In this Circle, Rightly Cast....

I've got a lot of Witchy Stuff. There's no denying it. In 25 years of practicing the Craft, I'm accumulated a fair bit of Witch Kitsch, Altar supplies, Sacred Tools, and SpellBits and Pieces. They have been purchased, gifted, made, acquired, inherited, and found.

They range from blown-glass chalices to pine cones, handpainted crystal inlaid wands to feathers, porcelain witch statues to a cast iron athame - hand-made incense to hand-carved stone candlesticks. I have cords for knotting, charcoals for burning, wax for sealing, fabric for bundling, twigs, stones, assorted plant and animal parts (claws, fur, teeth), little tiny bells, a magic mirror or two and a partridge in a pear tree. (mmm... one of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn't belong)

I got stuff. I need none of it to practice my Craft and live my faith, but at times, it does make it easier. I prefer to Craft my Prayers and symbolize my magical intentions, but I can pray just as well by myself alone with nothing but my intention and my Connection to Source.

If I was to do my Magical Aquiring all over again, I would do it differently. Of course, I'd have to "know then what I know now". So let me write a letter to my Younger Self - and see if I can help invest the flow of the Goddess' abundance a little more frugally than I have in my life journey.

Dear Baby Pagan,

You're going to read a lot of books that tell you a lot of things - some congruent and some contradictory about what you need to "have" to practice your Witchy Craft. Let me fill you in on a little secret. You can ignore them all. At least most of the time. And at least for the first 5 years of your faith practice.

Most of the time - the best way to empower your magic is to find the tools of the Craft, the props, the bling and the stuff that works best for YOU - not what a books says you need. Otherwise you'll invest a lot of money in acquiring a wide variety of things that you will use only occasionally - and you will have to keep and store your treasures as befits sacred things - which can be a pain in the broom bristles in today's highly mobile society.

Here's my best advice to you - "know thyself." Stop laughing. I'm serious. Learn what symbols speak most loudly to you for every concept in the Craft and acquire those things that have meaning - deep potent personal meaning for you - that connect you to the Goddess, the God, the Elmeents, the Directions, and to your intentions spiritually and magically.

The tools don't make your magic right or powerful - you make your magic right and powerful. You can take time to learn about yourself, and learn your Craft, and build a personal meaningful powerfully symbolic Magical Cabinet.

I'll write again with some ideas - I know how you hate long letters.

The Earth wastes nothing, and we should follow Her example,
The Frugal Pagan

The Cost of Your Craft

I was going through my bookshelves, putting things in some semblance of order this past week (the post-holiday cleanup), and mentally started adding up what the cost of this one shelf of books added up to and then kept going (I have many many shelves of books).  Talk about a reality check on what I had invested in my religious practice and study over the years - and I didn't even get to the Magical Cabinet of Stuff and Things (candles, incense, tools, statuary, candlesticks, herbs, oils, bottles, etc...)

Many of my books are old friends, bought many years ago, and certainly cannot be replaced for the same price I paid for them.  They have my notes in the margins, the occasional autograph if I've been fortunate enough to meet or study with the author, bookmarks or sticky flags (or badly bent spines) showing me where the really important stuff is.  I don't even have a comprehensive list of all the books I own anymore. 

I then opened up the Magical Cabinet of Stuff and Things and did a very quick mental count of the cost of what that would cost me to replace the contents that I have been accumulating for about 25 years.  I have hundreds of dollars of incense alone - given that each little package is about $5 (I like the good stuff) and I have an assortment of scents for every magical occasion) - not to mention the essential oils (high quality steam distilled), beeswax and parafin candles - etc - and then there is the hardware of candlesticks, altar cloths, incence burners, jars of herbs, trays of crystals and minerals, and drawers and shelves of other weird and wild stuff (feathers, shells, bits of leather, string, cord, fabric, all the stuff to do the symbolic work of my faith).

