Ask A Witch: Substitute for Candles and Incense

Here we are again!  I'm working to get through some of the backlog of questions from Ask A Witch.  If you've send in a question and it hasn't been answered let you may very well see it pop up here soon!  So keep reading.  :)  Today's question is one that I've been asked a few times in the past and one that was actually an issue for me once so I'm happy to help with this!

I'm a 14 year old Witch, and I'm not aloud to use incense, though I love it, because of my mom's allergic to it. Also, I can't light candles because of her boyfriend. He'll yell and hit and whatnot because of fire and the fact that it's religious related (he hates everything) and blah blah blah. Well here's the question I suppose: Is there any good substitute for incense and candles?~ Ivory

Thanks for your question Ivory!  It's actually not an uncommon question.  When I was in college I wasn't able to use incense or candles in my dorm room and had to have other ways to work with them when I wanted.  So I know that sometimes you just have to get creative.One thing though that I just have say, from looking at your question, is that if your mother's boyfriend is hitting you, or anyone for that matter, there is absolutely nothing that makes that OK.  Please, please make sure you tell someone and get some help if this is going on in your home. You might be a minor living under your mother's roof but this doesn't make you a literal or figurative punching bag.  So just something that I would be remiss to not comment on.OK, so back to incense and candles!Incense is easy to replace.  There are two different things you can do here and both work well depending on the material you're working with.  If you're using fresh or dried herbs as incense, or if you're working with powdered incense, you can place it in a bowl or dish and place it on your altar.  The essence of what, the energy that it carries, will still be there.  When we burn incense we see the smoke carrying our wishes to you Gods and to the Upper Realms.  It can be seen that the smell of the herbs on the altar are still carrying these things, even though we can't create the smoke.  The energy and the power from the scent of the herbs or incense is still there and will still be able to carrying our wishes to the Universe.Another option is to create ritual misters.  These are great and the smell will be there but it will be faint and shouldn't bother anyone that isn't directly in the line of the spray.  For this you'll need a small spray bottle (you can get this at drug stores and places like Target or Walmart quite easily).  Fill the bottle with water (personally I use bottled spring water) and then add about 15-20 drops of essential oils that go along with your work.  For example if you were going to burn sage and lavender herbs for incense use about 10 drops of each in your bottle of water.  I would use a small spray bottle like the kinds you might find in the health and beauty section, not the big kinds that you would find with cleaning supplies.  You may need to test and play around with the amount of oils used for the bottle that you buy.  This same technique can be used with magickally blended oils too; if you would have used healing incense you can use blended healing magickal oil to make a healing mister. Then just spray it around your space in place of incense.As for candles. it's a little tricky because it would depend on what it is that you're using them for.  If you're planning to use them just for light or symbolic purposes on your altar there are a number of different options for flameless candles.  There are LED tea lights, votives, and pillars and they come in all kinds of colors.  If you were going to use them for spells then you'll just need to find another method of spellcasting.  There are many, many spell casting techniques out there that do not rely on burning candles at all such as herbal magick and mojo bags, poppet spells, and working with spell jars.It can sometimes be a little tricky to have to rearrange your magickal work because of things like this,but as the saying goes "Where there's a Witch there's a way!"  You can always find a way to work around this if you are willing to experiment and be creative!