Hi, my loves and welcome to WiccaNow. Recently I’ve been talking a bit about herbs and plants, including these individual posts on cinnamon, lavender and rosemary along with guides to herbs for love spells and herbs for protection as well as a post about the history of healing herbs. I want to deviate a little from that today, and cover a topic that every beginner witch should know more about, namely, what beginner witch supplies are needed in order to begin practising witchcraft.
As we’ve learned so far, Wicca and Witchcraft are both very fluid in terms of what they require from you. Depending on what type of witchcraft you associate with, there can be very few rules in place which govern what you need in order to practise magick. Wicca is also quite malleable in terms of what’s needed in order to call yourself Wiccan, the only real rule being “An Ye Harm None, Do What Ye Will” as stated in the Wiccan Rede.
Given this fluidity, talking about specific witch supplies seems a little silly, doesn’t it? Basically you can use whatever you want, however you want, whenever you want. You could use nothing at all but the power of your intentions or you could have a huge inventory of magical tools that you like to work with. Both options are completely ok and I encourage you to find out what works best for you before buying a whole store cupboard of magickal tools that you don’t end up using.
In saying this, there are some things that are generally good basic supplies which you might like to have at home. Below I’ll give you a quick guide to some things I use regularly in my magickal practice, along with some tips on why each thing is important (for me anyway). This guide is ordered alphabetically and not in order of importance, because I don’t believe that one thing is more important than another.
My Top 13 Basic Witch Supplies for Beginners
Basic Witch Supplies #1 An Anthame
This is a ceremonial knife that you would use for ritual work. It’s used to channel and direct energies and would often be used for things like marking out a ritual circle. It’s thought to be symbolic of fire, so drawing a casting circle with an Anthame would be like casting the circle in with fire. The anthame would also be used to call the elemental powers into your casting circle.
Traditionally it would have a black handle and would be double-edged, although this isn’t a necessity. This is a knife that would never be used for actual cutting. In fact, some people believe that if this knife were to end up accidentally getting blood on it, then it would have to be buried as it’s use as an anthame was now ruined as it has been a part of a violent act.
To be honest, I don’t really use an anthame that much. If I’m drawing symbols onto candles during a candle magic ritual, I’ll often use a pin as I find it much easier to manoeuvre. Whether you want to use one or not is completely up to you, just make sure you only use it in rituals if you do end up getting one!
Basic Witch Supplies #2 A Boline
This is another small knife used in magical work. While an anthame is used for purely ceremonial work, the boline is a much more practical instrument used to chop herbs and spices used in spell work or to harvest ingredients.
If you are a kitchen witch, you may choose to use your favourite kitchen knife as your boline. Kitchen witches tend to like imbuing everyday objects and tools with magick rather than having special tools for everything. I actually like this idea much more as I’m all about multi-functional things.
Traditionally a boline has been thought to have a white handle as opposed to the anthame’s black handle. Whether or not you want to continue with this tradition or not is up to you, I don’t have a white-handled one and I’m really happy with mine!
Basic Witch Supplies #3 Book of Shadows
I wrote a post a while back about how to create your own book of shadows and if you’ve been following the blog for a while you’ll have seen that we’ve been providing downloads to certain book of shadows pages that we’ve made so you can start your own book. Check out this post on crystals for anxiety to find your first download.
Your book of shadows is…
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