{"id":1544,"date":"2011-10-30T18:23:22","date_gmt":"2011-10-30T18:23:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.monamagick.com\/media\/?p=1544"},"modified":"2012-11-13T03:05:35","modified_gmt":"2012-11-13T03:05:35","slug":"bookstores","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.monamagick.com\/media\/2011\/10\/bookstores\/","title":{"rendered":"A Force to Close…. Curio & bookstores in the shadows"},"content":{"rendered":"

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It is the end of an era in the sense of what it stands for when it comes to the adventure of self-discovery within your community of the nearest occult store. \u00a0For many seekers of occult knowledge, and of course the curious your local occult store was place to go for books and magazines on Metaphysics, Eastern philosophy, unlimited areas of occult and alternative health practices.<\/p>\n

In the beginning there were the \u201cold school\u201d shops where you could get everything you needed for any ritual from candles, oil, herbs, alter cloths, alter tools, robes, \u00a0and handmade wands (not the manufactured one\u2019s you see on the display stands that resemble Christmas tree hanging ornaments!) \u00a0As People became more curious the \u201cold school\u201d shops were bit heavy, a bit intimidating for your average person to walk in on the street with ought feeling a bit out of place so with any business demand it didn\u2019t keep up with the rise of inflation, the old school occult stores closed they were replaced with\u2026lets just say\u2026 stores that catered to the market that was willing to spend money.<\/p>\n

As the market expanded you saw more and more shops popping up replaced by soft-core occult popularly known as \u201cNew Age\u201d When more New Age shops started appearing out of nowhere it was really confusing for some serious occult students to get their bearings because it was hard to differentiate the seriousness to the point of many stores appearing as sheer novelty stores. “Obviously, the serious oriented occult bookstores and shops weren\u2019t for everyone\u2026 so as the New Age shops specialized more and more in the cheap gemstones, books by Deepak Chopra and self-righteous moralizing Barnes and Noble caught onto the market – closed down the bookshops by the convenience of offering everything else and more the smaller shops didn\u2019t as far as book sections go, and the old occult shops fell by the wayside, became hard to find from what any serious student needed for a simple ritual so many turned to botanicas that catered to Voodoo and Santeria to buy oils other essential items.<\/p>\n

With sales down, most stores could no longer pay its rent and overhead costs as a result they carried fewer quality selections to browse and more and more then sought out to online options such as Amazon which then became \u201cKing\u201d because of it\u2019s inherited customers from the brick and mortar stores that it ran out of business. Amazon cannot completely hold blame\u2026when the web and on-line discount book outlets gained acceptance, the new age shops really lost their primary line of sales. The new age shops went to selling primarily consumables\u2026 everything from nutritional supplements, candles, pendulums, bric-a-brac, crystals, ritual stuff and the like. And the owners typically had to go to work at a \u201cday job\u201d to support themselves while leaving and inexperienced clerk behind to manage the shop. The advice spewing from these clerks behind the register wasn\u2019t on the level, and the consumables didn\u2019t work, so the service wasn\u2019t there any more. In summary, you just can\u2019t expect a newbie to take the place of a seasoned and passionate professional!
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Back to the present time and place:<\/p>\n

People are going to the bigger retail chains for the new age books, which are now being exposed to a more mainstream audience. Of course, you will find lots of new age authors interspersed among the rest of the store\u2019s inventory\u2026 which may or may not help. I\u2019ve seen the so many of the wrong books stuck in the \u201cAmerican Indian\u201d section, and the Abraham Hicks books stuck in the \u201cself help\u201d section not to mention anything on Crowley defining \u201cOccult\u201d in it\u2019s entirety! If the customers cannot locate what they are looking for, it won\u2019t be purchased and the book publishers will have to buy back that inventory after a while. That will eventually tend to narrow the range of what will be published.<\/p>\n

Most high end bookstores as described above, has a pretty small new age section, limited to some paranormal crap, some wiccan stuff, a bunch of astrology stuff, and the usual hack Sylvia Browne and other assorted \u201cpsychic\u201d soft-core which some label as fluff authors. If you want a particular author, you have to go fish with the computer wizard.<\/p>\n

How do we reincarnate success?<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re a consumer<\/p>\n