Llewellyn's 2012 Witches' Companion

by Llewellyn

  Grow your own herbs. Seeds are cheap, and most herbs will grow in a small space like a windowsill. As a bonus, many of the herbs we commonly use for magick—like parsley, thyme, rosemary, dill, and basil—also have culinary uses. Win, win. (Of course, before consuming any magickal herb, it is a good idea to double-check and make sure it is edible!)

  Make your own garb. If you aren’t any good at sewing, you can always “repurpose” funky clothes you find at a consignment store or yard sale. I have lots of vaguely Pagan-looking clothes that I’ve picked up for a dollar or two. You can also take something simple, like a white shirt, and decorate it with Pagan symbols to turn it into something more witchy.

  Use a pretty plate or bowl instead of a fancy candleholder. Inexpensive glass and pottery often works quite well, as long as it is fire-safe.

  If you want a special chalice for Cakes and Ale but don’t want to invest in a pewter or silver one, go to the dollar store and get a glass goblet. You can make it special by tying ribbons around the stem or decorating it using glass markers.

  Instead of a pricey, store-bought athame, take a walk in the woods and find just the right piece of wood. (This works for wands as well.) If it is large enough, you can carve runes or symbols onto it, or you can tie ribbons, leather, crystals, beads, or feathers to it, if you happen to have some lying around. If you don’t want to go to even that much trouble, just use your finger to point with. Since the main purpose of an athame is to direct energy, a finger or your hand will work just as well as a physical athame in most circumstances.

  If you need a Book of Shadows, you can use a notebook or a 3-ring binder. Cover it with cloth or fancy paper, or decorate it with Craft symbols. Even better, create a special cover by gluing on leaves and other natural objects.

  You can spend a lot of money on premade spell candles that are anointed with magickal oils, carved with arcane symbols, and consecrated for magickal use. Or you can do all those things yourself and spend the money you save on ingredients to make your own magickal oils—that way you can anoint a whole lot more candles down the line.

  As you can imagine, I’m a big fan of buying books. By all means, feel free to buy the ones I’ve written! On the other hand, even I don’t buy every book I ever want to read. (Almost, but not quite. We talked about priorities, and books are one of mine.) You can get books from the library for free (although it can often be hard to find Pagan books there) or go to one of the many online book swapping sites. One of my coven mates has actually found quite a few Pagan books at yard sales over the years. You can also share books with your Pagan friends, although I wouldn’t do that with anything you can’t stand to not get back.

  Most of us use votives or tapers for quarter candles. Votives tend to be fairly cheap, and you don’t need anything fancier. But if you want to save your money (or can’t burn candles wherever you are, be it a hotel room or a dorm room), you can substitute symbols for earth, air, fire, and water—try using a rock, a feather, a picture or drawing of a flame, and a seashell.

  Statues of specific gods and goddesses can be truly beautiful … and truly expensive. If you follow a particular deity, try using something that symbolizes them, like a cat for Bast, or an antler for Herne.

  Feeding a Crowd

  When you are a Solitary witch, you can easily control what you do and don’t spend money on. But when you practice with others, things can be a little trickier.

  A better choice is to have your feasts be “pot luck.” Everyone who will be attending is instructed to bring a dish to pass.

  A perfect example of this is the post-ritual feast. I have been to—and in my earlier days as a high priestess, hosted—any number of rituals where the person hosting the event cooked up a huge feast single-handedly. If you’re someone who likes to cook for your friends, this can be a lot of fun. It can also be a tremendous amount of work and darned expensive. If you have a large coven, or hold open rituals that might draw twenty or thirty people or more, it can easily break the monthly food budget.

  A better choice is to have your feasts be “pot luck.” Everyone who will be attending is instructed to bring a dish to pass. If you are really organized, or are in a smaller group like a Blue Moon Circle, it can be a good idea to check ahead of time to see what people are bringing; that way you don’t end up with three loaves of bread and no vegetables.

  There have been times in the past when there were circle members who we knew had little or no extra money. These folks were usually given the most inexpensive options: potatoes, rice, or pasta, for instance. My book has an entire section devoted to recipes that will feed a crowd for under ten dollars, and almost all of them are dishes we have made and enjoyed.

  Some items, like the potatoes and pasta above, are almost always pretty cheap. But you can also save money by planning your feast around seasonal foods (a good Pagan tradition anyway), since produce that is in season is usually considerably cheaper than that which isn’t. Asparagus, for instance, is a pricey treat most of the year—except in spring, when it is readily available. Buying locally grown food can often save you money, too, especially if you have a farmers’ market near you. And you’re supporting local farmers, which I’m sure the Goddess thinks is a good idea.

  Of course, if you have a garden, using fruits and vegetables you have grown yourself is not only a cheaper option, but it has the added benefit of sharing all that energy you put into the process. And it connects you down through the past with all the Pagans of yore who grew and harvested their own food.

  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

  Th
ere’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, and threads in the colors of white, brown, black, red, and navy blue. I sometimes add in tape, glue, and paper scissors as well. I also put in a small egg rattle to remind me that this is one of my magical tool kits; I use the rattle for cleansing and centering before beginning my task.

  After cleaning, repairing, and filling my box, I set it on my altar for a moon phase, allowing it time to experience some magical workings and the full cycle of the moon. At the new moon, I blessed it before the gods and the elements with this enchantment:

  Spinner Clotho spin the thread,

  Lachesis the apportioner, measure the charge,

  Atropos the inevitable, cut the measure,

  Please bless these tools to their task

  For mending, sewing, all sorts of repair.

