorite candle maker , so I have just been over the moon excited to talk with them .

This feels very something that I can very easily grasp and sort of make my own , which I think you know as somebody who is sort of maybe magic adjacent , as not sort of a full practitioner .

It's really nice to hear , when people have that open invitation and share in a way , that it's something you feel like , oh , I can try that out for myself and see if this fits and if it does like ways that I can really put my own stamp on it .

So definitely . Well , let's get to our interview with Brandt . ["the Outer Known"] . Brandt , welcome to the Outer Known . Yay , thanks for having me . It's so exciting to have you here . I have been using your candles for years now . I'm so excited to talk to you about some candle magic .

So I know that your journey as a witch has been four decades in the making . So how did that begin ?

That was the cards , the imagery , et cetera . It was the Toth deck for anybody listening and familiar with tarot , and the Toth deck was still is my number one favorite deck that I read from . I'm not quite like an Alias , your Crowley fan , but I am a fan of the imagery and the art on the cards .

So I started there and then , from that place , just sort of added more things to my tool belt slowly over the next 30 plus years .

I actually like just dealing with , whether it's arrows or obviously cups or the coins , things like that , just to really delve into the things that aren't so tied to our humaneness . I really resonated with that . I like how they kind of transposed a few things in the majors .

I thought that was a little bit interesting and I also think that the art itself is quite beautiful . If I was going to like hang some tarot art on my wall , I might pick the Justice card or the Aeon or something that really had a cool , rich history and a really beautiful art .

bless and dress a candle for me , and they would ask me what I wanted it for , whether it was a job or love or whatever , and I would go home and just sort of light it with some intention but not totally knowing what I was doing . I definitely had a pull towards candle magic . I had a candle magic book that I sadly stole . I don't advocate stealing .

Ok , this is . I definitely , as a child of the Midwest without a lot of resources , stole some things from my local witch shop . Do not advocate this readers , I mean listeners .

But I did do some things where you're like anointing the candle with oil , red is for love and da , da , da , da , da , da da , all the assignments that were in the book , and I did those things for a while when I was in the West Coast , got things blessed and dressed for me , not completely understanding what was on top . What is in this candle ?

Why do I want ? What's about it ? And then when I moved to Portland in like the mid 2000s , there was a place called Orleans which was a family that was actually displaced from Hurricane Katrina .

They had moved here after Katrina I'm not positive the date of that but I started going there when they opened and they had , I mean , more candles than I've ever seen in my entire life , like candles for everything , and I got all my candle magic there . I deepened into my practice and when they moved back to New Orleans they closed their shop , moved back .

There wasn't really anywhere for me to buy candles , so I started making my own . What a wonderful introduction .

Candle magic you use a little bit differently with either of those , but the intention can be the same . Candle magic is putting your intention right .

So I believe that magic is the art of changing your environment with your intention and it's about putting your intention into wax , which the wax I use is soy , some people use bees wax , there's paraffin wax , coconut wax , et cetera , and it's about putting your intention into this natural form .

And the natural form is really special to me because it transforms and it's a physical representation of your intention . As you put your intention into the candle , really feeling like whatever your wish or whatever outcome you want to have come out , you can write on the candle if it's in a container . You can scratch into the wax if it's a taper .

There's no wrong way to do things like this . It's just about your energy and intention going into this wax and when you light it , I really resonate with the fact that it's transforming in front of you . And for me , when you have an intention , you want something to change , your goal is that something is either changing or shifting , whatever your goal is .

So it's a physical representation of that , and it also changes by going into the air or into the atmosphere or into spirit , and I really resonate with that . I like watching the candles burn . I like seeing the progression of them . I also like letting it go when they're done and they've gone out . It's a really nice , tangible way to work with magic .

So if you have like a sourn candle , here it is , it's so beautiful , excited about it , you , let's say , with this sourn , you're going to want to connect with your ancestors , you're going to want to like have a deeper type of feeling of releasing , letting go , turning towards the dark part of the year , allowing yourself to shed your skin , things like that .

Maybe you are looking for a change or looking for something to just help you sort of let go and also feel the support from your beloved dad , from your ancestry , from you know , whoever you your , the queers who have passed that you honor and love . Whatever , whoever it is . I would for myself , I like to write on the candles .

I like to have them be a little bit less precious , which is why most of my candles are made in pretty , not fancy jars . The sourn candle happens to be a fancy jar , but I still would write like , maybe in the names of my beloved dead , I might use a sharpie and just draw something on here . If I wanted .

