The Pagan and Witch community, as a whole, encourages overconsumption. This isn't particularly weird, considering the whole world is being encouraged to overconsume, but Pagan and Witch consumerism in general has increased heavily over the past few years, with "Witchy" becoming a popular aesthetic that is now found in abundance at mainstream stores, especially during Halloween. On this page I want to talk about why this is a problem and some ways to overcome or at least reduce it.
Disclaimer: A lot of the things I'm going to talk about here are based on things I've done in the past that I either regret or wish I had thought through more. Developing a more meaningful Witchcraft practice (and more sustainable lifestyle in general) is a long process! That said, if you do not do things the same way I'm suggesting, or have had trouble with it in the past, remember that we all make mistakes. It is not our duty to be perfect all the time, it is our duty to learn from our mistakes and do better.
Right now we are in a new golden age of overconsumption. We have been gradually manipulated for years to accept constant exposure to hyper-personalized advertising, which encourages us to buy large amounts of trendy goods, many of them cheaply-produced overseas, in a way that feels bespoke, like these things were made just for us. Then we are encouraged to completely scrap those things and replace them with a new trendy thing (or the same thing in a different aesthetic) when the next influencer comes along. For a while, everybody was buying Hydroflask water bottles. You only really need a couple water bottles at most, but people were being encouraged to buy multiple colors to coordinate with their outfits. Then Stanley cups got trendy, and people who already had collections of Hydroflask bottles went out to get Stanley cups instead; people who already had Stanley cups would buy more Stanley cups, because some of them were limited edition, despite being pretty much exactly the same as the non-limited edition ones they already had. One day I went on TikTok to find a video by a woman who was filming herself dramatically remove all her Stanley cups from her cupboards to replace them with some new cup... that cup never caught on, but she was sure to provide a discount code and portray it as the next big thing in water carrying trends.
Trying to be trendy, advertising goods, and overconsumption are not new things—athletes used to endorse products in ancient Rome, after all—but things are now structured in such a way that companies are not considered successful if they are not constantly achieving more and more growth, which they can't do if people are content to buy only one thing from them to use until it can't be used anymore. In addition, the invention of new materials like plastic means the waste that would have decomposed back into the earth, or at least sat there inertly, is now made of a material that takes a long time to break down and causes ecological havoc as it does so.
All of this takes a huge toll on the environment and results in a human rights nightmare, because rather than hiring people at a living wage to do high-quality work, companies hire workers to exploit with low wages. While these workers are skilled, they are also pushed to make these things as fast as possible, so the resulting product is likely to fall apart and require replacement almost immediately. And if you do manage to keep the things you buy in good condition, well... they'll be unfashionable. You wind up in a constant cycle of buying things, buying things, and buying things without thinking about the impact.
This is a problem I feel everyone should care about, but Pagans in particular should be holding ourselves to a higher standard. While (unfortunately) not all Pagans care about the environment or social justice, in general we tend to self-identify as environmentalists or other activists at a higher rate than non-Pagans... yet with the right aesthetic choices it is very easy to market products of questionable ethics to us by putting vaguely Witchy symbols on them.
All that said, here is my advice on the matter:
This means a few things:
Our whole culture is a propaganda machine dedicated to convincing you that the road to fulfillment is paved in constant consumerism, and unfortunately nobody is immune to propaganda. A lot of people (including me in my twenties, the era I was at my most annoying) think that they are smarter than advertising and above consumerism, but this is rarely if ever actually the case. Hell, during the time I was most convinced I was immune to consumerism, I was actually stupid easy to advertise to, because all they needed to do was convince me their products were "different" and only super smart, counter-cultural people knew about them.
Don't beat yourself up if you have been the kind of person who would buy enormous hauls of Witchy trinkets or things like that... you have been indoctrinated your whole into thinking that's how you achieve happiness.
If you do decide, "Yeah, I am on board with all of this, I'm going to start changing my consumption habits immediately," it is also important to know that you will never be immune to propaganda. There is no point where you will be a perfect model of ethical consumerism who makes no mistakes. Because of this, it is highly likely, especially if you have been a highly impulsive consumerist in the past, that you are going to continue making impulsive purchases in the future. Maybe you will see something that hits your dopamine receptors such that you immediately find ways to rationalize why it's not that bad, or you forget you were trying to be more ethical to begin with. The goal here is not to expect perfection from yourself, but to work on continuously improving.
