Witchcraft on a Budget
Here are some tips if you live on a budget and cannot afford all the fancy witchy stuff which is out there.
image: Girasol_Monge, Pixabay
Your intuition
Always follow your intuition, your instincts. If you read about a spell which requires specific items and they just feel not right for you or you cannot get a hold of any of them - adapt the spell. Find other items instead that you have at hand, they might work just as well.
Kitchen Witchcraft
Now of course, not everyone is drawn to kitchen witchcraft, not everyone likes to cook and bake. But nevertheless, most people use tea, coffee, herbs and spices and these are brilliant to work with for magic. You can also use many of them for magic when they are past the expiration date and are not edible any longer, for instance dried herbs, rice, salt, sugar, flour. Just make sure they are dry and there is no mold.
You can find correspondences and magical properties of food and herbs online and in books about Kitchen Witchcraft, for instance these:
A Kitchen Witch's World of Magical Food and A Kitchen Witch's World of Magical Plants & Herbs, both by Rachel Patterson
Some ways to weave magic in your kitchen:
Stir food clockwise (deosil) in a pot to attract positive energies
Stir food counterclockwise (widdershins) in a pot to banish negative energies
Carve sigils, runes or symbols into dough before baking it
Decorate cookies or other food with sigils, runes or other symbols, for instance with food color or sugar icing. Cookies are very good as offerings, too.
Make your own herbal tea blend with herbs that have magical properties fit for your intention
Put your energy into the process of food preparation, while you grind, chop, cook water etc.
Chant or sing while you cook, bake or do the household chores to fill these tasks with your intentions.
Use herbs, spices, essential oils (or plant based oil for cooking) and other food for spell jars, spell bags or as a filling for poppets.
Keep jars and clean them. Use them for spells.
Candle Magic
Many spells in books say, special candle colors are required. However, if you don’t have a specific color, white is always a good choice. Using a plain knife or a tooth stick - you can carve sigils, runes or symbols into your candle or even write a word or sentence.
You can also re-use remnants of wax and make your own candles in jars or other containers. Here is a tutorial for that:
Book of Shadows
It may sound strange, but I do not own a Book of Shadows. I can write faster on a keyboard than by hand and I keep a whole folder of witchy stuff, texts, notes, a witchy diary, pictures, a collection of hyperlinks and more on my PC.
However, if you’d rather keep a physical book, it doesn’t have to be an expensive fancy one. You can buy a cheap notebook and decorate it, making it personal.
Witch tools
Wicca and related traditions require at least four tools - an Athame (knife), a chalice, a wand and a pentacle. They are not required for magic, they are not magical in themselves. However, if you’d like to use them in your practice, they don’t have to be of the fancy kind.
See if you can find a twig outdoors - make it into your wand. You might also try and find out from which tree it is.
You can use a plain kitchen knife as your athame. Some witches prefer a wooden knife, if you like carving, maybe try and make a wooden knife from a piece of wood.
Use a plain cup or bowl as your chalice.
You can also create your own pentacle, for instance with a disc of wood that you can paint.
Altar
If you do not have much space in your flat or house for an altar, but would like to have one, take a look around. It doesn’t have to be on a table on its own. Maybe you have some space on a shelf, a window sill, or the surface of a chest of drawers? Improvise with the space you have and make it your very own.
Divination
Some witches collect Tarot decks or Oracle cards. However, such decks can be expensive. If you’d like to do divinations with such cards, stick to one deck. You can even do divinations with a plain traditional deck of playing cards.
(There are tutorials about that online, for instance this:
There are other divination methods and many of them can be done without expensive stuff. Here is a good blog text about this:
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/beneaththemoon/2020/07/water-and-mirror-scrying-crystal-ball-pendulum-and-wax-shape-reading/
And if you’d like to use a pendulum, you can make your own with almost any item that can be used as a free-swinging pendant. Maybe take a look at your jewelry collection (if you have any) if there is a chain with a pendant you might use.
image: EliFrancis, Pixabay
Books and resources
There are hundreds of books and tons of free material online, but how to know if they are any good?