  Imbue their work with love, joy, and magic,

  Conscious and Unconscious

  The magic does mend.

  Reverence and mirth,

  Power and joy,

  Honor and humility

  Each stitch does employ.

  This magic and power

  Through my hands and my tools

  Repairs and mends the heart and soul.

  With your blessings,

  For the good of all

  And the harm of none.

  As I will it so mote it be!

  After raising a cone of power and grounding the energy in the sewing box, I put it in its place to do its work.

  There are many household goddesses and goddesses of creativity and needlecrafts in every culture of the world. Athena is the goddess with whom I work most frequently for this and other areas; however, as I pondered who to work with for this tool kit, the Moirae stepped in to take the foreground. These three Fates of the Greek guided the life stories of humans, and even the gods could not influence them. Clotho was the spinner who spun the thread of our lives, Lachesis decided the length of each person’s life, and Atropos made the final cut, the snip that ended life and began the journey to the land of the dead. So to them I committed my tools of repair and mending.

  And yet the Moirae are not the only deities I work with for mending and sewing. Hestia, Vesta, Brigit, Xochiquetzal, Ix Chel, Athena, Arachne, Erinia, Spider Woman, and First Woman are all well known goddesses of the hearth or of the needle arts. It isn’t always easy to identify gods and goddesses associated with the needle arts. As a so-called womanly art, needlework and sewing is a humbler craft than some of the larger issues such as war, fertility, nature, etc.; many of the needle goddesses’ attributes are lost in time. So as we research the gods, we need to be well aware that our own personal interaction and understanding of the gods is as reliable and authentic as the documented historical evidence. If you are called to consecrate your needlework to Aphrodite, heed her call! Choose your goddess wisely but remember the gods ultimately choose us.

  Each tool in your mending kit can be charmed to bless its work. Sometimes in the middle of the hurly burly of getting things done, it’s hard to remember to stop and do the magic and then solve the problem. Recognizing that each of our mundane tools has a magical purpose and enchanting them at the beginning of the task can ensure that magic is imbued in the foundations of our mending. Our tools are ready always to be both magical and practical.

  Scissors

  Scissors are a wonderful tool, as they are sharp and shiny. I am picky about scissors, so I buy a particular brand. There are scissors to cut paper and others to cut fabric (be sure to buy the right ones for your needs); large ones for big jobs and small ones for projects that challenge us to use our fine motor skills. Still other cutting tools are made for snipping threads and getting close into the work. In my mending kit, I have a pair of scissors in the shape of a heron, a bird sacred to me, which is almost always used for ritual items. I have embroidery scissors, paper scissors, and two sizes of fabric scissors. Naturally all you really need for mending is a large pair and a small pair. Keep them sharp and free of the fuzz that develops from cutting thread and fabric. Scissors have an esoteric history as well, as in the story of Atropos. A sharp, clean pair of scissors honors the work, no matter how hard or how difficult. A charm for scissors is:

  Scissors, scissors, shiny and bright

  Make my cuts straight and right.

  Ragged edges made clean and new

  Shows my magic, loving and true.

  Spoken three times with the scissors in your hand, your scissors become empowered with the energy of love to do their job with skill and magic.

  Needles

  Needles with their eyes for thread bespeak of the ability to connect and bring things together. Of course, eyes are seen as a tool of vision, both inner and outer. Running a thread through the eye and then sewing something together or decorating with thread, the eye is essential for keeping all the tools and materials together and for creating the vision of the project.

  Needles bend with long use, and their outer polish is rubbed off. Their sharp point wears down. It’s important to replace your needles per
iodically. The Japanese have the Festival of Broken Needles, Hari-kauyo, where all the old needles are gathered together and brought to Buddhist and Shinto temples. The old needles are then placed in cakes of tofu. The idea is that the sorrows and joys of the women sewing are passed through the needle. This festival, on February 8, honors the service of the needles and the spirit of small, practical tools. I replace my needles on a regular basis, retiring them to a witch’s bottle, something I make as a housewarming gift for my friends in the Craft. My charm for old needles is:

  Though my shiny needle grows dull,

  Magic and love never lulls.

  With magic and thanks you retire

  Into the rest you aspire.

  Thankfully, the gods are amused by rhymes and charms, and it doesn’t always take high literary art to enchant and thank your tools. A charm for new needles can be light and fun:

  To my bright and shiny needle

  Hear me call, hear me wheedle!

  Keep my stitches straight and true,

  Magic and love sewn through and through.

  Buttons

  Buttons are fascinating, and whole books have been written about their history and art. Today buttons are a mass-produced, easily obtained everyday object. But they also go beyond ordinary: people collect them and there’s a collector’s market for unusual buttons. In ancient times, buttons were a precious commodity used in trade. They were used sparingly because they were rare. Women passed down their button boxes to their daughters, nieces, and female relations. I’ve inherited a few button boxes—one came when my mother, a sewer, gave me a gallon jar of buttons my grandmother (a quilter, knitter, and sewer) had gotten from the old shirt factories in town. There must be thousands of buttons in that jar. I’ve given a quart of them to a local charity that teaches people the sewing arts and works with the local disability charities to teach people working skills. I’ve also shared them with friends and my witch sisters.