And finally, it's so important that you not be an asshole about it. I'm not saying that you shouldn't point out ethical issues in Pagan products, but over the years I've encountered (and potentially been) a Pagan who lords their superiority over others or gets on their case over what are frankly some pretty normal purchasing habits. Also... Pagans and Witches are not all equally wealthy. While I will argue elsewhere in this essay that you don't need to immediately have every single Pagan and Witch tool in order to start practicing, it's also perfectly understandable that a lower-income Pagan or Witch might not prioritize bespoke tools.
As an example, one time, at a local Pagan meetup, somebody was excitedly talking about how her son was trying to find his first tarot deck, and was looking for one that spoke to him. A different Pagan interjected, "How could a mass-produced commercial product ever speak to you?" In addition to being a completely unsolicited opinion, the fact that it was tarot decks that prompted this was really odd... even decks sold by big publishers—unless they are AI-generated—are fundamentally pieces of art made by artists. Many—honestly probably most—Pagans do not have money to commission bespoke handmade tarot decks, or the time and skills required to make their own. So basically, this guy interjected an unsolicted opinion that contained a completely unreasonable expectation.
First, I want to start with something I know will initially piss some people off, but I hope I can explain it adequately enough: You are under no moral obligation to keep Pagan entrepreneurs in business just because they are Pagans. Pagans love telling each other to go buy things at brick and mortar Pagan stores, lamenting what will happen if people don't shop there, blaming the local Pagan community if a business goes under, and really playing up the services these businesses provide for the community. If you go to any event that has vendors, there will be people at those events guilt-tripping you into impulse-buying whatever crap they're selling on the basis that they "make events like this possible." I don't blame you if you think this way. I used to go out of my way to find Pagan brick and mortar stores to shop at, and I always felt like a great person for doing so.
The problem is that, unfortunately, a lot of Pagan businesses exist to sell mostly mass-produced and/or ethically questionable goods. Crystals of questionable origin, bundles of herbs at high risk for unethical harvest, mass-produced ritual tools and statues, ritual clothing made of polyester velvet, often the exact same thing you can find on Aliexpress, but at a huge markup because they have . Online vendors, of course, are even worse... even Etsy (where I admittedly do get a lot of deity statues and tools) is now loaded with dropshippers and people presenting mass-produced ritual items as if they made them when they did not, or implying that they are vetting these products for quality and ethics when they aren't. There are plenty of brick and mortar Pagan stores out there that sell exclusively mass-produced or dubiously-sourced products that were made or mined by exploited workers (often overseas).
A really common piece of advice I hear in the Pagan community is that you shouldn't buy cheap, mass-produced things, because they are ethically questionable, but if you do, you should at least buy it from a Pagan brick-and-mortar store, vendor, or other small Pagan business, because then at least your purchase will do some good to make up for the bad things about that product. A lot of people I respect a lot have given this advice, and I've even given it myself before I gave it more thought, but nowadays I strongly challenge that assumption. The ability to open and maintain a business requires a lot of financial privilege. You are essentially saying it's possible to launder the bad ethics out of your purchases by paying a huge markup that goes directly to the most financially privileged members of our community.
This does not mean you shouldn't patronize Pagan businesses, but that you can feel validated in being picky about what you buy there, and that you should not feel guilty about deciding not to shop at these places if they aren't selling high-quality, reasonably ethical goods. Hell, there is a Pagan/New Age store in my city that I now refuse to even set foot in, because they are one of those places that seem to exclusively sell mass-produced goods at an exorbitantly high markup. Other local stores, yes, they do sell mass-produced products, but they also sell high-quality artisan goods, locally-grown herbs, and other things like that, and I'm happy to patronize those stores for those goods.
Right now "Witchy" is a marketable aesthetic, so you can find things with occult designs like tarot decks, pentagrams, and triple moon symbols at stores you simply would not have been able to find such things 10 years ago. The Witch forums I'm in periodically get people showing off things they found at Walmart, World Market, Five Below, or Target, and people will entirely decorate their homes with stuff like this. If you're like me and have been a Pagan a really long time, this shift from being stigmatized to being marketable can feel like reprentation, so you may feel compelled to buy these things.
(Queer people may also be familiar with this process; I'm writing this from May into June just as I'm starting to see the plastic Pride garbage set out at Walmart).
I strongly encourage you to avoid buying things like this. I'm not saying absolutely everything you buy needs to be handcrafted by a Pagan artisan, but please keep in mind that these more mainstream businesses are taking your religion, consolidating it into a bunch of marketable designs called an "aesthetic," encouraging you to align with that aesthetic so you feel compelled to buy everything you see that fits that aesthetic.