I might write like compost or release , unwind , let go , surrender , whatever it would be for me . Or maybe it's like dreaming of my ancestors or dancing with whoever you know . Whatever I want to draw and I might actually physically write it on the candle . Sometimes I'll do like a little scratch on the wax , on the top of the wax where the herbs are .

You can use a pen , you could use a knife , you can use whatever you want . I'm not a person who you have to use your sacred tools for every single thing . You could use a butter knife or whatever you want to .

You could scratch onto the wax , you could draw on the wax and let's say you're done with that , or you just want to hold it that's also an option to hold the candle . I say ground and center yourself , and what that means is , if you're not familiar , if you're a new witch , you're grounding yourself .

So you're feeling your body in time and space that you're at . You're expanding your roots down into the center of the earth with a breath , with your energy going as slow or as fast as you want to . You're going down to the heart of the earth , the pulsating you know .

I call that the dark star or the like heart of the earth , whatever you want to call it and then you're allowing that , like regenerative creation type energy to come up all the way through the layers of the earth as slow or fast as you want up into your body , kind of allowing that to settle , allowing that to be in your body .

And then you're doing the same thing , going up , releasing your energy up into the cosmos . You're finding the star that is one of your oldest ancestors . You're allowing your energy to go up there , say hello , have a little drink of cosmic stardust .

Whatever you want to believe , whatever feels good to you there's no right or wrong and allowing that , like energy from the cosmos , that beautiful , like spark , the inspiration , all of the big perspective , to come down , rain down upon you , in through your crown , and then finding a place where those two things mix . To me that's your center .

That's the place of all possibility . The center is the spaces in between . It's in between the inhale and the exhale . It's the place where mystery lives and that also lives inside of you . So you're allowing yourself to find that place . Find wherever it resonates for you . Maybe it's your chest , maybe it's your belly , whatever it feels like is your center .

And then that's grounding and centering yourself .

When you're holding the candle in your hands and you're stating I like to just say it aloud if possible your intention or your wish , holding that intention or wish placing it in an altar , placing it anywhere you want Like I said , there's no right or wrong for this , it's just what your magic calls for and then , using a flame you can use a match , you can

use a lighter , you could use whatever you want and allowing yourself to light that candle and then really letting that whole intention , maybe with a few breaths , go into the candle . So you're not walking around holding it necessarily , you're letting the candle be like a placeholder for you . You're letting the candle have that intention .

It's not separate from you , it's just an extension of you and it gets to be your magical tool for that time .

So you could do that by boiling boiling water into the vessel , by putting it into like a double boiler kind of situation where , like a warm boiling water cup with the candle inside , melting the wax , and then you pour it out onto like a paper towel or whatever you want , and in my case you would get a gem .

Almost all my candles contain a gem at the bottom and in that case you're going to be removing the gem at that time and other candles are just getting all the wax out , no matter what . And if the wax is leftover , like once the flame is out , I don't think the wax is like so precious that it has to be like done something with .

I just like to have the container be like let's clear it , let's clean it , the flame is the power right , so let's let that all go . You can compost those paper towels into your normal , you know city compost and then with the glass containers they can go through for me , they can go through the dishwasher , you can wash those and recycle them .

Or if you're local to Portland , you can return them to me and I will reuse . Oh , that's amazing . Good to know

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You know it's like a petroleum byproduct and I didn't want to use that . I also don't want to inhale the off gas from paraffin wax . A beeswax also is a limited resource . I love beeswax candles but it's the amount of candles that I make , the amount of beeswax I would go through and the cost they would have to be is extremely high .

Think about beeswax as being four times the price of any other wax . Paraffin is the cheapest , so it's kind of in the middle . I've used this wax for a long time . I've gone through a few different soy brands . Some of them actually didn't survive the pandemic , which is sad . But it's non GMO , 100% soy wax . It takes color really well . It melts evenly .

You know I'm not afraid of inhaling the off gasing . It's not going to be toxic to you in any way , which is important to me .

I wanted the tall , traditional seven day burning candle or in my case , 120 hours burning candle and I started making them for a new moon group that I hosted from about 2010 to 2012 and maybe even also into 2013 a little bit , but I would have folks over for new moon and I would make candles depending on that new moon , and my intention really was I didn't

really know what to put in the candles at first .

I was an astrologer at the time I just finished my astrology apprenticeship around that time and so I was a working astrologer and I just sort of used the plant correspondences and the gemstone correspondences for that new moon , and that's kind of how I started pairing those things up the color , the herb , the essential oil and the gem .

So those were kind of my three components to start . Now I have evolved into a wider scope . Not all the candles contain gems , because they don't have to , and we can talk about that in a little bit , but every candle is a little bit more .

