Candle
Absorbing rather than cursing — the most misunderstood candle on the shelf.
These are associations the community holds, not settled fact — the more a reading is shared, the bolder it sits.
Black candles have a reputation that comes almost entirely from film. In actual practice the overwhelming majority of black candles are burned for protection, absorption and clearing: setting a boundary, drawing off what is stuck to a house or a person, marking an ending. Cursing is a small and unfashionable minority use, and it does not require black wax.
Agrippa puts black under Saturn — limit, weight, time, endings — and that reading has stayed remarkably stable across four hundred years of otherwise contradictory colour tables. It suits the work people actually do with it. Where a candle is meant to take something away rather than bring it, black is the usual choice.
Practitioners often pair one with a white candle, black to draw off and white to fill the space, which is a tidy piece of reasoning even if the mechanism is unexaminable. Where black is unavailable, white will stand in, and a deep brown or indigo will do at a pinch. Any candle burned for absorption is generally not relit for another purpose.
Readings practitioners have offered, ordered by how many recognise them. Take what serves, leave the rest.
Carried forward
Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy (1533)
Saturn in Agrippa governs what is cold, heavy, dark and final — lead among the metals, black among the colours, and the ends of things generally. Nothing in his account treats the colour as wicked; it is simply the shade of the planet that closes doors.
Carried forward
Common in contemporary practice
Black to draw off, white to fill the space, burned in that order and never the reverse. The stub of an absorbing candle is usually binned rather than reused, on the reasoning that you would not wring out a cloth and put it back on the shelf.
Credit what you carry. Much of this comes from living traditions, and some of it from traditions that are closed — held by particular peoples and not offered for general use. Where you know whose practice a reading came from, name them; where you don't, say that too.