RIO GRANDE FLAMING SPIRITS - From the bosque to your altar.

The smell of water isn't water itself — it's the story of everything it's touched. Out of the Rio Grande it smells like wet silt and warm clay, cottonwood resin and willow leaf, sun-baked river rocks turned cool again, with creosote and ozone from a storm miles upstream.
 
Spiritually it's worked with as memory in the air: not to banish, but to remember, to softly thin the veil, and to ground you without holding you stuck. The small river rocks will reset a room and tells your body you can exhale. Old travelers would pause to smell the river before crossing — a sign of respect for moving from one side to the other.
 
Hand-poured in small batches with soy wax, is dressed with one of the oldest moon herbs. Artemisia ludoviciana, mugwort, the silver-leaf you see all along the Rio Grande bosque. In candle tradition it's the boundary herb. The one for crossing between waking and dreaming.