✨cheap beginner witch things✨
I’m a witch and I’m broke! Here are some ways I practise my craft. (Mostly free Internet resources I’ve found helpful, plus a couple of my own ideas chucked in.)
Explore astrological birth charts on Cafeastrology! All you need is your birth date, time & location. Diving straight in & doing charts for you & your friends is the best way to learn how to interpret natal charts.
If you are new to astrology and need to get to grips with the basics of the zodiac, you can use sites like iZodiacSigns to give you a basic rundown of the signs & the traits with which they are most commonly associated. I even find Wikipedia’s Astrological sign page useful as a quick reference—it clearly lays out the signs, their associated elements, polarities, & modalities.
Astrolocherry cannot be beaten for her wise, empathetic insights. I would recommend her to anyone, particularly those who feel sceptical re: astrology or struggle to identify with their sun sign, as her analyses are always compassionate & avoid lazy stereotypes.
A basic guide to the 12 Houses of the Zodiac.
I highly recommend the Golden Thread app, especially for beginners! It’s simple, beautiful, free, available for both iOS and Android, & all the cards come with neat, accurate explanations.
If you want to delve further into the traditional Rider-Waite card meanings, Biddytarot should be your first port of call. You can copy their quick card descriptions down into a notebook/grimoire to help you learn them better!
Autostraddle has an LGBT+/queer friendly tarot column called Fool’s Journey! A great read, encourages you to interpret the cards in non-traditional, subversive ways, & recommends a variety of more creative/abstract, less heteronormative/white decks for your wishlist.
You can use websites like Free Tarot Reading if you don’t fancy asking one of the thousands of tarot readers looking for practice on tumblr dot com.
Other Forms of Divination
Numerology! I used this site to find basic meanings. You can use numerology to analyse your birth date, the meanings within a plain pack of playing cards, or a set of dice!
Runes! There is a great post going round about different rune meanings. Making your own set of runes is a fun craft activity, and you can use almost anything! I’ve seen DIY runes made from pebbles, bits of porcelain, sea glass, & crystals (fancy). Just use whatever’s cheap and readily available!
How to make and use your own pendulum.
Scrying is free and worth a shot!
You want to make cute, aesthetically pleasing charms like the ones you’ve seen on Tumblr, but you can’t justify spending your grocery money on new crystals, fresh herbs, fancy containers or jewellery making equipment, right?
Containers: old jam or coffee jars, medicine bottles, wine or beer bottles, mini spirit bottles, lotion bottles, old lipstick tubes, jewellery boxes. If you don’t have a bunch of these lying around the house, somebody you know will, & they’ll grateful for you to take them off their hands. Upcycle!
Kitchen herbs (salt, pepper, rosemary, sage, garlic, mint, cinnamon, coriander/cilantro, etc. - obvious but effective & all available from your local supermarket)
Materials: beads, ribbons, glitter, sequins or buttons according to colour correspondence (old things you’ve been hoarding for years may carry magickal energies of their own!), rocks/pebbles with sigils painted on (I’ve even used nail polish!), glass, sea glass, & mirrors (good for curse protection).
You can make your own mini ‘altar’ out of anything: jewellery boxes, a shoebox covered in wrapping paper, etc. Old Altoid boxes are popular on Tumblr among USians. Draw or print out pictures or symbols you find soothing or invigorating & tape them on the inside; spray some perfume or essential oils. Use it to store a few special magickal items for luck, and/or your grimoire.
Speaking of which—a grimoire can be anything. My first one was an A5 notebook & it was very scribbly. Now I have a jumbo binder covered in Buffy stickers.
Candles—whatever you have to hand works, including LED. I use tea lights because you can get a giant bag from the pound shop. You can add essential oils to them if you want more of one specific type of energy.
Also easy & free to do: making moon water (by leaving a cup of water to charge by the light of the moon), & collecting rain or storm water. These can be used in spells. I personally dab moon water on my wrists every day like it’s perfume, & I believe it gives me inspiration, creative energy, & keeps me in touch with my intuition.
If you’re reading this, you probably know how to make sigils, but here is a good post anyhow. Powerful, effective, fun & cheap.
Sprinkle salt water around your room/apartment/whatever and chant your intent to protect it from negative energies. Bam, you’ve just put up some magickal wards.
Make playlists on Spotify, YouTube etc., of music to evoke the mood you wish to create for the rituals you are doing.
Intent really is everything. We as witches have the power to give items magickal significance. You can pick up an old stick & call it a wand, & that’s equally as valid as using a masterpiece special fancy wand for £100 off Etsy. You are not less of a witch because you can’t afford certain materials.
Good luck fellow baby witches!
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