Of Maps and Openings

One of the first lessons of magic is this: There are many worlds.
This truth is why we don’t care for maps. Or for clocks. Or for most of the tools of the modern world which present our reality as a single immutable truth that can be described and measured and put on the shelf as an eleven-volume set that contains all knowledge.
There are maps from Europe’s Medieval period in which Paris is as close to Jerusalem as it is to Aachen, and in which the Kingdom of Prestor John is positioned with as much certainty as is Rome. Today, this seems absurd, as laughable as a map which places New York next to Narnia, or Mordor on the eastern border of Canada. But these maps are not to be derided, or at least no more derided than the ones pumped into our brains via our dynamically updated phosphorescent screens. All maps are illusions, all measurements are half-truths. They create realities as much as they record them.
Unfortunately, we are still left with the realities they create, and that is the crux of the issue at the moment.
The world in which we at Hierophany & Hedge have a special interest is one of glamour and gramarye, of metaphor and metonymy, of séance and of sorcery. But it is not the only world. There is a coterminous world entire. Its mind is full of shipping routes and global positioning satellites, its flesh is made of manifests and cargo crates, and its sinews are pulled taught by teamsters and long-haul drivers.
In our world of conjuration and contemplation, we have some say. We can request a whispered prayer from Remembered Samarkand, and expect it to be delivered at dawn by the North Wind as it whistles a tune to make your heart break or your soul shiver.
But when we step into the world of delivery vans . . . well . . . we can not make DHL carry fine French paper from Europe to our doorstep any faster.
All of which is to say that it is the year 2021 and many physical objects do not move as quickly or with as much certainty as they did just a few years ago. There are things which we had hoped to have safely nestled within our shop months ago, which sadly still languish in dockside warehouses and in gently bobbing cargo containers. There are aged pieces of furniture whose long road to us is now longer still. And there are products being crafted for us in sputtering factories crippled by their own supply chain disruptions.
We still plan to open on the first of May, and we still expect to have much of our catalog in place.
We beg your indulgence for the items and fixtures not yet quite fully realized.