For online ressources, I can recommend the site Patheos Pagan. They have lots of articles from diverse perspectives, covering witchcraft, paganism, druidry and more.
Website: https://www.patheos.com/pagan
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PatheosPagan/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/PatheosPagan
I can also recommend the books about magic and paganism by Moon Books. You can also get them as e-books and they also have a free book:
https://www.johnhuntpublishing.com/moon-books/our-books/weathering-storm
There are also some interesting books by Llewellyn, fo instance “Intuitive Witchcraft” by Astrea Taylor: https://www.llewellyn.com/product.php?ean=9780738761855
Upcycling
I already mentioned keeping used jars for magical purposes. You can also keep scrap paper to use for your spells. Have an old doll? Maybe you can use it as a magical poppet? Keep ribbons from gifts, you might want to use it in a spell item or for knot magic. Some package materials can be reused as spell bags.
image: jplenio, Pixabay
Things from nature
Apart from edible herbs and food, if you take a walk in your vicinity, you might find leaves, pebbles, flower buds, tree seeds, feathers, roots and if you live by the sea also shells. Many of these have magical properties. You can find correspondences online or for instance in this book: Witchcraft...into the Wild by Rachel Patterson.
Or listen to your instincts and what they tell you to use and for what purpose. Even if you live in a big city, there might be a park or another green spot in your neighbourhood. Please be careful, do not collect any poisonous or endangered plants. If you are unsure, better leave them where they are and use something else instead. Also, if you collect for instance seeds or plants, do not take them all, leave some there. And always thank the plants, trees etc. from which you are taking something. In fact, it is best to ask for their permission first (you might hear a voice in your head or get a feeling if it is right or not to take something from the plant/tree). My recommendation would be, just collect things that have fallen to the ground, then you avoid any harm.
Incense
Instead of buying expensive incense blends or smudge bundles, you can make your own using herbs or bundles. If you can grow your own herbs, for instance on a window sill, a balcony or a garden, that is fine. If you don’t have the space, in some stores, herbs are not that expensive. Several herbs and plants can be used for incense, for instance garden sage, rosemary, lavender, mugwort. You can also collect some plants (just take a few leaves, not the whole plant) you find outdoors - just make sure you know them in order to avoid poisonous or endangered ones. Dry the plants or herbs and cut them into small pieces to make an incense blend. If you’d like to make bundles of them, here is a tutorial about how to make them - in the video, they are using sage, but you can also use different plants.
Social Media
If you use Instagram, maybe check out or follow the hashtag #witchcraftonabudget
https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/witchcraftonabudget/
There are some interesting ideas there.
During the Corona pandemic, many venues, witches and pagans have taken their activities online, via Facebook or Youtube live streams, Zoom or else. There are talks, wheel of the year celebrations, rituals, Q& A chats, workshops and more. Some of them are free, some are donation-based and some are not that expensive. Here is an overview (UK-based):
http://www.badwitch.co.uk/p/online-events.html
You can find several more events in your social media channels.
Here are some basic beginner items listed which are not expensive:
Some recommendable videos:
Ari the Oak Witch has some Budget Friendly Witchcraft Tips.
“6 Minutes of Witchcraft: Simple Magic IS Advanced Magic”, by Laura Tempest Zakroff:
“Low Budget Witchcraft: How to practice Witchcraft on a Budget” by The Norse Witch:
“Low-Cost Witchcraft Tools (That You Probably Already Have!)”
by the Witch of Wonderlust
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCWQcs2qDmI
Book: »Thrifty Witchery: Magick for the Penny-Pinching Practitioner« by Vincent Higginbotham and Martha Kirby Capo. Link to the publisher’s site of the book:
Wow, your content is so comprehensive and interesting.