Witchy supplies for nomadic, poor, homeless, parochial, and anti-consumerist witches.
You don’t need tools. Everyone tells us that, and it may well be true. But let’s be real, they do legit help you focus especially when you’re new, and witchcraft is all about focus. For me, as an empath, they also reduce the amount of energy I have to expend on a spell. Beyond that, hell, there’s just something nice about physical ritual and creation. And why wouldn’t there be, with a practice based on crafting? We all have our thing we connect to, process-wise. Personally, I have a much easier time focusing and making witchy shit happen if something’s on fire at some point in the process. Mmm, fire. Anyway…
But just because you want or need tools doesn’t mean you need to spend every cent you make on it the way it sometimes seems when you browse a pagan store, or even online witch communities. And for a tradition that’s always been primarily about empowering the oppressed and the have-nots, personally, it irritates the hell out of me that so much of modern witchery has gotten… well, so elitist and classist. You’re not witch enough unless your grimoire is made of the hide of baby otters and your rosemary was harvested by Indigo children in the enchanted forests of Dunedin.
I, for one, wish I saw more inexpensive, DIY, and found tool witchery portrayed as not only doable, but meaningful and beautiful.
So here are my ideas on how you can get a good flying leap on your witchy cabinet (or witchy rucksack, if you’re nomadic or homeless) for under £10. I’ve done some of these myself and I’ll post pics of how awesome these can really look.
Nothing. You can write sigils in water if you want. Personally, I often make sigils with honey in the bottom of my tea cup.
But if you want to make your own, which requires a fair bit of trial and error, or ya just really like writing shit down…
You probably already have these. If you don’t, then buy a packet of cigarette rolling papers. They’re thin and a bit see-through (perfect for tracing your sigil if need be) and obviously they’re designed to burn cleanly if you want to burn them to activate them. 50 to a pack. £1 or less.
Buy a pen. Or knick one at the desk of your local annoying government agency. No judgment. Less than £1.
Sigils can be charged in a variety of ways that are absolutely free. Energy manipulation, holding them to a pulse point on your body, tearing, even visualizing while having an orgasm.
Tesco has 100 tea lights for £2.
Lighter and/or matches. Anywhere. Under £1. Matches are sometimes free.
Do you have a rock or stone? Does it have a hole in it, or can you put one in it? Stick an earing wire through it and attach a necklace chain. Pendulum. Shazam. Here’s mine.
Does your rock not have a hole in it? Make some netting out of thread, tie it around the rock, and then use either more thread or a necklace chain for the support. Pendulum. Double shazam.
Got some playing cards? Cartomancy.
Got anything that plays music? Shufflmancy.
Got anything with a shiny screen, or access to it? Scrying.
Got a stick? Slice it up and draw some runes on the cross sections.
Got a candle? Cyromancy. Pyromancy. Ceromancy. ALL THE -MANCY’S.
Look in your cabinet if you have one. You probably have at least salt and pepper. Both highly useful, especially salt. If not, both together will cost you under £1 at Tesco.
Or you could always just swipe some packets from McDonalds. Again, no judgment.
If you want more, go down to your nearest Asian or Indian market. That is where the bargain herbs will be – often large quantities for under a pound. It may be harder to buy small quantities, but it’s worth a look before you go to the supermarket.
Also, if you have the domestic stability and the green thumb to do so, it’s worth looking into whether it would be cheaper to grow your own.
Also consider what kinds of local plants you can find growing free, and would be useful to you. Dandelions? They’re everywhere, and super magical. I use the little purple flowers that grow in the cracks in the concrete outside my door. I don’t even know what they are (therefore I am careful not to consume them), but they represent home for me.
Any piece of jewelery you have that has any sort of stone on it.
Any piece of glass; use it like quartz, although it seems to drain a bit faster.
Rocks you find. There’s tons of pretty and magical stones to be found in forests and beaches and gardens.
