You’ll find the candles in botanicas, the herbal/spiritual shops tucked into Haitian and Hispanic neighborhoods. You’ll even find them on the shelves of the biggest supermarket chains in South Florida. And you’ll certainly find them in the makeshift memorials that mark the sites of traffic accidents.

These aren’t just any candles. These are a 20th century invention that has become the official beacon for everything from miraculous sightings and missing children to neighborhood tragedies and anti-war demonstrations.

More commonly, though, they are lighted in the home to accompany a specific petition to a higher authority.

Known as prayer candles, seven-day candles or, in Spanish, veladoras, they come in 81/2-inch glass jars filled with about 71/2 inches of paraffin and usually bear an image and a prayer.

Scholars and candle industry folks find their origin hard to pinpoint. According to Sister Schodts Reed, chief executive officer of the Reed Candle Factory in San Antonio, her Mexican-born father-in-law, Peter Doan Reed, invented the prayer candle in the late 1940s.

The elder Reed started making votive candles — which are always burned in glass and are so named for their use when making a vow or petition — in 1938. But after about a decade of making standard votives, Reed, in 1947, came up with a tall jar model that could burn for seven days and bore a picture of a spiritual figure along with a prayer.

“His goal was to allow people to have their particular patron saint with the image on the candle so that they could light it and have their prayer on it,” Reed said. “That way they have a silent prayer that is continuing even after they are done praying.”

Reed said her father-in-law’s company started out selling just a few types of silk-screened prayer candles and now they produce 350 saint varieties alone, many with paper labels. And this doesn’t count the mystical varieties made by their subsidiary, Mission Candles.

The use of these candles has evolved far beyond a religious context. On the same Web site and even on the same store shelf, you can find Virgin Mary candles not far from “D.U.M.E. Black List” candles that are purported to help you, well, kill your enemies.

More common uses include attracting a specific mate with a “Come to Me” candle while simultaneously sabotaging the mate’s current relationship with a “Break Up” candle. According to Carlos Soto, manager at Indio Products, a chain of botanicas in Southern California, the “Come to Me” + “Break Up” combo is his No. 1 seller.

Isn’t that kind of mean?

“Not really,” Soto says, “because usually [the customer] is a woman … whose husband or boyfriend is cheating, so she is just getting back what was hers.”

At St. George Botanica and Religious Store on West Sunrise Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale, owner Houngan Sorel Fenelon says there isn’t one candle that outsells others.

“Everyone is looking for what they want,” he says of the dozens of varieties he sells.

The Rev. Roland Desormeaux of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Mission Catholic Church in Delray Beach, says the candles are very popular among Italians, Hispanics and Haitians.

“It’s a means of prayer,” he says. “They believe that if you are sick, for example, if they light a candle in your name that God will answer your prayer. It’s a popular devotion. We Catholics don’t see anything wrong with it. If they believe in it and truly believe in the Lord, with or without a candle, God will answer their prayers.”

So popular are they in some areas of South Florida that they’re available in many Publix stores.

“People buy them for different reasons,” says Anne Hendricks, Publix spokeswoman. “I would hate to generalize and pigeonhole a certain customer base. We carry them because some of our customers do like them and we always aim to give our customers what they want.”

Top sellers at Chango Botanica in Laredo, Texas, according to co-owner Jorge Diaz, include the “Blockbuster” and the “Reversible.” These, he explains, are summoned when “someone puts a hex on you,” and you need to either bust through it or reverse it back to them. His third most popular candle, the “Tapa Boca,” is used when the candle purchaser faces a court case and needs “the judge or prosecutor or witness to stop saying bad things about you,” Diaz explains.

The target market for seven-day candles is primarily female, according to the botanica representatives across the nation. Jorge Diaz says most of the customers at his Texas store are Hispanic, but on the Chango Web site they are “almost all Anglo or African-American. More and more of them are getting into this.”

Soto also notes that his customers — both on the retail and wholesale level — are 80 percent women because “the ladies come in here to get candles for their relationships when their man leaves and then they see it works. So later when they need help with their jobs or money or gambling or a court case, they come back. The men, for some reason, they don’t want to tell anyone about needing help with women who left them.”

Why do they call them seven-day candles?

“I really don’t know but we don’t even call them that anymore,” Reed said. “Novenas were supposed to burn for nine days but I don’t know. Now with the mass production of these and selling them in supermarkets they have needed to keep the prices low and the quality [of the paraffin] has suffered. They no longer burn for seven days, maybe five or six depending on conditions. Now, we [at Reed] call them religious prayer candles.”

Many people let them burn continually, but each candle features a written warning to never leave a burning candle unattended.

In fact the Rev. Charles Hahm, a pastor in Chicago, tells people not to leave them burning because, according to the fire department, “they are a leading cause of fires. A young college woman died in one of our parish-owned buildings when she left a candle burning next to her bed and somehow the covers caught fire.”

How do you use the mystical varieties?

The candles come plain or “dressed” with oils, incense, seeds, glitter and herbs. Dressing them, according to Juan Zarco, manager of Centro Botanico Guadalupano in Chicago, makes them “more powerful,” and Guadalupano charges an extra $4 for dressing. You can buy many pre-dressed candles on the Internet for about $9 or have them custom-dressed at a store.

Most of the candles bear printed prayers (in Spanish and English) for the users to recite. But a proper petition often involves more than just buying a candle and lighting it when you get home, explains Los Angeles botanica manager Soto.

“Let’s say that you came down to my store because you need money,” he says. “We have a money-drawing candle, and each candle has an oil, powder and glitter that goes with it. Like if you are doing money-drawing, then the glitter will be green. To finish the job … you need to write your petition on parchment paper. The best saint candle to go with money drawing would be St. Jude because that is for money and business. With that candle you always offer holy oil … not powder or glitter because you are now talking about a saint. You should also write a petition to St. Jude and put it under the candle. But if you think someone might read it, you should burn it in the candle.”

He also notes, “before you start your petition you should cleanse yourself and your home [of negative energy] first,” with a shower, open windows and incense.

“A lot of people say the candles don’t work, and it is because they light them as soon as they get home instead of cleaning themselves first.”

And then they still may not work. But just in case you want a refund or are thinking of calling the Better Business Bureau, keep in mind that many are now made with the word “alleged” written above their “magical use,” and they’re only a $2 investment.

Any additional investment of faith is up to you.

Staff Writer John Tanasychuk contributed to this report.

The Chicago Tribune is a Tribune Co. newspaper.