Witchcraft PSA
If you are a witch, and think you cannot afford herbs, crystals, or essential oils PLEASE visit these sites!!
Spirit Apothecary
It is BY FAR the best out of any place I’ve seen! Don’t go on Amazon, don’t go on Etsy. Those sites are grossly over priced. I see a lot of people trying to sell stuff for WAY MORE than it’s worth and it really makes me mad.
I mean, $2.50 for an ounce of Lavender flowers from France!
OR go to Mountain Rose Herbs. You can save $1.00 by buying lavender there. (They sell it for $9.00 for 4oz.) They’re prices for herbs are great, too!
Spirit Apothecary has better prices for essential oils though- for example: Bergamot Essential Oil is $8.00 @ S.A. for 1/3 oz. it costs $16.50 @ M.R.H. for ½ oz. That’s over twice the price, but you don’t get twice as much, so I get all essential Oils at S.A.
MRH doesn’t sell, crystals, but SA does. They are good quality and by far the most inexpensive. Also they both have a facebook page.
If you really want to buy herbs, oils, and crystals, but think you can’t afford them, PLEASE, PLEASE check these sites out!!
Reblogging to add the Monterey Bay Spice Co.
Also if you want crystals, go to gem shows, make friends with the folks running the booth, geek out about stuff with ‘em. Their stuff’s almost always cheaper and frequently better-quality than metaphysical shops (sometimes by a huge margin), you’re likely to find less-common kinds, and on top of that IME if they like you they’ll cut you a discount off the sticker price about half the time without even having to ask. Sometimes gem-show people will even give you crystals just because you geeked out with them about their hobby. I mean, I wouldn’t recommend just trying to bullshit a bunch purely to get cheap or free stuff, most people can smell a fake looking to manipulate them for deals (and don’t discount the possibility that some of the folks running show booths are witches themselves even if there’s no obvious metaphysical lean to their booth… it’s one of those hobbies that draws a certain type, and that type has a higher-than-average overlap with the type that’s drawn to witchcraft). But don’t assume you’ll never be able to get a collection started just because you’re sorta broke. Go to gem shows. Bring whatever money you can afford to spend on stones, browse before you buy because the first booth you look at might be selling nearly identical quartz points for twice the price that the next one down the row has, do your research ahead of time so that you can avoid getting scammed by some jerk with dyed knockoff stuff (who may not even realize it’s knockoff themselves, knowledge levels vary in any hobby, or who may have it just because it’s a cheaper thing that kids who are just there to ooh and aah over shiny shit might blow their allowance money on), and enjoy learning more about rocks from people who fuckin’ love em. Once in a while you’ll find a booth staffed by someone who doesn’t know jack shit but will still try to spout off like they’re an expert, I’ve had people try to feed me all kinds of bullshit. Just kind of smile and nod along with those people and let them ramble at you, but don’t pay more than anything is *actually* worth no matter what they *say* it’s worth. This is usually gonna be the booths with more of a metaphysical-shop vibe, don’t let ‘em get ya down, just move along and find the guy with five tables full of buckets of raw slabs for cabbing and ask him questions about his rocks bc he probably collected and cut at least half of them himself (these folks are great, they might even teach you how to spot really cool shit in the wild that most people would never give a second glance to since it just looks kinda brown and blobby on the outside). And consider buying some of those cabbing-slabs too – they’re usually one of the cheaper forms of whatever stone they are that you can get, and they’re great for incorporating in spells as altar plates; set a candle spell up right on top of a slab o’ rock. Fire safety AND spell enhancement in one convenient package! Don’t be afraid to ooh and aaah over stuff that’s out of your price range, and definitely don’t be afraid to geek out a whole bunch about how cool crystals are – everyone else there is a huge-ass rock nerd too, and excited geeking out is how you make friends with huge-ass nerds. …but while I know this is a post about how to obtain materials on a tight budget… if you can swing it, I recommend budgeting a little generously for the gem show. You’re gonna see SO much cool shit that you can do SO much cool witchcraft with. Further bonus points: if you’re in the broom closet, you can absolutely pass this off as a mundane interest if you learn to speak rock-science a little bit.
