I love candle magic, but I don’t do it quite as often as I’d like for one simple reason: It usually requires letting a candle burn completely, ideally uninterrupted, and who’s got that kind of time? There are options for getting around this, of course, but a lot of them are less than ideal. If only there was something smaller, that could burn more quickly. Something like… oh, I don’t know. A birthday candle.
There’s gotta be some kind of birthday candle witchcraft out there, right?

What do you do if you can’t leave a candle burning?

So, you’ve got a candle spell to work, and one big problem — you can’t just leave it burning while you go on about life. There are some suggestions in old books, things like placing the candle in a cauldron or bathtub with an inch or two of water in it, so it’ll be immediately doused if it falls over. As someone who grew up with a firefighter, however, these suggestions make my teeth itch.

Fortunately, there’re better options out there than “stick a candle in your bathtub and hope for the best.” If you absolutely have to, you can snuff a candle and re-light it when you’re able to pay more attention to it. You might even be able to work this into your spell itself, by performing it every night for a series of nights and only burning a little of the candle at a time.

The other option, of course, is to use a really tiny candle.

There’s nothing wrong with using birthday candles in spells. They pack much of the same characteristics of full-sized candles (the element of Fire, the act of burning, the presence of a flame, the wax and wick being consumed) in a tiny package. There are a couple of things to consider before swapping all of your pillars, jars, and chime candles for a package of birthday candles, though.

The Pros of Using Birthday Candles in Spells

They’re tiny

Birthday candles are little and don’t take long to burn completely. When time is of the essence, or you can’t afford to take your eyes off of a candle for even a second (hello, friends with children or pets), then you need something that can work quickly.

That aside, there’s another reason why you might want to try using birthday candles: portability.

I have a crane bag. For Druids/Neodruids, this is a container of tools for field work, power objects, and/or everything that you might need for performing a ritual at any time, in any place. I’ve got tiny incense sticks, small statues, stones, bits of wood, airline-sized bottles of whiskey, a small bowl, a tiny bell, a rattle, etc. Birthday candles fit nicely here, and I don’t have to worry about disposing of a plastic or aluminum cup like I would with a tea light.

They’re inexpensive

Birthday candles are cheap and plentiful. You can find them in any grocery store, in decently sized packs that should last you for a while. Honestly, you’ve probably already got some in a junk drawer or the back of a cabinet in your kitchen right now.

They already have positive magical associations (that other candles don’t)

In cultures that celebrate birthdays with cake and candles, there’s a tiny ritual associated with their use. The candles are placed on the cake, one for every year of the recipient’s age, and lit. The recipient closes their eyes, makes a wish, and tries to blow out all of the candles in one breath.

Honestly, if you mention birthday candles to anyone in the US, it’s likely that one of the first things they’ll think of is making a wish. Sure, it’s a cute little ritual primarily targeted at kids. It’s still a ritual, though. It’s still a positive association between birthday candles and wishes.

This is something that other candles don’t really have. Can you imagine parking an eight-inch-tall pillar candle in the middle of a sheet cake? Eleven or twelve tea lights? A massive jar of something labeled “Sun Dried Cotton”?

Depending on your particular birthday candle witchcraft goals, that connection with wishes is something you can tap into.

They’re easy to clean up

As a candle burns, the wax turns to liquid and is carried up the wick to be used as fuel for the flame. This process is more efficient for some candles and some types of wax than it is for others. Scented candles, for example, produce a lot of liquid wax to let the fragrance dissipate. Taper candles are used primarily for light, not scent, so they have a different shape and generally don’t produce much messy liquid wax. Birthday candles are only supposed to burn as long as it takes to blow them out, so they burn pretty neatly. Maybe a drop or two of dripped wax, if that.

If you’re not a fan of either cleaning old wax out of your candle holders, or digging holes to bury the remains of spell candles, birthday candles offer easy clean up and disposal.

The Cons of Using Birthday Candles in Spells

They’re difficult (if not impossible) to engrave

The small size of a birthday candle doesn’t give you a whole lot of real estate for inscribing sigils, words, etc. If you have a particularly steady hand, you may be able to do something with the tip of a straight pin or sewing needle. Otherwise, if your spell calls for inscribing a candle with something, skip the birthday candle witchcraft and go for a chime, votive, or even pillar instead.

They blow out easily

Unlike other candles, birthday candles are meant to go out easily. This can be a pain if you’ve got a situation that makes it tough to keep a candle lit. A stray breeze, whether from the outdoors or sudden movement, can leave you scrambling to re-light your candle mid-spell. It’s a major concentration breaker, if nothing else.

They’re a pain to use in long-running spells

Some spells call for snuffing a re-lighting a candle, generally over a period of several days. Taper, knob, or pillar candles are good for this. Birthday candles, not so much. Can you imagine having to mark a tiny birthday candle into seven equal segments, and burn one single segment each night for a week? By the time you got it lit, you’d need to immediately snuff it again.

You might have some trouble finding a good holder for them

Birthday candle holders usually come in the form of either those little plastic or metal cups with a spike on the bottom, or an entire cake. Neither of these are particularly ideal when you only need to burn one candle, on a flat surface.

If you have trouble figuring out how to securely set up a birthday candle, get yourself a basic glass votive or tealight cup, and a handful or two of sand. Poke the birthday candle into the sand, and you should be good to go. If any of the melted wax gets on the sand, it’s easy to scoop it out and bury or otherwise dispose of it along with any other remains of your birthday candle witchcraft.

Like I said, I love candle magic. I also have three cats and the attention span of a brine shrimp, and I need candles that I can easily travel with. For me, birthday candles are a valuable and useful magical tool.