Then I looked around at the many gifts I have received of chalices, statuary, braziers, more incense holders, etc.  for doing handfastings, house blessings, baby blessings, requiems, menarche ceremonies, etc etc... and contemplated having the world's largest pagan garage sale. (sorry, not going to happen).

While all of these materials are not Necessary for the practice of my Craft - it certainly makes it more "fun".  I love to do magick, and "make my prayers" - having a tactile relationship with the symbolic manifestation of my request, or offering, etc is important to my faith practice.  It doesn't (and can't) exist soley in my head as a mental endeavor - there often needs to be some external active work done as well, and the energy raising that goes with it.

So - going forward, how do I integrate the values of a Frugal Pagan into all the stuff and things I need for my religious practice?  In the next couple posts, I will be exploring the Magical Circle from a Frugal Perspective.

"Nature uses as little as possible of everything" (Keppler)

The Frugal Pagan

The Method or the Goal

Say what?

I'm already hearing that frugality is anethema to the Pagan lifestyle - aren't we supposed be wild and free, living our life according to our will and our whim - unencumbered by artificial strictures and structures?

Hogwash. (anyone ever try to wash a hog? just asking)

Like my esteemed colleague over at Wise Bread, 

I view frugal living as essentially hedonistic: I don't deny myself things. Rather, I spend less on the things I don't care about in order to be able to spend more on the things that matter to me. 

So as we enter this new calendar year, with all it's possibilities (silly humans that we are - using mental tricks like changing a cluster of papers hanging on our wall to initiate change - some would call that "magic" at a world-wide level) - how do we (individually and collectively) determine what is important.

We, each of us have needs - food, clothing, shelter, transportation, recreation.  The "wants" determine what those needs look like? Here are some extremes - and real life is in between.

• Food - organic or regular? discount days & coupons vs gourmet food boutique?
  
• Clothing - kmart or Calvin Klein? Value Village or Designer Boutique? knock off vs home-made?
  
• Shelter - A small house in the inner city versus a palace in the outlying suburbs. 
  
• Transportation - economy or luxury - smart or suv - bike or transit  - plane or train?
  
• Recreation -  expensive evenings out vs renting a dvd with popcorn at home? Every new electronic gizmo that appears, or a 4 year old game console and some old favourite games?
  

All these choices have an impact on our physical well-being, mental health, levels of stress, and sense of spiritual connection.  Each person - each family unit gets to make their own decisions about what is right for them.

Pagans are just people - with widely varying priorities - but we share the same basic needs and our quality of life is determined by our wants.  So - Pagan Reader, what do you need vs what do you want - and how will you make that happen? 

In order to live a life of total hedonistic pleasure - meaning having the things that are important to you - you need to know what they are - and you need to know what is less important so you can divert time / energy / resources to obtain what matters.

And that is the essence of being a Frugal Pagan.  Living a life in balance, connected to each other, in harmony with Nature, in the service of our Gods, and having the best that a life well lived and well planned can offer.

Let's enjoy the new year together!

If the Universe wastes nothing...

The Frugal Pagan

Don't Schwifferize your Altar!

We all love nice neat clean homes and temple spaces, don't we? Many of us use biodegradable cleaning products, or the good old fashioned vinegar/baking soda/elbow grease combination - a very frugal choice.  A new broom may sweek cleaner - but do we really count the impact of the tools we use? 

Please read this article by the Chicago Tribune that delivers some shocking facts, including the following:

"If someone were to load all of the disposable wipes purchased by

 consumers in North America last year onto 18-wheel semis, the caravan would number 9,000 trucks and stretch for 68 miles. And it would be carrying 83,000 tons of these seemingly ephemeral cloths, which are anything but fleeting."

The Rag Bag

Pardon Me? 9,000 semi-trailer trucks? Just for "wipes"?  Doesn't anyone use good old fashioned "rags" anymore?  I recently read a suggestion that every kitchen and bathroom should have a rag-bag - basically the same thing as those cloth tubes we use to store the plastic consumer bags we try not to get when we go shopping.  