Coal. Yup, coal. Actually, um, guys? I LOVE coal for energy absorption and clearing. You should try it.
Containers for storage and spell jars/bags:
Any tupperware you might have.
Any containers you might empty (sauce jars, etc).
For highly mobile containers, cut an inch or two of a straw, melt the end to seal it, fill with whatever, and melt the other end to seal that too. Free at any fast food place that has soda fountains.
Find a stick you like. This is a environmental craft, dude. Get in the spirit!
Chalice/cauldron/stuff for putting stuff in (we’re going cheap here, so multi-purpose is a thing):
Any cup or bowl. Hit the pound store if for some reason you don’t have one, or want a special one.
An ashtray. Possibly one you found sitting outside, looking sad and lonely at a restaurant. No judgment.
Or even, again, a fast food place that has plastic knives that you can deck out if you want.
Or an awesomely sharp chipped rock.
Find a pretty reed and use that. Great for a mobile mini-besom for altar use. Or lash a bunch of reeds or thin twigs together onto a long stick and make an actual full-size broom. Results can be frickin’ beautiful, by the way. I made one that I love. All found materials. Behold (this was right after the reeds dried from soaking to soften them, so it wasn’t as fluffy as it is now).
Travel altar for nomadic/homeless witches:
Just some examples with the stereotypical altar layout, but really, you can use anything that’s small enough for your needs…
Any little container. Altoid tin, old spice jar, jewelery box, whatever. You could even use a piece of fabric and bundle everything up in there, and it could double as an altar cloth when you untie it.
Thimble, bottle cap, or folded tinfoil for cup/chalice for water.
Birthday candles, anything red or orange, chilli pepper or spice for fire.
Dirt for earth. I mean, obviously. What’s super cool about this is that you can take it from wherever you are, which gives you an automatic connection.
Whatever the hell you want for your focus point. Draw a pentagram on paper. Use your favourite ring you wear everywhere. Use a pretty rock you like.
Most of these can either be found quite easily or gotten for less than a pound.
Make a digital grimoire. Probably the cheapest way to make it pretty too. I mean, have you seen what people can do with a simple Tumblr blog? If you do it in Word or Google Drive, you can download all kinds of cool page borders, free.
So there ya go. And thing is, a lot of witches won’t even want or need all of these things. Not into crystals? Don’t get any! Ain’t got time for altars? Don’t make one! So in reality, a lot of witches could spend considerably less than the cost of getting all of these.
But if you did decide to acquire all of this, now you have materials for sigil craft, candle magic, a million kinds of divination, basic staples of herbal and crystal magic, storage containers, spell jar containers, both a regular and travel-size altar, and a grimoire. That’s a pretty good set of kit.
At best, you spent literally nothing at all. Most people will already have most of these things anyway.
Some may need to buy some of these things. But at the end of the day, the vast majority of these things can be found or made for free quite easily, with a couple of exceptions. By my best guess, poor or homeless witches in most places wouldn’t need any more than approximately £3 to £5 if they were starting with nothing, their goal was to acquire something from every category, and they could not ask loved ones to spot them supplies.
Some of these are not as over-the-top gorgeous as the artisanal stuff people buy off Etsy. But you know what? It’s sure as hell authentic. This is what witches have done for eons: use what’s around them. Witchcraft is not about flashing how much money you have. And nothing’s stopping you from decorating with whatever you have.
Witchcraft is for everyone, not just folks who have £200 to blow on an athame.
Even if you have the £200 to blow on an athame, there is something really rewarding about crafting things yourself. This is, after all, witchcraft. I am privileged enough at this point in my life that I could have bought a lot of the stuff I decided to make or find (and sometimes making is more expensive than buying, though it’s fun and meaningful), but honestly, my DIY and scavenged tools usually speak to me more than my purpose-bought tools do.
It’s worth trying and seeing how it changes how you feel about your work. Give it a shot. And if you do, share with me! I wanna see!
