broomcloset ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Material incentives Yay! I'm feeling all crafty. Mind you, I did get a bit of incentive in the mail yesterday. You see, I love getting mail, and I love little boxes filled with cool little things. So when I came upon the add for Witch on the Go, I thought, hey this could be neat. I checked out their site, and lo and behold, they were selling little boxes filled with cool little things that they sent you through the mail! What more could I ask for? ;) (maybe their prices in Canadian funds?) Anyway, I decided to order their Summer Solstice kit and their Grounding Spell kit. I checked my mail box every day for a week and a half, and yesterday they came! Yippie! The boxes were filled with neat little stuff: incense, a candle with holder, anointing oil, and a fun little activity. For example, with the Summer Solstice kit, you make a sun-shaped amulet out of sparkly yellow Fimo dough. I'm a sucker for cute projects. :) But after I received these wonderful little crafty bundles and opened them on my floor, I started to think about all of this witchcraft perifinalia: this is very materialistic, is it not? I've thought about this before, and I will not deny that I like all of the "stuff" that's associated with Wicca or witchcraft: the candles, the candle holders, the incense, the altar cloths, the censers, the this, the that... it's all fun! I've always loved little trinkets and "shiny things," so all of these Wiccan trappings play right into that. But how much of this is really needed? Aren't we supposed to be communing with the Goddess and/or God? Do they really care if you have the right incense and the properly proportioned altar cloth? Something tell's me that they don't care. :) So why do we do it? I think there are a lot of reasons:
I think all of these reasons are valid and they all tie into one another. My main concern is that all of the trappings could get in the way of a real spiritual connection to the one(s) you are trying to connect. How do we avoid this while still staying with our traditions and practices? Either way, I will be using both of my little spell kits. While I know it's materialistic, these little kits are incentive for me to actually practice something. So maybe a little materialism isn't so bad after all. BB! -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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