Field Trip: Magickal Childe
Most cities have one: a small, secret bookstore, tucked away, almost hiding, on a side street. You have to take a few steps down stairs of filigreed iron, or ring a bell beside a glass door heavy with hammered glass, velvet curtains in olive or oxblood obscuring the view inside. Look not for the storefront fortune-teller’s garish windowfront. There will be subtle signage – a name inked onto a tin sign, a pentacle etched onto a window pane, wind chimes tinkling where there is no breeze. This is the occult bookstore, and it is every bit as important to urban living as apartment buildings, posh boutiques, bohemian coffeehouses.
In New York, for me, it was Magickal Childe. Magickal Childe was an occult bookstore located deep in the canyons of a Chelsea on the cusp of gentrification. It operated openly, though occult bookstores don’t always, its bay window displaying books, jewelry, the ephemera of a magickal life under neon signage for Tarot readings. But for all of its presence on that street, you could walk past it a dozen times without noticing it. Often you couldn’t remember where it was. It hid in plain sight, appearing as if through mist when needed, even though it had always been there.
Hiding in plain sight is often the primary lesson for a magical child. I really don’t know how I knew that Magickal Childe existed. It was that, as esoteric teachings often state, when I was ready, it appeared. To paraquote the great Wiccan author and teacher Raven Grimassi, the ways have ways.
I had no hesitation whatsoever in opening the glass door and parting the velvet curtains to enter Magickal Childe. I felt a quickening of the pulse, but it had nothing to do with apprehension. I had been drawn to the occult, while not fully understanding the term or comprehending the meaning of being drawn, since childhood. The unmistakable energy of magick hit me as a wave of voices and energies rushing to me as I entered. It wasn’t scary because instantly, irrefutably, it felt so right. “You belong here,” voices whispered with assurance and the familiarity of finding a place you were meant to find.
The air was thick with the smoke of incense ground to order, sprinkled on white hot charcoal in censers hanging from the ceiling. Lead glass display cases of jewelry and Tarot decks were topped with swathes of velvet under candelabras dripping wax. There was an antiquarian cash register, attended by a rotation of clerks who always seemed immersed in a tome as they cashed out oils, books, and tickets for readings that were done in a curtained alcove in the back of the shop. I had my first Tarot reading in that alcove, and many subsequent, just as much to be in the space among the people as for seeking any guidance from the cards. Indeed, it was the forces behind the cards that guided me there.
Often the clerk behind the register was the owner of the shop. Magickal Childe was founded by Herman Slater in 1979, as natural progression to his and partner Eddie Buczynski’s Brooklyn-based The Warlock Shop. The Warlock Shop had opened in the early 1970s as one of the few metaphysical shops at the time. Beginning in the 1950s and burgeoning through the sixties and seventies, in the west there was a resurgence of interest in and the practices of Paganism, Witchcraft, Ceremonial systems, and earth- and metaphysical centered religions and beliefs. In 1951, Britain repealed the Witchcraft Act that, among other effects, had myopically suppressed “witchcraft” so that its practitioners, religious or otherwise, kept their knowledge, and often themselves, hidden – i.e., occult*.
In New York, for me, it was Magickal Childe. Magickal Childe was an occult bookstore located deep in the canyons of a Chelsea on the cusp of gentrification. It operated openly, though occult bookstores don’t always, its bay window displaying books, jewelry, the ephemera of a magickal life under neon signage for Tarot readings. But for all of its presence on that street, you could walk past it a dozen times without noticing it. Often you couldn’t remember where it was. It hid in plain sight, appearing as if through mist when needed, even though it had always been there.
Hiding in plain sight is often the primary lesson for a magical child. I really don’t know how I knew that Magickal Childe existed. It was that, as esoteric teachings often state, when I was ready, it appeared. To paraquote the great Wiccan author and teacher Raven Grimassi, the ways have ways.
