Candle-Making Nuns Know Their BeeswaxBy Diane Wright, Seattle Times (USA), 12/21/2006
On a chilly December afternoon, a vat of molten beeswax heated inside a water-jacketed tank, smelling slightly of honey, while candles stood on trays ready to be packed in boxes.
In the next room, there was a stock of work from more than 60 vendors: candles, raw and creamed honey, holiday plates, lanterns, Christmas ornaments, Egyptian alabaster jars, carved wooden toys from Russia and tapes and CDs of carols.
Orthodox Christian nuns from The Convent of the Meeting of the Lord make a living here at Quiet Light Candles near Stanwood…
Their foray into commerce came in a roundabout way, when a lavender farm asked if they would want to manufacture lavender-scented paraffin candles.
It almost killed them — breathing toxins from the paraffin, a petroleum product, combined with the anesthetizing agents in the lavender was like breathing diesel exhaust, one doctor told them.
They quickly halted production — but they had all that equipment.
What to do?
They turned to bees.
"We only make beeswax candles," said Mother Evdokia, "and the reason being is that beeswax is a natural product. And it's made by the bees, and 60 pounds of honey are produced for one pound of beeswax. It's just the 'jar' in which the bees stored the honey. In olden times, it was reserved for royalty, and you could pay your church dues in beeswax."…
"The neat thing about beeswax, which we didn't know before we actually started all this, is that beeswax produces negative ions when it burns, which cleans the air," said Mother Evdokia.
The claim (dare I call it a lie, but oh no, purveyors of natural products would never!) that burning beeswax candles "cleans your air" is absurd.
ReplyDeleteEven if it produced negative ions - the amount would be so little, and so close to the candle (you can't clean the air in a stagnant room) that it would be negligible.
Not so negligible? The affect negative ions have on asthmatics...
The idea that everything natural is "good" or "of G*d" defies all logic. Strychnine? (from Koochla tree) Morphine? Heroin? (from the sap of the Papaver Somniferum flower), Digitalis? (foxglove), Nutmeg (peel makes Mace, eat too much of the body and you'll turn yellow), Lead, Cocaine (from Coca Leaves), Hemlock... Should I continue?
There is no such thing as a "man made chemical" - everything comes from nature, it's the source of everything we have!