Omega – Yes, to both. The candles were usually lit as a way of extending the person lighting the candles prayer, thoughts about or request for a dead person, an ill person or the Madonna or particular saints. In Greece, in the tiny country churches they had small tin models of arms, legs or any part of the body they requested help with. These were left in the ‘holy place’ as prayers.
Let’s look at a straight forward way of understanding your dream. If we start with the dream entries, they are written not from superstitious ideas, but from looking at how people use the symbol in their dreams. I can search the thousands of dreams mentioning a particular image in seconds. From the understanding gained I write the definition given – and any new dream information I see in dreams I add to the dictionary items.
So the first sentence is about your brother-in-law. So the reference here is
http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/characters-or-people-in-dreams/ which explains how to understand the characters you dream about. But it is also important to understand the context – the words used in connection with the dream image – your brother-in-law. So that links us with
http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/context-theme/ which demonstrates how we create in our imagination what we gather from reading any sentence.
The context of your first sentence is, “has someone died? I think so.” Which suggests thoughts about death – and of course the other imagined scenes created by your thoughts about death.
Dreams are not a guessing game, but a message not in words but in linked images. In the above, if you observe the dream and words describing it with awareness, you have a world of experience, and maybe would be helped by reading
http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/dreaming-of-death/ Also, although you mentioned it last, you wrote, “...there is a sacred, religious aspect.” We may not be religious, but often have religious feelings. What religion means in this case is that we sense things that are not necessarily arising from our physical senses, but gives as a feeling of something beyond our present understanding, a part of us that is bigger than us – the unconscious part of ourselves, which is pushing for us to know it. Sometimes there is a feeling of holiness about this.
Candles – Because of the context in which the candles appear I feel the candles are both a celebration of the light/consciousness of Life that lives through consuming substance/food/air/water. As such it is sometimes seen as a great being of light that burns away the dross of your thoughts and turgid emotions.
Fifty pound notes and the feeling of abundance – taken in context again, it seems to be a great feeling that includes death, religion and the knowledge of your own inner light. Also a lot of potential/energy.
Flame – Only singeing – also taken in context – may mean that the energy is not yet released; because fire is a great releaser of energy held in whatever is the fuel – my guess in this case is human energy not yet used.
So a good dream with much promise.
Tony