Uncategorized – Page 3 – Hierophany & Hedge

September 9 2025

Reading to Cats and Children

Not Gently into the Darkness

Despite, well, everything, we try to keep the shop an optimistic place, or at least one where it’s possible to laugh at the horrors rather than cry.

One grim bit of news has really gotten to us, though.

Apparently, the number of parents who read to their children has dropped catastrophically.

Imagination is the heart of magic, literacy is the heart of a functioning democracy, and the ability to share stories is the heart of what makes us human.

This holiday season (which starts for us with the first leaf drop) we’ve increased the number of books for children in the shop.

Most, like “The Little Witch’s To-Do List” are approved by Murderpaws.

All are intended to make the shop a friendly place for customers of all ages, and to remind you all to read to your children – even if they’re cats.

September 4 2025

Saved by Silver

Augur Uncategorized

On the Compression of Souls

We rolled our eyes back in the day when all the audiophiles claimed that MP3s were ruining music. We were young and listening to music with low-quality speakers. A bunch of information we couldn’t hear anyway being ditched in favor of portability seemed like a fair trade.

We can afford better speakers now, but our ears got old, so this particular instance doesn’t really matter for us any longer.

This devil’s bargain between accessibility and quality, however, feels more relevant than ever.

We realized this the other day when going through some goofy old family photos from JCPenney. These are not going to win any photography awards, and the chemicals used for the development have aged poorly.

Despite that, the actual image fidelity of a forty year old photo taken at the mall is significantly better than the overwhelming majority of the images we use to document our existence today.

None of the faces in that old photo were smoothed by an algorithm, and the photo itself was crisply resolved at 11×17.

Our world is increasingly mediated through the distorting and compressing eyes of our phones, and not to our benefit. We give up a few pixels here and there for convenience, and suddenly we discover our worlds have shrunk and our memories have been compressed.

In our little effort to hold back the tide, we are delighted to welcome Eternal Springs Studio to this year’s Cryptid Block Party where she will be taking tintype photographs.

It is absurd to post scans of these photos to instagram, as they have a resolution and luminosity that embarrasses the very best digital tool. We’re doing it anyway in the hope that it inspires you to get some real ones taken.

Most of our shop witches are away this weekend, so we will be understaffed. We appreciate your patience, and hope you all enjoy the lunar eclipse on Sunday night.

August 26 2025

A Familiar Magic Cauldron

Augur Uncategorized

Magic in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Simulacra are some of the oldest and most powerful forms of magic.

The first human paintings are found deep in ancient caves. They illustrate game animals, and were part of rituals designed to guarantee successful hunts.

Similarly, various forms of representational poppets (e.g., “Voodoo dolls”) have been used magically to treat illness or curse enemies. One might treat a fever by chilling a therapeutic poppet, or hobble an enemy by putting a pin though a doll’s foot.

As a result, we take very seriously any representation of our shop, and were a little concerned when we started receiving messages that Hierophany & Hedge was on display at the 2025 Miniature Society of Cincinnati show.

But then we saw the photos of the marvelous model that a long-time customer and her daughter had produced, and we haven’t stopped grinning since.

This is perfect, right down to the green string on the packages, and we love it. We are so looking forward to seeing it in person

Our customers are wonderful, and we are honored every single day to be able to serve you. Thank you so very much for helping to create something worthy of becoming magical art.

August 19 2025

Enchanted Living Magazine

Augur Uncategorized

How we long for for the fashion magazines of old!

There is a downside to binding elemental spirits into fire alarms.

While they are exceptionally good at what they do, they are also incredibly loud.

And they like to tattle.

So, yes, there were some ringing ears and anxious phone calls this weekend while Coil was out of town and Augur got to play with his smoke machine.

This video was abbreviated because the little gremlins refused to stop screaming, but hopefully you get the idea.

We are now a proud stockist of the current issue, as well as of selected back issues, of Faerie Magazine (which is now called Enchanted Living Magazine for fey copyright reasons).

We miss glossy fashion magazines. Looking at pouty lips and dramatic lighting just isn’t the same on phones.

August 15 2025

Routines & Rituals

Augur Uncategorized

On Morning Rituals

Our lives are filled with routines.

For most of us, what we do today will be very similar to what we did yesterday.

That can be comforting, but it can also be dull. Days may blend into one another and we can start to feel more like robots than people.

Our favorite way to avoid this is to make routines into rituals.

The most important aspect of this is to be intentional and conscious of the activity in question. Don’t just make the coffee in a half-asleep state. Take a moment to address your ingredients, to thank the sun, the plants, and the people who made the drink possible. Then purposefully perform the task thinking consciously about each step.

It helps to be a little bit . . . extra. Our coffee maker is a colossal pain. It takes forever to prepare, to brew, and to clean, and it only makes two cups of coffee. But every use also feels like we’re doing mad science. Forcing ourselves to wait and to observe the wonders of physics helps us to savor the result.

Finally, be protective of your ritual time. You don’t have control of every aspect of your day, but you can find a way to carve out five or ten minutes here and there for activities that you refuse to be distracted from. Turn off your phone. Tell your partner to find their own socks. You deserve to be able to focus on your own thing for a moment.

We love this little book on coffee magic. While it has some spells, it is really a reminder that much of enchantment is a decision to find the miraculous in everyday existence.

It reminds us that rituals don’t even have to be “magical” per se, they just have to be things that you elevate above the level of “task.”

We are stretched a bit thin with daily life this week so our hours are limited, but we look forward to seeing more of you in the rest of August.

August 5 2025

Happy Birthday, You Princesses of Maine

Augur Uncategorized

All Cats are Leos

Please join us in wishing a (slightly belated) happy second birthday to Lt. Commander Atramenta Murderpaws and her twin sister, Baroness Belladonna Nightshade.

We had no idea when we summoned these two furry voids from the outer darkness that they would lodge so deeply within our hearts. But it turns out that if you stare long enough into the abyss, it stares back . . . and meows.

They have gifted us with cryptic utterances, savaged toys, and occasionally hard-won purrs, and we can’t believe there was ever a time that they weren’t the managers of our little shop.

They are shown here “helping” us hang a canvas astrological painting from an early twentieth century circus.

We once thought that they were terrible astrologers, since every fortune they give is exactly the same, “You will give us treats.”

It turns out, however, that they have a more accurate prediction rate than any diviner we’ve ever met.