February 2026

The winter jasmine blooms (lat. Jasminum nudiflorum).

Зацветает жасмин голоцветковый (лат. Jasminum nudiflorum).

I've always considered storytelling a form of magic. So perhaps it shouldn't be surprising that the novel I wrote demanded its own ritual.

Time to let my witch self out of the bag.

I created this candle on Spring Equinox (Ostara), inspired by the energy of the season and drawing from what I felt when writing Rubedo.

Now many people might wonder: This looks too intense for springtime aesthetics, which are usually soft, pastel-coloured, joyful. But we do not live in easy times. The world is wounded, perhaps beyond repair. The times are unforgiving. Everywhere life is suppressed, exploited for greed and ego.

So when I sat down in front of my altar and contemplated, I found myself unable to deny the cry of the earth, to pretend everything is fine and my heart is light. Instead I was drawn to a different aspect of the spring: raw, determined, the unstoppable, fearless force of life that was determined to break winter's cage. The pulse of roaring river under thawing ice. The sprout struggling to pry its way out of rocks. The new born desperately gasping for air.

That's the kind of spring that Rubedo, both the book and the candle, try to embody: the bloody, messy birth of a miracle. I intend it to manifest a revolutionary spring, a burst of creation against winter, trauma, tyranny, abuse, grips of old vices and patterns. It's also why, as some may note, I borrow the concept from the final alchemical stage, the last leap towards Magnum Opus.

Here's a breakdown of the ingredients for the candle and their correspondences:

Nigredo: black sunstone, pomegranate, myrrh. The underworld, the hidden and forbidden, the wound, the Midnight Sun, the False Light. Frederick.

Albedo: moonstone, fig, frankincense. Purification, renewal, clarity, the lunar and the feminine, introspection, peace & enlightenment, the White Queen.

Citrinitas: yellow tiger's eye, mandarin orange, benzoin. First ray of dawn, expansion, connection, integration, the search, the solar and the masculine.

Rubedo: red sunstone, rose, dragon's blood. Nirvana, a union of passion and wisdom, reddening of life, rebirth, completion, True Illumination. Rebecca.