I love going to magic (or magick, or Wiccan, or pagan, or whathaveyou) shops, but I'm always disappointed when I get in. It's never as good as I think it should be. It's always poorly presented, or lit with fluorescents, or a mishmash of the kitsch and the ridiculous, or filled with fliers for yoga and Reiki and a new vampyre band and hamster breeding.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, mind you. But in my head, I can see just how awesome I could make a magic shop. The layout (all twists and turns and overhangs), the lighting (indirect, amber, nooks and crannies). I'd hire a bookbinder to make nice leather versions of public domain John Dee, Agrippa, and Baring-Gould; I'd hire a printer to make smaller chapbooks of public domain individual essays/chapters. Herbs and seeds would be had from known farms and packaged inhouse with handwritten labels (no computer fonts), in glass jars, affixed with paste, and placed near the reprinted public domain herbals. Candles would be beeswax. Ink would be handmade. I'd lay out some cash for big ticket items that don't detract from the overall feel, maybe things like this, or this, or this. And I'd probably want to have this around just because.

My magic shop wouldn't be just a place to buy old texts and folk magic gear -- it'd be an art installation. I'd want my shop to be the shop-equivalent of Alex CF's crypto/historical work. Because in my mind, that's how to do it properly. Make it realer than real, by being actually real.

But I'll never have this shop, and for a variety of reasons. Aside from the foolishness of attempting to have my own brick-and-mortar (esoteric) business in this day and age... I'd feel guilty. Because I don't believe a word of it. I don't believe that this magical sign will grant protection, and this ancient spell will call up revenants, and this incantation will summon a fairy named Margarett Sarratice. But someone coming into my store... they might. And what I'd be doing is essentially conning them into my reality. With an exchange of money thrown in.

It'd be one thing, I suppose, if I only got customers interested in the art of the store itself, or the historical aspect of magic. But I wouldn't. I know I wouldn't, because in order to be successful I'd have to have the store in a nice tourist-like place, or maybe a college town, or somewhere else that would specifically draw in people to spend money. And the money-spenders, I am afraid, are the ones who I should most discourage from entering my store at all. It feels very wrong to profit from their beliefs when I don't share those beliefs. On top of going out of my way to mindfuck them into thinking I have The Real Thing.

Bah. Whether I will ever have it or not, I think about it.

At the very least, it makes for a diverting mental exercise.