A long time ago, breezing around a thrift store, I found a candle holder that intrigued me. It was in the shape of a woman with two faces…she supported a U-shaped bracket to hold candles, and the top of her head held a third. She was, for me, an unlikely color: her dress was pink with yellow flowers. She must have been imagined as a grandmotherly sort—her painted hair was gray. She was hollow and very lightweight and I thought it was made of paper mache of some sort. She was priced to sell at 99 cents!

For years I used her as a holiday centerpiece, nobody had to look at the back of her head, since she had a face on each side. She was a favorite thing of mine. And then came the day I found her lying beneath the mantle shelf on the floor, broken in many pieces; I don’t know how it happened, but her head was off, her arms and candle holders busted and cracked down the sides of her pink dress.

It was almost this time of year, Samhain was approaching and I sadly picked up the pieces and carried them outdoors to the firepit. I would send her off in the end of the year blaze, I decided, as befitted her place as a treasure! The firewood was stacked atop her, and the wax remnants of the year’s magic candles. The fire blazed into the night, well past midnight. And as the embers were almost gone, as is often the case here in the Nor’west, a soft rainfall began. Everyone went inside to sleep away the growing storm.

The next morning, as always after a sabbat fire, I went out to view the remains. Imagine my surprise—my candle bearing lady was NOT burnt up. Instead, her pink and yellow paint was gone and she gleamed white in the black ashes, washed clean by the rain. She was apparently not made of paper at all—but some sort of clay which the flames had now fired! I picked up all the hard pieces and took her inside to re-assemble. To my surprise, one of her two faces was not white, but now solid black, and trying to wash it off proved it was not changing. I glued her back together…some of the candle holding bits were simply gone and were terribly brittle, having been very finely shattered. She served in this bare, ghostly white and scorched hybrid form for the last four years.

When I had guests this past summer, one of whom was quite artistic, I asked her if she would re-paint my two-faced lady. She agreed and did make a start at it, but circumstances and her own energy levels being what they were, the task was never finished. So, I took it up myself, finally hoping that doing this would heal the rent in my heart.

We had agreed her blackened face was a revelation of something that should not be covered over and I did not paint this face. I added to it only a touch of gilding shine. I re-painted what my guest had begun, choosing different colors. Like Changing Woman of the American Southwest’s Indian legends, my candle lady got younger—she is now blond, not gray haired. Her face is rosy on both sides and her eyes are blue. The black faced side has a green dress with yellow and black in the flowers. The other side has a violet dress and red and white flowers.

Looking at my candle lady now, she is more a treasure than ever. She speaks to me of life and death, of light and darkness, of day and night, of fragility and hidden strength, of summer and winter. She speaks of shattering and healing, of falls and risings, of fire and rain, of waiting and winning. Under my paint job lingers the painting done by a friend now lost through circumstance—and the hope that one day the memory of that loss will be tempered by the joys of what the friendship brought to us both when it was yet green and bright with hope.

I hope you enjoy her portrait(s) as part of my Samhain preparation!

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