It's made in a different type of way and I am also mostly using herbs that are readily available to me that either I grow , a which friend of mine grows . I'm not using any herbs that are like not of this land or not of my lineage .

And the gems I use , I try to use as small of pieces as humanly possible because they are a limited resource and they still really want to be in the candles and maybe someday I'll take them out , but at this time I still .

I mean , gemstone magic was something that I used for so long in my solitary practice and I feel like it's still important to be in there . But you know , everything is evolving . I've been doing this for since 2012 . So some things have changed , some things have been renamed , some some things are different .

You know it's a little bit different and as far as the like correspondences go , I decided to sort of not go with the traditional correspondences in general . There's lots of books around candle correspondences written by different practices , different types of magical folks , different types of witches that say , like this color is for this , is colors for this and I .

That just didn't really seem like it applied for me and this would flow into how I make candles . But when I'm making a candle I'm asking the candle or it's being presented to me as a color and I go just proceed with that information .

So you'll see that like I use like a white candle to dispel things , like a clearing candle versus a lot of other things , other practitioners , I think that that would use a black candle to kind of like get rid of things , dispel negativity . I like using white to do that . My love candle is like a soft pink or like even a hot pink versus our red .

Like you know , I just sort of want to do things that feel a little more me and hopefully people resonate with it .

You develop relationships with materials , with plants , with colors , to your point and I just I always want there to be a perfect answer like this corresponds to this and this and this , this planet and this plant , and I think this is actually confusing . You know how it can be quite different in different books and different .

You know , if you're studying your ancestors work and then new age witchcraft book , like what is this ? You know , why is this all different ? And I think you really have to to some degree develop your own relationship and kind of what you were saying like based on your own lineage , your own histories . So I love that , I love that you've done that . What ?

What's your personal favorite candle that you've created ? Ooh , that's fun .

I mean , it's sad that we need a revolution candle for a different thing all the time , but that's just the world that we're living in . I'm really proud of that and I'm proud to have a consistent thing that benefit at all times . So that's definitely a favorite . The art candles one of my personal favorites . I actually just changed .

The art candle Used to have a floor right at the bottom Floor . Right is very hard to get and in a small size , and it's also very fragile and didn't feel right to be in there . So now every art candle has a mystery gem and I just have a whole jar of mystery gems . I just put my hand in there and pull one out .

So whatever you get is what you get and they're all . Every single art candle is different , so they're fun to make and fun to pour .

Each one that I've used I've kind of developed a real like relationship with and every time that gemstone comes out of the bottom I'm like okay , like all of my intention is like kind of absorbed in the stone and it feels extra beautiful .

You know , I can have that as a remainder on my altar or put in my pocket or carry it with me in my purse like whatever I need to do . But just want to say like I love them . They're so great .

I used to go to like a women's gathering in my 20s and early 30s and saw some older witches really doing powerful magic and I was very intrigued , I was blown away . I thought they were like so cool and I wanted to learn from them . So bad , okay , like very cool .

And I took , you know , workshops when I could , whether it was like learn astrology or learning a broom making or whatever . And when I was in my mid 30s I entered into a mystery school and I spent eight and a half nine years in mystery school . It used to be called the blue iris mystery school . I believe it's now called the golden web mystery school .

I'm no longer teaching or working with the school , but I'm a graduate . I've done , I've devoted probably I mean I've devoted years of my life , but really every weekend of my life for literally years to that school and the practice and working with a couple teachers , one of which is Collette Gardner , who's an incredible witch and I really love her .

She's very dear to me and that was in a big community . So I went from working alone or with just like a small group of people , like at the women's circles and stuff , and then I went into like a huge community you know our saun rituals or hundreds of people . You know it was a different . It was a completely .

You know we're putting on witch camps , we're putting on like very elaborate , like production value type rituals and you know me being teaching . I was reading tarot , I was doing astrology and I was doing candle making . So there was a lot of things that were overlapping during that time and in 2019 , the school kind of imploded .

Honestly , one of the teachers was called out . You know we all have some harm from that teacher and I do believe that teacher can hopefully find some healing for herself . But there's been a lot of harm caused by her and her methods and I didn't really want to be affiliated with the school anymore .

Even though I learned so much and I really have a soft spot for the teachers that were involved . I do miss doing ritual in a large group . Now in the since 2019 , it's been a smaller thing for me . I had to . Really it's kind of a spiritual crisis I had to go through and be like , okay , whoa , what if everything that I was taught is bullshit ?

