Faithful Religious Supplies

This post won't be about cooking or getting a bargain on clothing. I will continue to cover those at a different date. Nope, today's post is about being Pagan and saving on that.

First let me define what I view a Pagan is: it is someone who is not generally viewed as Christian, Jewish or Muslim. I cannot speak for everyone who claims to be Pagan, but my faith has many gods to worship and we even have our own holidays and "rules".

That out of the way let me continue with the post.

For anyone who follows any set beliefs can tell you that there are many things we can convince ourselves we need to worship. Over the years I have acquired, been gifted, or even finally been able to buy a few things we use to worship our gods and celebrate our faith.

I remember, though, the first time my oldest saw a Harry Potter wand at one of our local large book stores. He "needed" it and continued to complain that was the reasoning for not wanting to put it back onto the shelf. I knew his feelings about it. I had pushed myself away from going toward the New Age section because I felt a calling to the Tarot cards and possibly a new book. I lowered myself to his level and smiled at him. He did feel he needed that wand. He argued that it called to him and we could use it in our rituals. I agreed we needed a new wand at home, one of my other children had broken the one we were using, but we didn't have the money for it at that current time. I put the boxed overly priced piece of wood (or plastic - I didn't look at it much) back onto the display shelf and walked a tantrum throwing five year old back to my car.

I didn't drive home. I drove to the state park. He was still going on and on with the tears falling from his eyes as I made him walk with me into the trees. We followed the path until he stopped crying and sat down on the ground. As I waited something caught his eye and he reached over to bring a straight stick up from the ground. We got a wand that day for free and he learned a lesson as well from nature.

As Pagans the temptation draws us to stones, sticks, cards, books, charms, and other things found in New Age shops or even "hippie" shops. Being a broke Pagan is difficult in today's consumerism culture. We want the prettiest spell books or do the most elaborate of rituals we find in our largest most expensive reading materials. The biggest names of authors and founders of the biggest groups makes being a broke Pagan difficult. Too many rituals or spells call on certain things such as a special knife or a certain color candle.

I see it when I look at my Christian friends, too. Recently my niece had her first communion in the Catholic Church. I spent over a hundred dollars on her gifts for the occasion. My sister spent more for her big day. She needed a special dress, shoes, veil, gloves, cross, rosary, and then there was the celebrations afterwards. Being any religion can come at a steep price. Did it need to? Probably not. I am sure we could have found a dress second hand or even borrowed one from a girl who had her's last year. There are always ways to save the money. My sister didn't want to, though.

The day we received our new wand was the day I didn't want to spend money on something from a store. I did buy our family book which is made from real leather and hand crafted paper (it holds all of our rules, stories of our path, rituals, and information. Kind of like a hand written family bible). I hand wrote and transferred everything into it as fast as I could. It's beautiful and at the time I followed my instincts when I felt the tug to it. It is my version of buying the communion dress instead of borrowing. I could have continued to use my five subject spiral notebook that held everything before the bound book called me. My children will copy it (if they stay Pagan) probably into a spiral notebook before leaving my house for good as adults, or they could possibly find the money for a bound book.

Everything in your faith or religion can probably be done cheaper, though. Make your own wand or borrow the dress. Times are difficult and we need to teach our kids now how to view faith is not needing the money, but rather the intent.