I was a student at NYU, shyly beginning to orient myself to the New York City beyond Washington Square and Greenwich Village. Something about living in the city was opening me up, and that included spiritually. I had been drawn to metaphysics my entire life, but I kept it to myself out of self-preservation, another dimension of the profound aloneness that defined my childhood. In a common refrain amongst the spiritual community, I had been raised in an organized religious tradition that did not fit me, felt as constrictive and heavy as a winter coat two sizes too small. I was fortunate that my grandmother, who effectively raised me, was of Osage heritage. The old ways of Native living seeped in, quietly as they were intended, but powerfully.
The energy of an occult bookstore is unmistakable. Some people, upon first entry, experience an intense level of discomfort. Sometimes it’s so intense they have to leave. It doesn’t mean that the occult store is evil or dangerous. It just means that the space, sacred to magical energies, is not for everyone. Nor is it meant to be. As with other communities, people on this path, spiritual or otherwise, have the need, and the right, to our own spaces. The veil of energy that envelops the occult bookstore is designed to keep it a safe space for those who belong there. Not everyone does.I had no hesitation whatsoever in opening the glass door and parting the velvet curtains to enter Magickal Childe. I felt a quickening of the pulse, but it had nothing to do with apprehension. I had been drawn to the occult, while not fully understanding the term or comprehending the meaning of being drawn, since childhood. The unmistakable energy of magick hit me as a wave of voices and energies rushing to me as I entered. It wasn’t scary because instantly, irrefutably, it felt so right. “You belong here,” voices whispered with assurance and the familiarity of finding a place you were meant to find.
The air was thick with the smoke of incense ground to order, sprinkled on white hot charcoal in censers hanging from the ceiling. Lead glass display cases of jewelry and Tarot decks were topped with swathes of velvet under candelabras dripping wax. There was an antiquarian cash register, attended by a rotation of clerks who always seemed immersed in a tome as they cashed out oils, books, and tickets for readings that were done in a curtained alcove in the back of the shop. I had my first Tarot reading in that alcove, and many subsequent, just as much to be in the space among the people as for seeking any guidance from the cards. Indeed, it was the forces behind the cards that guided me there.
Often the clerk behind the register was the owner of the shop. Magickal Childe was founded by Herman Slater in 1979, as natural progression to his and partner Eddie Buczynski’s Brooklyn-based The Warlock Shop. The Warlock Shop had opened in the early 1970s as one of the few metaphysical shops at the time. Beginning in the 1950s and burgeoning through the sixties and seventies, in the west there was a resurgence of interest in and the practices of Paganism, Witchcraft, Ceremonial systems, and earth- and metaphysical centered religions and beliefs. In 1951, Britain repealed the Witchcraft Act that, among other effects, had myopically suppressed “witchcraft” so that its practitioners, religious or otherwise, kept their knowledge, and often themselves, hidden – i.e., occult*.
Then magic happened. Such authors as Doreen Valiente, Gerald Gardner, Sybil Leek, Scott Cunningham, Starhawk, Janet and Stewart Farrar, and Laurie Cabot, who had opened the nation’s first Witch Shop in Salem in 1970, emerged from the presses as voices of ancient religions with new and engaged followers. It turned out that the audience for these books and related resources exceeded all predictions except, one believes, those voices of it. New and established witches, pagans, magicians, and mystics** were hungry for both the learning from books and periodicals and the application of it in safe spaces. Slater and Buczynski both saw this need and, one suspects, saw it as a service for them to address it.
By all accounts, Magickal Childe was successful from the beginning. As specialty bookstores do, the shop became a hub for New York City’s magical community. Cities foster subcultures, and places such as bookstores and bars become community centers, with everything from simple bulletin boards to complex services. Slater, a Gardnerian High Priest, took seriously the shop’s role in the magical community and his own role in educating the populace about Witchcraft. He published a newspaper titled Earth Religion News and for a time annexed the Magickal Childe name as a book imprint. Along with founding one of the city’s first occult bookstores, he hosted one of public access cable’s first television shows about the occult. Reputedly, he never charged for use of Magickal Childe’s ritual room, where groups met for rites and roundtable discussion.