Okay , then what ? Okay , well , I can go back to how I used to practice magic . Well , I learned from books and from these women in the woods who are probably terfs let's be real and , like you know , just like things that just didn't feel right and like all my elders , kind of feeling like they're like letting me down and it's .

I didn't want to throw them away , but I also didn't know what to do with the teachings and how much of them came from narcissism or from spirit . So , having that like confronted for myself , I had to really rewind . I had a lot of grief I mean so much grief this is summer of 2019 into the fall . Obviously , we know what happened in the early 2020 .

So it just was like and then it just became like isolation for me , my spiritual community and , of course , just for everybody in general , and I had to reset . And for me , in 2020 , 2021 , and even 2022 , I had to rewind and go back to something as basic as okay , do I believe magic is real ?

And like , ask myself that question in the morning , right , maybe pull a card , even if I don't believe in it at the moment and just be like what does this have to tell me I can take or leave it ? Every day was like a one day at a time vibe for me .

The only thing that I could count on every single day was magic is real , because the tree exhales and I inhale . Gravity holds me on this earth .

I am in relationship with this tree , I'm in relationship with nature , I'm in relationship with the beings that are around me , whether they're seen or unseen , and I had to really just have a reset and it was slow and grief ridden and rich and methodical .

Every day , having that practice and I'm not saying I'm totally through it I feel open in a new way and also producing candles during that time a little challenging . I didn't create a lot of new things during that phase .

I just kind of did what I normally did and , yeah , I'm grateful to be kind of at a different place with it now , but I'm still evolving .

I was really entrenched at what I believed and then for me to be like that doesn't matter and that's not the only way to do this , and part of that was my teacher's narcissism and like what does that leave me ? What was my role in that ? You know , like ugh it just .

You know I was able to kind of strip back the layers to get to some basic belief systems and know that it doesn't . All the other stuff doesn't really matter . What matters is do I feel in relationship with my magic ? Do I feel like I am doing something that's good for myself in the world ? Am I , when I do magic , am I moving between the worlds ?

Do I feel like I'm affecting things in a good way as an agent of change ? You know things like that .

I really relate to that in a lot of ways and just kind of constantly in my practice , going back to like healthy skepticism , trying to understand what I truly believe versus what I've read or have been taught , and just trying to feel my way through it .

So , thank you , thank you for sharing that Well , in terms of like , where you are now in your personal belief system and kind of continuing to make the candles through that . What do you believe now about magic and what makes it powerful ?

I don't know , but I do believe that my intention is most of the magic , right ? So the other part of the magic is unknown to me and I'm not trying to act like I know it and I'm the only one who knows what this magic is , or I don't think . I mean , maybe people do know that , but it's not for me to know and I don't want to get hung up on it .

There's no right or wrong way to do things . I don't believe in that at all . I don't think that somebody making candles for three months is making a more powerful candle than someone's making it for 12 years . It doesn't matter . Everyone's thing is different . We're all bringing something unique to the table and there's room for everybody here .

So kind of getting out of my ego in those ways and just allowing my intention to be as clear as possible and then kind of just handing it over , surrendering the rest .

Because that's the part of magic I don't know and I'm not going to know and nor do I want to , because that's to me like where the specialness kind of comes in and my intention can be as clear as I want it to be , but I don't want it just to be so human and mundane . I want to have spirit kind of come over and be in conversation with me .

I want to have it be in relationship and you know I also do a lot of listening . So one way I make the candles as well is I only listen . I this is challenging . I made originally I made like a grand trine candle . I made more like astrology based candles , lilith candles , things like that . Those were very , very beginning .

And then I woke up and was like I have to make a healing candle and it has this , this , this and this , and that I'm not doing anything . I'm just waking up and thinking this is what it is . And then I was like what color ? I'm asking questions , what color is it ? Oh , it's this color , and I'm just listening and creating what I'm given .

Right , and that is how I mean . I'm not going to say 100% , but I'm going to say 98% of these candles are made and they don't really deviate that much from the original intention . For instance , I wanted to make a Mars candle . For years , literally years I was like I just feel like I need a Mars candle , I need this energy . Of course it's Mars .

I'm really trying to wield this into like fruition , right , and it's not happening . Not happening , not happening . I'm doing , I'm pulling cards about it . I'm waiting till Mars is out of retrograde and I can , and it's perfectly aligned in my chart Da , da , da , da , da , you know .

And then I , literally , after it's about three years in the waiting and in the waiting room for Mars Okay , that Mars finally was like opening the door and being like oh , are you here for your appointment ? Great , and it was completely laid out and it was like okay , here it was the gem , the this , the this .

