Occult Books Failed Me
Or, how I made the generations-worthy practical grimoire I was promised but never found.
I got to thinking about occult books after reading Vanessa’s look back at Practical Magic and then watching The Craft for the first time in ages in the lead-up to Halloween.
I first watched The Craft when it was released in theaters in 1996. I was 13 years old. Even before then, in my earliest preteen years, I’d indulged my fascination with all things witchcraft by checking out just about every witchy fiction book in the young readers section of the South Pasadena Public Library, and even some nonfiction from the adult section. My interest in magic and the occult was initially surface level. Sure, I wanted to attend Miss Cackle's Academy for Witches with Mildred Hubble after reading books from The Worst Witch series and I clearly remember learning about the grim belief that the fat of human babies gave witch brooms flight from a nonfiction book—my introduction to darker depictions of and superstitions about witches. But it wasn’t until The Craft that I decided to go in search of books about practicing magic.
Perhaps it was seeing a Black witch onscreen that made something click. I couldn’t look away from Rachel True playing Rochelle Zimmerman, one of the too-cool-for-school members of the established coven Robin Tunney’s Sarah meets on her first day at a new high school. There I was, an L.A. teen about to enter high school, desperately wishing I could be as cool and mysterious—more social misfit than socially incompetent.
After the movie, I dragged my mom to Upstart Crow, the bookstore across from the theater at Universal Citywalk (this was before Upstart Crow turned into a truly obnoxious souvenir shop). Bookish from birth, I had latched onto the idea, promoted by the film, that one need only find the right book to unleash one’s powers. This is how I ended up with my very first "book of magic,” Falcon Feather and Valkyrie Sword: Feminine Shamanism, Witchcraft and Magic by D.J. Conway.
“Ignite the Goddess Spark and Reclaim Your Power,” the back of the book cried in bold, oversized text. While this was exactly what I wanted to do, I couldn’t deny the kernel of disappointment that grew as I handled the glossy cover and flipped through crisp, white pages. This was no Invocation of the Spirit with its understated cloth binding and magically animated illustrations, hiding in plain sight at Lirio's occult shop—the type of book that has no publisher but, rather, appears from thin air and, though rare, miraculously costs an affordable $25.
I wanted to learn about the beneficial plants that would thrive in my garden and that grew rampant and were used around me in the Appalachias. And I needed a book to house what I learned.
I would spend the next couple decades flitting from occult shop to occult shop telling myself I was there for crystals and dried herbs when really I was always in search of this special book. I even went to Panpipes Magickal Marketplace, once owned by The Craft star Fairuza Balk who’d apprenticed with the shop’s then-manager. I walked out of the dim, cramped place not with a book, but with a scented oil that made me smell like some reanimated bride rising from her trousseau tomb of rotting flowers. But did I ever find The Book?
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