Privately, Herman Slater was known as a complicated, contradictory man who was curious about almost anything, loved animals – especially his dogs and his familiar, a snake named Herman, veered between pragmatic business sense and expansive generosity, and could be a fire cracker when his temper appeared. He had been seriously ill as a young man, where during a reputed three-year recovery he began to experience the paranormal phenomena that opened his consciousness to the otherworldly and led him to Gardnerian Witchcraft. He was a prolific author of esoteric texts and both lightning rod and ambassador for the wider understanding of metaphysics.
Herman Slater died in 1992 from complications associated with AIDS. That would be about a year after I first walked in to Magickal Childe. Since by most accounts Herman was “always there,” that means I probably had the honor to encounter him, but I cannot truthfully state that I remember it if I did. As a gay man, to me, we are brothers, though I cannot speak to whether he would have shared in that sentiment. I do feel that, while not a formal member of his coven, I am absolutely a part of the community who drew sustenance – often the only such we had – from the sacrosanct world behind those velvet curtains.
In testament to that community, every effort was made to keep the store open after Herman’s passage. When Magickal Childe closed in 1999, it was the first nail in the coffin of the New York City that had buttressed me as the young gay pagan man who was first drawn to that mysterious storefront in Chelsea. Its loss is part of the greater loss of the New York City of bohemians, of artists and writers, of club kids, of gay lib, of witches and magicians and all magical children. There are still occult bookstores in New York City and many more outside city walls, but for this magical child and many more of us, the beacon will always shine from Magickal Childe.
* It is noted that occult systems kept themselves hidden throughout history; this refers to this specific piece of the history of magick.
By all accounts, Magickal Childe was successful from the beginning. As specialty bookstores do, the shop became a hub for New York City’s magical community. Cities foster subcultures, and places such as bookstores and bars become community centers, with everything from simple bulletin boards to complex services. Slater, a Gardnerian High Priest, took seriously the shop’s role in the magical community and his own role in educating the populace about Witchcraft. He published a newspaper titled Earth Religion News and for a time annexed the Magickal Childe name as a book imprint. Along with founding one of the city’s first occult bookstores, he hosted one of public access cable’s first television shows about the occult. Reputedly, he never charged for use of Magickal Childe’s ritual room, where groups met for rites and roundtable discussion.
Privately, Herman Slater was known as a complicated, contradictory man who was curious about almost anything, loved animals – especially his dogs and his familiar, a snake named Herman, veered between pragmatic business sense and expansive generosity, and could be a fire cracker when his temper appeared. He had been seriously ill as a young man, where during a reputed three-year recovery he began to experience the paranormal phenomena that opened his consciousness to the otherworldly and led him to Gardnerian Witchcraft. He was a prolific author of esoteric texts and both lightning rod and ambassador for the wider understanding of metaphysics.
Herman Slater died in 1992 from complications associated with AIDS. That would be about a year after I first walked in to Magickal Childe. Since by most accounts Herman was “always there,” that means I probably had the honor to encounter him, but I cannot truthfully state that I remember it if I did. As a gay man, to me, we are brothers, though I cannot speak to whether he would have shared in that sentiment. I do feel that, while not a formal member of his coven, I am absolutely a part of the community who drew sustenance – often the only such we had – from the sacrosanct world behind those velvet curtains.
In testament to that community, every effort was made to keep the store open after Herman’s passage. When Magickal Childe closed in 1999, it was the first nail in the coffin of the New York City that had buttressed me as the young gay pagan man who was first drawn to that mysterious storefront in Chelsea. Its loss is part of the greater loss of the New York City of bohemians, of artists and writers, of club kids, of gay lib, of witches and magicians and all magical children. There are still occult bookstores in New York City and many more outside city walls, but for this magical child and many more of us, the beacon will always shine from Magickal Childe.
* It is noted that occult systems kept themselves hidden throughout history; this refers to this specific piece of the history of magick.
** It is noted that, in illustration of the vast landscape of practice, this is not a comprehensive list, nor are these names that everyone would use regarding themselves and / or other practitioners.
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