Also , it has like ritual fire ash in it and I needed to have that at a certain time . You know it has to have all these things in it that are totally aligned and I was like thank you , I'm not using my will to create these things . There's a few exceptions , but the majority of the candles are just made with me .

I'll say , like I want to make a art candle Please show me what's in there and it takes . Sometimes we'll take a long time . Mars took three years . So I am really trying to turn on my listening ears as much as possible and I do make , like you know , a hundred things . It's not . I actually sometimes need to turn the volume down a little bit .

Sometimes we don't need all those things , but it's still fun and I'm still showing up for it . It's home .

It's just , it's a little hilarious .

I'm definitely working with the cosmos a lot of times , whether it's fluorescence making or herb harvesting or gem charging .

Right , it's not being fired , but it's like , or whatever the restaurant thing is , but it's , the tab is up , okay , and so there might be some changes , like the next day might be like oh , it's actually red jasper , not carnelian , it's this , not this , and I'll just make a little note oh red jasper , oh , this is this , or it's dark red or whatever it is .

And I'll write little notes on the piece of paper that I have on my desk and then I will start really going into the production of it . So for charging gems , I will look at the astrological timing and make sure I can charge those . Most of the time they're nighttime charged , with the exception of , like sunstone or the carnelian that goes in the fire candle .

Some things go solar charged as well , or they'll be charged under a certain transit . So I'll refer to those things again . With the flower essence , if I don't have it , I have to see if I can make it . If I can't make it , I will get them from FES that I love .

I'll buy them from sister spinster or some other type of witch who I really adore and think makes great essences , and that'll also be timed for me , like according to the plant , if it was in bloom , et cetera . You know , in the winter might make some cedar or some other types of like restful type essences .

But and then the herbs , if I don't grow them or they're not readily available , like I use a daffodil on the Ostarra candle . Daffodils aren't blooming all year round , so I'll have to make sure I have them when they're popping up . I go around the yard and just snip , snip , snip kind of thing , but I will put a call out for those .

Usually with the Mars candle there isn't like , for instance , the Mars candle doesn't have an herb , so that's a different kind of energy . A lot of times there is a flower or a plant , the oil . You know , honestly , if I completely had my way , I would probably not use oils at all .

I'll be honest , I'm a really sensitive person , I'm like a migraine kind of person , sadly , and I don't like fragrances . I call my candles almost unscented . Oil is in there for mostly the energetic properties . After that it's not really going to smell the room .

With a few exceptions the astrological sign candles , the holiday candles and a few other candles do have more scent and I do have that on my website is like this is more scented . People love a smelly candle and that's one thing I've had to sort of like bend a little bit , because if they don't smell like anything at all , people are like bummer .

So that's like where my business person kind of sneaks in a little bit . But I usually say it's there for , like the energetic properties , which is also true If they happen to smell cool .

As a non-binary trans person , I believe in transforming not only your body , being able to live in this world as somebody who is ever evolving and ever transforming . And for me , living at the crossroads it could be life or death . It could be drawing something towards you and pushing something away . It's just a little bit of that polarity .

I don't really like to live in the black or white polarity spaces . I like to operate in the middle . I'm a mutable sign person . I really thrive in that mutability . And when I was working with the crossroads more intently when I was in the magic school community , I was doing a lot of work with Hecate .

I was doing a lot of things where it was around death priestessing . I did some living funeral work . I do a lot of pet death things like that . I thought maybe I wanted to be a death doula . I wasn't sure .

I don't think that's my route anymore , although last week I got an alert on my phone from Black Cat DOA on my street down the way and I just can't . That's my work . I put my gloves on and it's raining and I went down there to get that cat out of the middle of the street . Because that's just who I am . To me that's being a crossroads witch .

It's for me , looking at the in-between spaces , and in the in-between spaces all things are possible . You're not subscribed to the one idea or the other . You're operating in a place of ever-evolving , like I said , ever-transforming .

Again , that's probably why I'm really drawn to candle magic , because I like the art and the magic of transformation , and that's what you're doing with this . I still like death work and that still resonates when I think about crossroads . But to me it's a little bit deeper .

It just feels more like I'm comfortable in the uncomfortable places and I don't subscribe to dark witch , whatever good witch which I operate in the places of . We're doing the best that we can as humans and sometimes we have to operate in the place that is in between to really make some magical things happen .

We're the folks that are very comfortable with the unknown and we help people sort of move through those portals in life from one state of being to another and I can see , yeah , why you're really drawn to that . Well , what's your sign actually ? Lane and I are both Pisces sons .