These goods are also by and large produced with environmentally unfriendly materials (like plastic) using exploited workers, just as all cheap goods tend to be. If you really like these things, you should try getting them second-hand (or at least wait until they are on clearance after the season is over), but it's way better to use them as inspiration to either make, find, or commission a higher-quality, artisan version of it. Yes, it'll be more expensive. But that brings me to my next point:
A common thing that happens to Pagans and Witches who are either new or who have just discovered a new type of Paganism we're super into is that we get an intense desire to get all the tools at once. Now that I'm a Witch, I'm going to need an athame! And a chalice! And a pentagram! And a pendulum! And statues of every God I have any interest in! These all cost money, so when you focus on getting all of them at once, unless you're really wealthy you're going to wind up compromising on the quality of your tools, settling for those that are lower quality than you really wanted, or you'll buy the first thing that piques your interest without considering whether or not you really, really like it and will maintain interest in it for the foreseeable future.
This can put you in a cycle of consumption just like I talked about earlier. A great example was the first athame I bought. I ordered it online from some big Pagan retailer for under $10, as part of an enormous order of other tools. I thought it looked good in the picture and I was able to mentally manufacture some deep symbolism about the design. It came to my house, and it immediately became apparent this tool was incredibly cheaply made, the handle was made of hollow aluminum, it had some polyester tassel with a plastic bead on it that immediately fell off (which was for the best because it looked bad). I felt almost nothing when I used it, and spent the entire time it was my only athame desperately wanting to replace it.
It would have been way better for me to save up money to get an athame that really spoke to me or to use an alternate tool like a wand or a hunting knife I already owned and had a close connection with. Instead I used a tool I resented until I found the next cheap athame I had fleeting interest in, and started the cycle over again. Which, by the way... we need to keep in mind that these are sacred items we're talking about, here! It's worth it to be picky so you don't develop that resentment or wind up with a bunch of tools gathering dust, you want tools that will develop a soul through regular, long-term use.
OK, I'm not anti-collection... if you really, really love a particular type of tool and want to amass a collection of several versions for the same reason people might collect Wizard of Oz trinkets or baseball cards, that's fine, and if you're really into a particular type of magic to the point where you actively use ten versions of the same tool, that's fine. Some people collect tarot cards because they like the art... I'm not really opposed to stuff like that.
But a thing a lot of us wind up doing is collecting what essentially wind up being big piles of clutter that we bought because of a fleeting whim. Like, there was a point where I was buying loads of tarot decks because I liked the art on the cover or was temporarily into the subject matter or I just didn't look enough into the card art. The problem? I don't really care for Tarot that much... sure, I use it, but not on a regular basis. I like the art, but not enough to regularly crack a deck open and look at it. So why would I need more than a couple decks? Another common item people buy and hoard is crystals... because of new age influence, a lot of people impulsively buy crystals, but realistically how many of them are you really using? I am super guilty of this and have amassed a large collection of crystals, but ultimately I wind up using like... three palm stones.
The same goes for consumable ingredients. Have you ever met somebody who nursed one bottle of extra virgin olive oil for years upon years, using only a tiny drizzle each time? Olive oil should be fresh, and it's great for you, you should not be hoarding it like you're rationing it during wartime. Spell ingredients are a lot like olive oil... you should only keep around what you can see yourself using, and actually use them before they go bad or crumble away. One thing I did for a long time was keep supplies of things like figural candles and chime candles and incense, but I was so afraid of "wasting" them that I just never used them. Well, if you're not going to use them, just having them around is wasting them!
So buy what you're going to use, and if you wind up not using them, repurpose or rehome them.
Personally, when I am looking for a tool, there are some things I am always looking for. I like... famously hate plastic and especially plastic fabrics, so "no plastic unless absolutely necessary" is a mandatory requirement for me. Other than that, I will buy the tool that has the best materials and ethics within my affordable price range (preferably made by an artisan using traditional methods, but not necessarily).
Then, each tool I'm looking for will have its own set of standards based on my personal preferences and tradition.
For instance, at some point I decided I wanted to do work with a cauldron. I started looking for one that met the following standards:
I wound up saving my money and getting a size 2 cast iron potjie pot, which I absolutely love and still regularly use (both in ritual and to make sacred mac and cheese when I go to Pagan Spirit Gathering). I've now had it for about a decade, and while I have accumulated a few more cauldrons suited to different purposes (one that I can use on my stove, a small one for incense and other small work), the potjie pot was perfect and still gets plenty of use.
