Soul Candles Ritual Kit

This is a magical time before the new year, a season when gateways are open between worlds. As you work with this kit, bring along family, your minyan, your coven, or practice alone to connect deep into history, sink your roots down into the present moment, and create magic and invoke protection for the 5781 year to come.

Shipping while supplies last! *Photos by Irit Reinheimer*

What are Soul Candles?

The Soul Candles candlemaking tradition has been passed down through "tkhines," Yiddish collections of prayers by and for women. Soul Candles are made to both honor ancestors and protect the living. Said while spinning wick into candles, these tkhines prayers capture the ritual of Jewish Russian and other Eastern European memorial candlemaking during the high holy day season. Burned during Yom Kippur and throughout the year, their lighting awakens the souls of ancestors and calls on them to pray for the well-being of the living. Making ritual candles at this time is an opportunity to connect with ancestors, mourn recent losses, and pray for the year to come. Tkhines have been largely, though not completely, obscured historically by Patriarchy and Christian Dominance. With this kit, we bring the tkhines of Jewish women into our lives and hold them up to shine brightly.

What is the Ritual Kit?

Jonah Aline Daniel, Rabbi Ariana Katz, and Rebekah Erev have partnered in the past handful of years to explore the thkines and Soul Candles tradition through text, ritual, art, research, and prayer and craft. 

Mailed to you in a beautiful box, this kit includes all the tools you will need to learn about and make ritual soul candles:

• Soul Candles Ritual Guide 
• Beeswax dipped wicks for your ritual candle making
• An Oak Gall ink stained wooden bobbin wound with candle wick
• A vial of Oak Gall ink with instructions for making your own
• A pair of Narrow Bridge Candles Shabbat Candles
• A 1-oz jar of honey
• A piece of art and prayer card by Rebekah Erev
• A book of matches for 5781

What is the Soul Candles Ritual Guide?

Building on the beautiful curation of Rabbi Ariana Katz from 5778, this second edition of the Ritual Guide includes history, art, photography, ritual ideas and guidance, poetry, original sofrut (calligraphy) by Rabbi Ariana Katz, and artistic contributions by Nomy Lamm and Irit Reinheimer.

The guide also includes a Reference List to learn more about the rich traditions of tkhines, Soul Candles and so much more.

* Excerpts from the Ritual Guide:

"May you speedily accept the prayers which are said by the light of these candles, for we pray with complete kavone (intention) and sincerity. - Tkhine for Soul Candle Spinning (Translation by Tracy Guren Klirs from Merits of Our Mothers)"

"...Walking the perimeter of the cemetery, candle makers would measure its circumference using candle wick, and measuring with candle wick across the width of headstones of their dear departed, later spin them into candles to burn for the dead, and for the living. If you can go to a place where ancestors are buried, take the spool of wick and measure along their gravestones. If they are far, measure an artifact, the length between two trees, the length of your back, the spine of a book written by a claimed ancestor..."

You may also add the ancestors candle and/or tincture as part of your kit using the drop down menus below, or add the moon angels oracle deck by clicking the link below!

• A Narrow Bridge Candles Memorial Votive Candle Set (4 Votive Candles and 1 Piece Votive Glass) - $18
  
  

• A "Remember" tincture formulation by Narrow Bridge Candles for Grief and Connecting with Ancestors - $14
  
  

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• A Moon Angels / Malakh Halevanah Oracle Deck by Rebekah Erev