Candle
Warmth rather than heat — affection, repair, and being decent to yourself.
These are associations the community holds, not settled fact — the more a reading is shared, the bolder it sits.
Pink is the newest colour on this list in any systematic sense. It barely appears in older schemes, which mostly treat it as a weak red, and its modern meanings — affection, self-kindness, reconciliation, friendship — belong largely to the twentieth century. Venus is the usual planetary assignment, borrowed sideways from green.
The distinction from red is the useful part and worth keeping. Red is desire and nerve; pink is warmth, and the two want different workings. A great deal of what gets attempted with red candles — repairing a friendship, being gentler with oneself, softening a household that has gone tense — is pink work, and goes better when it is not being driven at Martian speed.
It is also the standard colour for self-directed care work, which many practitioners find harder than anything aimed outward. White substitutes; red where the work is genuinely about desire rather than warmth. As with any working aimed at another person, the honest question comes first: are you asking for warmth, or asking someone to feel something they have not chosen?
Readings practitioners have offered, ordered by how many recognise them. Take what serves, leave the rest.
Carried forward
Common in contemporary practice
Burned for oneself as often as for anyone else, which is the use practitioners most often say they had to be talked into. The instruction that circulates is to name the kindness specifically — vague self-care workings tend to produce vague results and an unburnt candle.
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.