As I've been a Witch for over 25 years now, I already have most of the "basic" tools, but there are a couple things I'm in the market for right now that I haven't bought because I'm looking for the right version of them. I want a mirror to use for things like glamour magic and certain traditional mirror uses. I already have mundane mirrors that I will use until I find one that's just right, and that might take a while because I am looking for a mirror made out of polished metal (not aluminum-coated glass), with no plastic components, made by an artisan. I'm on the fence between a couple different kinds of mirrors that fit these standards that are all about equally expensive. I also want a drum... the actual kind of drum doesn't really matter that much, but I really want one with a black, hair-on goatskin head, and I do not want to buy one online where I can't try it first. Since both of these items will be expensive and I have very specific requirements for them, it might take a while to get them... and that's OK.
What I know I absolutely cannot do, though, is settle for something less than these requirements. There is certainly some wiggle-room, but that needs to be really thought through, because if I decide to just impulse-buy a drum that has a highly processed head, or a mirror that is made out of aluminum-coated glass, even if it looks pretty good, I am immediately going to feel the urge to replace it, I will wind up resenting that tool and it isn't going to be used, which is disrespectful and wasteful.
Not everybody has the time, skill, ability, or inclination to make their tools, and that's fine, you can certainly buy them. But I, as somebody with the brand of ADHD that makes me both want to learn all the crafts and makes it easy for me to learn them, I am a huge fan of DIY tools.
Over the past couple decades, I've made a number of wooden wands and staves, I've made really nice shrine statuary... I had the good fortune to be in an open-ended ceramics class in high school, around when my interest in Witchcraft first picked up, and was able to make my own altar pentacles, shrine statues, cauldrons, and chalices at a time when I was unable to buy them elsewhere.
What I can say, though, is that the more components of your tool that you can make or acquire yourself, the more personalized it will be, the more of your standards it can fit, and the fewer questions you will have about it.
For example, at some point I'm going to be making a velvet pillow for my crystal ball, some satin and velvet bags to hold various items, and eventually a ritual robe. By making these myself, I can make exactly what I want instead of searching endlessly for something that might not even exist. Almost all of the velvet and satin fabrics I have found at occult stores are made of polyester; polyester is plastic and will degrade into forever chemicals to do lasting damage to the Earth. Natural materials made into satin and velvet, like silk, will eventually decompose and return to the Earth. By making them myself, I can go out of my way to get natural materials instead of polyester. And while it would be extremely hard to eliminate all of it, any part of that process that I can do myself is a part of the process I know did not exploit any workers.
Finally, every part of the process you can take over yourself, as well, can be imbued with magical energies. Art and craft are themselves inherently creative and therefore magical processes. I've often found making ritual tools and art contemplative, if not meditative. Recently I learned how to electroplate gold onto silver, because I wanted religious jewelry I could only find in silver. It was like learning alchemy.
One day, when my roommate and I were at a restaurant, we both rejected the straws. He pulled out a reusable plastic straw he carries around, and I just sipped straight from the cup. The server complimented him (but not me) on being eco-friendly, even though by all accounts not using any straw is more sustainable than using any straw, reusable or not.
Now, obviously I was not rejecting straws to get compliments, this just stuck with me because it's an example of the problems with "green" consumerism. The reality is that a lot of people perceive the act of buying or owning a "sustainable" product positively. But there is nothing you can buy or otherwise consume that is more sustainable than not consuming at all. Replacing things you already bought or own that are made of unsustainable materials with the same thing made of sustainable materials is even worse from an overconsumption standpoint than just using your unsustainable items.
This doesn't mean you can't replace things with higher-quality versions... sometimes you can put all the effort in the world into finding a tool you think is perfect, but it either turns out not to be, or you simply develop different tastes in the future. Just be very mindful about how you're doing that replacement. For instance, I made the commitment a few years ago to replace my resin statuary on my shrine with wooden statuary. This was not entirely a sustainability decision, it was a ritual purity and general quality one... I wanted to banish plastic from my shrine, I wanted to have the most high quality representations of my Gods I could afford, so I needed to replace the statues. I bought some very nice wooden statues of my Gods from artisans. But I didn't throw away the resin statues... they got given away, donated to a raffle benefiting a Pagan organization, or repurposed for work not done on my main shrine. By taking care to find them new owners, I'm not only avoiding waste for a little longer, I'm giving somebody who would have bought brand new resin statues the opportunity to get them in a sustainable way by getting them secondhand instead.
Happy Trails,