Articles — business

Greetings from your favorite Faery Pagan online boutique! The weather's finally getting cooler here in Texas. We're moving into Samhain season--or, in some traditions, the end of the Pagan year. It feels like a good time to take a minute and update you all on what Grove and Grotto has been up to in 2016: Online Store I've made a lot of small but constructive changes to the online store. Taking new photos, fleshing out product descriptions, updating checkout and navigation, and writing regular blog articles. The goal is to make the site as easy to use as possible for...

If you shop for Pagan and spiritual jewelry online, your browser is most likely bursting with ads for cheap imported baubles. But there are plenty of good reasons why you shouldn’t bite. Supporting these merchants hurts Pagan artisans (and possibly yourself). Based overseas, companies like “Wicca Movement,” “Enchantory” and “Wicca Store USA” use aggressive marketing tactics to reach customers in the United States. They offer pendants, bracelets, and other trinkets at tempting prices—sometimes only a dollar or two including shipping. Even formerly craft-friendly sites like Etsy are now flooded with galaxies of cheaply-made pentacles and crescent moons. Some of this...

There are many scenarios in which it’s useful to create a temporary psychic bond between individuals. Perhaps you are about to do a reading or healing for a client. Maybe you’re about to work together in a magickal spell or ritual. Or maybe you just want to use your psychic skills to be a better listener, listening to the person’s energy as well as their words. Here are some easy ways to tune in psychically to another person. (You probably already use one or more of these methods!) Most can be used in combination with each other: #1: Synchronize your...

The fable of the “village witch” is immensely appealing to many Witches and Pagans. Whether it’s historically accurate or not, we relish the idea of the lone magick worker whose gifts are supported by their local community. Yet the popularity of alternative spirituality has led to a classic supply-and-demand problem, in which spiritual services are oversupplied and undervalued. It’s time to drag the village witch out of her cottage, and introduce her to the modern marketplace. The myth of the village witch The story goes something like this: In the distant (or not-so-distant) past, each village had its witch. (Or...

China has long been the source of many consumer goods purchased in the United States.  But in recent years, manufacturers in China and neighboring countries began selling directly to shoppers through sites like AliExpress and eBay.   At first limited to cheesy trinkets and fashion accessories, the overseas marketplace is always expanding.   Businesses are reaching out to increasingly specialized consumer groups--most recently, in my own cubbyhole of witchy and Pagan wares.  If you're a merchant in a subcultural niche--whether it's Wicca, Steampunk, Goth, Cosplay, et cetera--you've likely been affected by the Chinese invasion. As a small business owner, I have...