If you've been using cloth or recycled fibre shopping bags, and have used up your store of plastic bags - you may have one of these tubes in your Value-Village box waiting to go to a good home.  Don't give it away - just repurpose it for small squares of cloth - cut from old bed sheets, old clothes, old towels that have seen better days - any absorbent fabric that can be used to wipe up a spill.  Rinse them after use - and toss them in the wash when they need it.  Keep them separate from the cloth you use to wash dishes.  (and I'm hoping here you are using cloth - not "J-cloth")

Only 30% of these 83k tonnes of wipes were used for household cleaning - the rest are baby wipes, travel wipes, etc...  Why can't we use a washcloth to wipe our children's faces, etc when needed? Generations of parents used a washcloth to clean a dirty face or wipe a butt at diaper time.  No one died. Basic principles of good hygeine just need to be applied - wash your hands, wash your cloth after each use.

Germ Warfare

We have become ridiculously germ phobic - to the detriment of our health.  Fear of contamination has trumphed common sense.  There is a difference between sanitary and sterile.  Don't let your kids hit each other with the toilet brush - and you don't need a "flushable"toilet brush head every time you clean the toilet.  Germs are everywhere, people - and we NEED some of them to survive - because they fight other germs.  Too much "anti-bacterial soap" has made us more prone to illness.  The Goddess created bacteria.  Some healthy, some harmful - and some of the ones that are harmful to humans actually have other beneficial purposes on the planet - like breaking down the stuff we insist on putting into the landfull. (spelling error intentional).

AND all this "Disposable Stuff" gives new meaning to the phrase "Disposable Income".  Not very Frugal. Not very Pagan. Put the two together, and what do you got? 

So - there are three factors This Frugal Pagan considers:

1. the impact of all this disposable waste on the environment.  Pagans, there is NO "away".  We can't throw anything "away" - we just put it out of sight.  These products are laden with chemicals - and they end up in the landfill, where those chemicals leach into the ecosystem and contaminate the soil, the water, and have a negative impact on the bacteria that are needed to break down the garbage.
2. the cost of repurchasing a tool over and over again to do the same job in the same way - when a slightly different tool would be reusable over time and save me money.
3. the impact on my health - too clean is as dangerous as too dirty. I strive to live in harmony with my environment, and want to live "with" the helpful bacteria - not create a sterile lab environment to live the experiment that is my life.

So - don't be sold on "convenience" - because convenience "costs".  These products are not "pagan-positive" when it comes to how they align with my values (how about yours?).

If the Universe wastes nothing, then we should follow its example,

The Frugal Pagan

*all photography from stock.xchnge.com

Printing Frugally & Responsibly

All those who simultaneously bless and curse their computer printer please raise your hand.  Yes, me too.  While email, attachments, and pdfs mean less things need to be physically printed, there are still things that need to exist in hard copy. 

Ink is ridiculously expensive.  Some people swear by re-charged/re-filled cartridges, others won't use them.  At the very least, save up your empty cartridges and put them in the recycle bin at your local big-box office supply store for safe disposal. I swear that ink evaporates once you put the cartridge in the printer. 

Here's a small thing - if you believe as I do that small things add up over time.  The choice of font you use affects how much ink you use - I try to use a non-serif font like Arial or Verdana rather than a serif font like Courier or Times New Roman that have all the fancy little footers and squiggles on them.  It is a small thing - but I like to think it conserves ink.  I also pay attention to font sizes - and use the smaller fonts if it helps to make things fit onto a whole page rather than over multiple pages.

If you possibly can - use paper made from post-consumer recycled fibre.  This seems like a Pagan no-brainer - but when standing in the store and faced with the (minimal) price difference, we Frugal Pagans can find it far too easy to take the (slightly) cheaper non-recycled ream of paper.  This, in my opinion, is a false economy. If we don't create a market for recycled paper (and other) goods, then what's the point of faithfully filling up the blue box?

