After three decades in a non-descript building on Vaughan Road, Toronto’s supernatural superstore has found a much more visible new home and is benefitting from the increased foot traffic that’s come with it.
Have you ever wished you could enchant the world around you with strange, mystical powers? Have you ever wondered how to go about casting a spell on someone? Have you ever wished you could have wealth, fortune and friendship all gravitate toward you? If so, then The Occult Shop has everything you need—and you can now find it at a more convenient new location at 1373 Bathurst, just south of St. Clair.
The gentle aroma of hand-crafted incense hangs in the air as you walk in the door and 1950s rock ‘n’ roll hums and twangs through speakers at an ambient level. (Other days, you might hear gothic metal, or industrial techno.) The place has a quiet, homey feel and always seems to have at least one or two customers perusing the merchandise or chatting with the store clerk.
You can find incense, candles, herbs, oils, bath salts, gem stones and literature on all things occult. You can learn about tapping into your latent psychic abilities, the beneficial energies of crystals, tales of ancient mythology and the nuances of the zodiac. The walls are decked with shelf upon shelf filled with numerous alphabetized jars of incenses and herbs. Down the middle of the store, you’ll find candles in a galaxy of colours, sizes and shapes—cats, crosses, women, skulls and genitalia, all in the form of hardened wax effigies. The back wall boasts mythical and fantasy-themed statuettes of warrior heroines, princesses and goddesses.
“The new store is about 300 square feet smaller than the old one, but the layout is much better,” says Nicole Cooper, store manager. “It gave us a chance for a bit of a facelift, which is nice.”
For the previous 32 years, The Occult Shop was located on Vaughan Road in a nondescript building tucked away a block north of St. Clair, in a low foot-traffic zone. Now on Bathurst, the store is enjoying greater exposure, with a constant flow of pedestrians that’s translated into more walk-ins and, therefore, more business.
“A lot of people are looking for incense; the oil blends that we make are another reason people come to the store. A lot of the products we make in-house and you can’t find them anywhere else because we make them. People come here for our bath salts, our kitchen sprays and our oil blends.”
These customized sprays and oils produced come in a variety of scents, each with their own unique properties: Damnation spray to ward off enemies; money mist to attract wealth; compelling spray to take control of your life; patchouli love spray to attract a mate. (The bath salts come in similar flavours.)
“We’re getting some new and interesting stock,” says Cooper. ”And we’re getting more responsive to customer requests.”
