Tips for those stuck in fumes of the current wildfires

• Beeswax candles – huh, that’s interesting one.

• I always felt better with our holy candles burning, maybe it’s just the ions (I’d still call that providence).

• I remember reading about beeswax candles and negative ions and air purification years ago. Steve BC put something about beeswax candles in his original Covid document in March 2020 (he is always ahead of the game). When someone in my family is pretty sick, I tend to burn a beeswax candle in the sickroom. I also put a plate of yellow onions (peeled, cut in half, and cut side up) in the room near the sick person. Cut onions function very much like essential-oil diffusers and are really helpful when there is sickness about.

• You’re a woman after my own heart — we do onions in the sick room also… And sometimes in common rooms (kitchen, living room, bathrooms) as well.

• Awesome info about the onions. And Amen to SteveBC’s vast and deep knowledge.

• I have a tangential tip: Whether beeswax or not, if you can get the stubs from candles which have been burning at the altar during Masses, they are great to burn at home when you feel you are in an unsettling time of spiritual attack. Much like exorcised salt and holy water, the altar candle stubs are a powerful sacramental.

• But they have to be 100% beeswax; the 51%-beeswax candles sold at church-supply stores won’t work as well. if at all, for this purpose.

• Beeswax Candles at The Cloister Shoppe >

• P.S. In case anyone might be interested in getting beeswax candles, here’s an excellent source >

• Amen about the stubs of church-burned candles. When I said “won’t work as well, if at all, for this purpose,” I meant only the generation of negative ions for air-purification purposes. I didn’t mean to denigrate the 51% beeswax candles for spiritual purposes.

• Oh yes. I didn’t mean to negate anything you “said.” You are a bearer of such a great span of knowledge and I understand why the 100% beeswax is essential for generating the negative ions.

• I’m actually laughing at the limits of electronic communication because. for one thing, it cannot convey tone. My line “whether it’s 100% or not” could be said with a nasty sassy lassie tone and be so obnoxious. But I was just noting the difference in my “tangential” tip. It’s all good.

• Wow. Have never thought of this.

• It was an exorcist who advised a friend to do this. She had sought help from Fr. Wang and me to pray for her teen who was going through some spiritual difficulties.

• Haha! I know what you mean about the tone thing in writing. And I also totally knew that you weren’t going all “mean girl.” I just wanted to make sure that you and others knew I wasn’t being snitty about the 51% vs. 100% beeswax candles.

• Ooh… I hadn’t thought about the bathroom. Thanks for the suggestion! In our bathroom we keep a stainless-steel bowl of unsifted wood ash from our woodstove (unsifted so that there are chunks of charcoal; stainless in case any of the coals are live). This eliminates all bathroom odor, even the odor from dirty diapers in the trash can. It makes me wonder if a bowl of ash in a sickroom would help to purify the air from airborne viruses and bacteria.

• I’ve also read about putting cut onion halves on the bottom of your feet with socks on to draw out the illness.

• Yep! We do that at our house, too. When my kids all had chicken pox 13 years ago, I remembered to put onions on the feet of my boys (they got it the day before my daughter), but I forgot to put onions on my daughter’s feet. All the kids also got Rhus tox 30. My sons both ended up with fewer than 10 blisters and they barely itched. My daughter ended up with a moderate case, a good number of blisters, and so much itching that she didn’t really sleep for 2 nights.