Strange News Day today.
Lets start with The Daily Mail, and their story about how six of the deaths connected with the curse of King Tut were actually murders orchestrated by Aleister Crowley
Now lets jump stateside to the Alamagordo News for a feature entitled: ”SPACE HISTORY: Magic guides rocket propulsion development”
http://www.alamogordonews.com/ci_19274854
Finally lets head to the good old Huffington Post religion section for how Botanicas serve people in good times and bad, and are essentially places of healing.
This last one deserves special attention because:
1. In the ethics posts, the kind of magic that Botanicas serve kind of got treated a bit roughly. Not more roughly than it deserves, but some readers are not not nuanced enough to be able to read criticism without thinking that the writer is against something. I am all for ATR’s, Rootwork, Espiritismo, and Brujeria. I am all for Botanicas and the ones I have frequented for the last 20 some odd years of my life HAVE in fact been centers of healing and learning and community.
2. Originals in the Bronx is the main focus of the piece. I lecture occasionally at Originals, and my friend Lady Rhea runs the Pagan Center/Buddhist Center upstairs.
There was, or perhaps still is, a ‘witchy’ store in RI that gave off an energy that spooked me, and still creeps me out when I think about it. My then-girlfriend and I stopped in on a lark about 10 years ago, and left after maybe 20 minutes both creeped out. We felt strongly that everything in the store was enchanted in a way to say ‘buy me!’ but didn’t have the capacity to achieve the results it claimed… except for the cursing materials, which seemed hideously, drastically effective.
As, as you say, moderately affluent white people (and me largely in a GD mindset rather than a witchy one), we weren’t really in the mood to buy, or buy in, to any of that. The store was on a regular travel route of mine, and I saw that it was in business for a few years; not sure if it moved or closed, but I was never really tempted to try again. Too awkward a vibe.
I think that a practitioner needs to know what sort of store they’re willing to buy from. I’ve shopped in botanicas, and herbal apothecary shops, and ‘witch stores’ and New Age kitsch places, and more often than not it’s about the vibe you get from the owner or folks behind the counter, and the energy of the space, that tells you whether you want to support that business. Most times, I try to buy a little incense or something… buying magical supplies wholesale or online, I find, dampens the relationship I have with the magic.