Hang In There, Witches
Despite the recent addition of a rather garishly well-lit Dunkin Doughnuts, my neighborhood is generally home to three types of businesses: quirky hair salons, vintage/antique stores, and witchy/spiritual supply shops.
In 2020, for a while there pretty much all of them were temporarily closed. I roamed the streets regularly after dinner taking solitary “sabbaticals” from my housemates and walked past closed signs on businesses that I had never been inside and wondered if they would ever open again. And I imagined what treasures they might contain.
Now, apart for a few years in my mid/late 20s, I’ve never had the disposable income and…I guess the drive…to sit in a chair in front of a stranger and engage in small talk to get my hair done regularly. So, while there were some years there when I had bangs and a shag and hair highlighted nearly blond, I pretty much have rocked long, one-layer, Little-House-on-the-Prairie-style hair for most of my adult life. So, once things reopened, I was not particularly interested in patronizing the salons.
But the supply shops…
Interest in the spiritual stuff tends to peak around periods of instability and crisis. Just after the Civil War and after WWI and the 1918 Flu pandemic, for example, spiritualism became pretty popular. Spiritualists believed that there was a life after death, that spirits want to communicate with the living, and that spirits can provide insight to guide the life of living humans.
Folks would try to make contact with dead loved ones and ethically-advanced spirit guides via seances and with the intersession of mediums, living people who mediate conversations between the living and the dead using devices like Ouija boards or by entering a trance state and delivering messages in spooky voices.
Seems like a silly concept to buy into, but consider the context. In May of 1844, Samuel Morse sent the first long-distance telegraph message from DC to Baltimore. By 1861, the first transcontinental telegraph line went up. The first telephone line was built in 1878. These were new ways to relay messages between people across vast distances. It’s not hard to imagine that a grief-stricken person might buy into the idea that some other new contraption would enable them to send and receive messages to the beyond.
President Lincoln attended seances organized by his wife Mary Todd Lincoln who was trying to get in touch with their dead son. Arthur Conan Doyle, famous for creating the very-scientific-seeming detective Sherlock Holmes, was an avid spiritualist and a member of the Ghost Club—an exclusive London social club dedicated to the scientific study of alleged paranormal activity (other members included Charles Dickens and W.B. Yeats).
Of course, a lot of the mediums were con-artists using slight-of-hand tricks and weird tapping techniques to part the grieving from their money. Famous magician and escape artist Harry Houdini, took on a mission to publicly expose fraudulent mediums.
Overtime, the spiritualist movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries shifted, morphing into a diffuse range of spiritual/religious/philosophical/metaphysical beliefs and practices that support the range of supply shops in my area, including (in no particular order):
Once the stores reopened, I popped my favorite mask on and went exploring to support my local businesses and see if the stuff on offer might provide some buffer against the chaos and instability of the wider world.
I mostly bought myself pretty rocks in addition to the somewhat spooky carved bone hair pins. I’ve got pretty substantial pieces of obsidian, amethyst, and rose quartz. The obsidian is said to be good to ward off negativity and for helping process emotion and experiences and letting things go. Amethyst is supposed to be healing, calming, and can enhance one’s willpower. Rose quartz encourages love, compassion, and trust.
Do I believe that having these rocks around or touching them will make things happen or directly manifest a change in my personality? Not really. But having them around reminds me of the importance of letting things go, and healing, and being open and loving and it’s nice having home décor and jewelry that functions as potent symbolism. It’s like having a Hang in There Kitty poster except more durable and kinda witchy.
I bought some tarot cards not because I think they are going to predict what kind of sandwich I’m going to have for lunch or whether I’m fated to have an encounter with a tall, handsome stranger. But, they usually provide an idea for a mediation session and sometimes can be good writing prompts.
The spell kits and manifestation candles I’ve largely avoided purchasing at this point. But maybe they are worth another look.
This spooky season, we watch the US government once again approach a shutdown cause Congress won’t agree on funding for the federal government. If it shuts down, millions of folks won’t get paid. Up to 10,000 children would immediately lose access to Head Start services. Food safety inspections could be disrupted. Desperately needed transportation and infrastructure projects could be put on hold.
Maybe it’s time to visit your local metaphysical supply shop to buy a rock to remind ourselves to elect people to public office who have compassion and believe that some of the essential functions of national governments are to pay its workforce and provide essential services.
At least you’d be supporting a small business and maybe have a new object to add to your seasonal spooky décor.
If you feel like using a spell kit to directly influence a particular representative, you do you.
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