Here's something that is saving me paper, ink, and making me feel better about the times I need to print up copies of rituals, lesson plans, workshops handouts, etc... and for the average home user - it is free

Check out GreenPrint - a free download that monitors your printing, making sure you don't print that last page of an email that just has the Gmail logo in color, and nothing else of value.  It also gives you some tools to promote responsible printing - like a tag for your signature that helps you encourage people to turn "email into treemail".

Try it out and let me know what you think. It saves paper, ink and energy!  

If the Universe wastes nothing, we should follow its example

The Frugal Pagan

*photo images from stock.xchng.com, greenprint logo from printgreener.com

Pagans Love Their Books!

and what says "frugal" more than a free book? especially one you can share with your Pagan friends, without having to give up your own precious copy? (with or without the "book-binding spell - return to owner"! - ask me for details - if I get enough requests, I'll post it to the blog) 

There are lots of free book resources on the Web - and some of them are amazingly relevant to our particular areas of study - Sacred Texts and Project Gutenberg - both have "public domain" texts that speak directly to many of our areas of research and study

But what about "newer" titles? Or areas like gardening - or self-improvement/education?

The Frugal Pagan has found a site called Free E-Books dot Net that has more up to date material than most free ebook sites. It has books on every topic - some good - some not so much - but as in any big box bookstore - you have to browse the shelves to find the titles that appeal to you.  

Their spirituality section has books from the major religions, and from religious philosophers as well - such as David Hume's excellent essay on how a religion based on nature is a religion based on reason.  Very thought provoking.

Most of the books are in PDF format, some are zip files. There are lots of PDF readers out there - another Frugal Soul I know highly recommends Foxit Reader. To each their own.


If the Universe wastes nothing, we should follow it's example.
The Frugal Pagan

*all photo images from stock.xchng.com

Frugal Is As Frugal Does

Hello, Earth-Mart shoppers!

Everything we have comes from the Earth - the ultimate big box store shaped like a globe and full of resources. On levels big and small - how we manage those resources is entirely up to us. How we do that has a cumulative impact on our individual and collective quality of life - because life is for enjoying - that's why we are here.

Its all in the choices. The Frugal Pagan realizes that we all need a helping hand when it comes to making those incremental changes in our lives that improve our immediate world, balance the household budget, preserve our resources, and ultimately, help save our environment and improve the quality of our life.

I wanted to start this blog with a definition of "frugal" - and I like how Wikipedia defines "frugal". It says, in part:

Frugality is the practice of acquiring goods and services in a restrained manner, and resourcefully using already owned economic goods and services, to achieve a longer term goal.

This makes perfect sense to me. How can we enjoy the bounty of Our Mother Earth if all we do is squander it as it passes through our hands?

What frugality is NOT is miserly-ness, penny-pinching for its own sake, an excuse for mean-ness, cruelty, or other bad behavior. It doesn't mean not sharing, not helping those in need, or refusing to be hospitable.

It is a means to an end - to a responsible joyfilled abundant life. A life where we are able to have our needs met, have some of our wants fulfilled, and have a little left over to share with those who are less fortunate than we are.

There are lots of blogs etc on frugality - especially in these challenging times. I want to speak directly to the Pagan perspective when it comes to managing the Abundance that we all share from the Goddess and the God. We see the world differently. We are called to live in it differently. That is the Pagan way.

So, I welcome your contribution to this forum - both in comments, and perhaps even for some of you to become fellow regular "post-ers" on this blog. A good idea shared becomes a great idea! I will be sharing as much as I can from my own Frugal Pagan Life and from what I learn from other forums.

If the Universe wastes nothing, we should follow its example.
The Frugal Pagan


*all photo images from stock.xchng.com