Let’s not forget to look for sales, either. You might have planned to serve chicken, for example, but if the ground beef is on a buy one pound, get one free sale, you may just want to change the menu. It pays to be flexible, as well as frugal.
Nature Is Free
When trying to keep down the costs of your Pagan practice, remember that witchcraft is a nature-based religion, and therefore much of what is involved needn’t cost anything at all.
For instance, you can take a walk in the woods and connect with the trees and the creatures that live in them. Even a park in the city can have a few spots that might allow you to get back to your roots (so to speak). Sit by the water—ocean, lake, stream—it doesn’t matter how big or small. Just take a few moments to listen to the sound of the water and let it soothe you. And think about how all the water on the planet is connected, and through it, you are connected, too. Go outside at night and look at the stars. Feel how small you are, and yet, how much a part of the whole of the universe. Gaze at the moon when it is full, and talk to the Lady whose symbol it is.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. There are hundreds of ways to practice witchcraft for little or no money. After all, being a witch isn’t really about how many crystals you have or who has the fanciest athame. At its core, witchcraft is a path of heart and mind, of love and faith. And that, my friends, doesn’t cost a thing.
Deborah Blake is the author of Circle, Coven and Grove: A Year of Magickal Practice, Everyday Witch A to Z , The Goddess is in the Details, Everyday Witch A to Z Spellbook, and Witchcraft On a Shoestring, all from Llewellyn. She has published numerous articles in Pagan publications, including Llewellyn annuals and has an ongoing column in Witches & Pagans Magazine. Her award-winning short story, “Dead and (Mostly) Gone” is included in the Pagan Anthology of Short Fiction (Llewellyn, 2008). Deborah has been interviewed on television, radio, and podcast, and can be found online at Facebook, Twitter, and www
.myspace.com/deborahblakehps. When not writing, Deborah runs The Artisans’ Guild, a cooperative shop she founded with a friend in 1999, and also works as a jewelry maker. She lives in a 100-year-old farmhouse in rural upstate New York with five cats who supervise all her activities, both magickal and mundane.
Illustrator: Bri Hermanson
Needles, Threads, and Pins
Gail Wood
There’s nothing more ordinary than sewing on a button or replacing something lost, torn, or falling off. It’s a chore. Mending things is something every household has to do, even if there is no interest in sewing or the needle arts. For the most part, our mending piles up until it demands our attention, and then it’s an arduous mess to clean up. We grumble and complain as we sew on buttons, mend tears, and take up hems.
Needles, safety pins, and thread
Buttons, scissors, and those snaps.
Magic and love here embed
In mending, sewing, household tasks.
What if we were to shift our attitude and make the ordinary act of mending a magical spell? After all, the meaning of the word mundane also means being of the earth, or of worldly matters. The word came to be about ordinary events because mundane matters were not the concerns of heaven. As Pagans and Wiccans, we know that the matters of the earth may well be ordinary, but those are also matters of sacred and divine life. Everything we do is sacred and our every action is that of a divine being—even mending and sewing! Much of our magical work concerning the soul and the heart uses the word mending. It’s a wonderful analogy for healing our fractured lives. If we move from the analogy back to the source, we arrive at our pile of mending and sewing.
Sewing and mending magic (like all household magic) is short, simple, and practical. In order to finish the household tasks of cooking, cleaning, and repairing, the magic needs to be quick, practical, and effective. Banish the thoughts of creating big rituals and ceremonies and move your mind to simple charms and tiny ritual reminders. The beginning of all good work—especially good magical work—starts with the tools, and it is the same for mending and sewing. How do you store and treat your mending tools? Are they all in one place? Are they blessed and consecrated? Do you honor and treat them as you would your tools for magical and spellwork?
A basic household mending kit is very simple. Most of what you’ll need to do is repair work, so you need a variety packet of needles, safety pins, a measuring tape or ruler, scissors, thread, an assortment of buttons, and perhaps some iron-on patches. If you darn socks, you will need darning tools as well. I keep my mending tools in a sewing box I got at a chain fabric and craft store. It’s smallish and had stayed on the store’s sale shelf for a long time because it was damaged. As the price decreased, my usually-absent nerve increased; I finally bargained with the manager to get the box for nearly free!
Because I do a lot of sewing and crafts, I have other tool boxes that are outfitted more fully for knitting or quilting, but this is the one I take when we travel to various events and might need something repaired or need an impromptu magical spell. Your own sewing repair box may vary. I have a couple of different sizes of scissors (well maintained and sharp), a variety packet of needles, straight pins, safety pins, measuring tape, some buttons in different colors,
