Glass Encased Religious Novena Candles

[SunKat]

By 1945, although American mail order hoodoo catalogues still primarily sold free-standing altar candles with pasted-on labels -- under brand names such as black cat, Success, and Master Power -- they also began to carry what they called "religious" candles, those familiar tall, glass encased European-American Catholic novena candles bearing printed paper labels depicting various saints.

Novena candles are designed to be burned for nine days while a series of votary prayers are made. It is not necessary to dress them with magical hoodoo or conjure oils, although many people like to anoint them with named Saint Oils or hoodoo oils that match the candles they burn. Colour symbolism is not always important part of the lore accompanying these religious candles, although some saints do have certain colours associated with them, such as green for Saint Jude and red for Saint Expedite.

The use of glass-encased Novena candles is widespread in Catholic Latin America; as well as in pseudo-Catholic African-Caribbean religions such as Santeria and Voodoo, and among the pseudo-Catholic Mayans of Guatemala who burn glass encased candles to a black-garbed peasant figure called Maximon or Saint Simon.

Beginning in the late 1970s, Cuban, Mexican, Guatemalan, and Salvadoran immigrants -- both Catholics and Santeros -- entered the United States in great numbers, which led to the increased marketing of Catholic saint novena candles here. Suddenly, not only could one find novena candles dedicated to universally well known Catholic figures like Saint Jude (San Judas Thadeo), but candles featured a host of Catholic saints previously little known here, such as San Martin Caballero (Saint Martin of Tours) and the Nino de Atocha (Infant of Atocha).

Additionally, as time went on, manufacturers began to add more and more paper-labelled glass encased novena candles marketed to their inventories in order to appeal to this sector of the population. Some of these candles honour Catholic folk saints and holy apparitions that are revered in Latin America but have not been officially approved by the Vatican, like the Anima Sola (Lonely Soul), a Mexican favourite, and the Seven African Powers (Siete Potentias), a staple image that represents the Cuban Santeria religious practice of mingling Catholic saints with the West African deities called Orishas.

On occasion one may even find the conflated Mayan-Catholic deity-saint Maximon (often labelled Saint Simon-Judas) on the candle shelf in a grocery or supermarket, a sure sign that a community of Guatemalan immigrants lives in the area.

The arrival of these immigrants, with their firmly entrenched candle-burning customs, has had a strong effect on hoodoo candle-burning practices. After decades of exposure to people who find it efficacious to petition the saints, it is not uncommon now to hear from African-American Protestants who have little interest in the Catholic form of Christianity, that they would like to burn a Just Judge (Justo Juez) candle for a court case.