Six stops on New York's occult transit map
The city's magical scene doesn't run in a straight line — it jumps boroughs, goes underground for a decade, resurfaces under a new name. Here's the route, station by station.
Crowley arrives, then keeps coming back
Aleister Crowley first landed in New York in 1900, then returned for a five-year stretch from 1914 to 1919 that reshaped him as much as it shaped the city's occult underground. He wrote for the American edition of Vanity Fair, worked as an astrologer's assistant, and folded himself into the Greenwich Village radical art scene alongside painters and poets on what was then called "Genius Row." In 1918, while living near Central Park, he undertook the Amalantrah Working, a sustained series of visionary rituals conducted from his apartment.
Greenwich Village · Central Park SouthThe Warlock Shop opens in Brooklyn Heights
Herman Slater and Eddie Buczynski opened a small witchcraft supply shop on Henry Street, just off Atlantic Avenue — the seed of what would become the city's first true occult retail institution. It sold what the neighborhood botanicas didn't: books, ritual tools, and a place for the city's scattered Wiccan covens to actually find each other.
Henry Street · Brooklyn HeightsMagickal Childe opens in Chelsea
Slater relocated and renamed the shop the Magickal Childe, moving it to West 19th Street. For two decades it was the central switchboard of New York occultism — an incense-thick storefront with an indoor waterfall, a back-room temple, and a reputation for stocking the strange and out-of-print. Weekly gatherings there hosted everything from Pagan Way lectures to the city's emerging Ordo Templi Orientis membership, and the shop's press published the notorious Simon Necronomicon.
West 19th Street · ChelseaEnchantments opens in the East Village
A new shop opened a few blocks over, specializing in hand-carved custom spell candles and a house apothecary of oils, herbs, and incense — much of its formulary drawn directly from Slater's own recipes. It's still the neighborhood's anchor for practical magick, and by most accounts the oldest continuously operating occult store in the city.
East 9th Street · East VillageAn era closes, and the Village scene scatters
Herman Slater died in July 1992; the Magickal Childe's brick-and-mortar store limped on under new ownership before finally closing in 1999. Members of its back-room O.T.O. body regrouped — James Wasserman, who'd joined the Order in 1976 and founded the city's TAHUTI Lodge in 1979, later wrote about surviving that era in his memoir In the Center of the Fire.
Chelsea → dispersed citywideCatland opens in Bushwick
A new generation's shop opened on Flushing Avenue, aimed less at Village-era ceremonial magick and more at Bushwick's expanding, younger metaphysical scene — witchcraft, hoodoo, Norse practice, and Thelema under one roof, with a full events calendar of classes and rituals. It became the borough's answer to the East Village's older institutions, though its storefront status has been in flux in recent years — worth confirming current hours before a visit.
Flushing Avenue · BushwickThree people who built the scene
Aleister Crowley
The English magician whose five-year New York residency wove him into the Village's art and literary underground — and, separately, into wartime intelligence work aimed at keeping America in the war against Germany, conducted under cover of pro-German propaganda writing.
In NYC: 1900, 1914–1919, 1919Herman Slater
A Wiccan high priest who turned a Brooklyn Heights storefront into the city's occult switchboard. His Magickal Formulary spellbooks, drawn from the shop's own recipe files, are still in print.
1935 – 1992James Wasserman
Joined the Ordo Templi Orientis in 1976 when it numbered fewer than a dozen members, founded the city's TAHUTI Lodge in 1979, and later chronicled the 1970s New York occult underground in his memoir.
Active from 1976Where to actually go
Three shops, three eras, three boroughs of the same continuous impulse — a physical place to buy candles, get a reading, and find other people doing the same thing you are.
Childe
Magickal Childe 1979–1999
West 19th Street, Chelsea. The city's original occult department store — books, ritual supplies, three resident covens, and a back room that hosted the early New York O.T.O. Closed for good in 1999; its formulary lives on through Enchantments and reprinted editions of Slater's books.
Enchantments
East 9th Street, East Village. Opened 1982, still New York's longest continuously running occult store. Known for custom hand-carved candles and a deep in-house apothecary of oils, herbs, and incense.
Books
Catland Books
Flushing Avenue, Bushwick. Opened 2013 as a supply house and event space for the neighborhood's younger metaphysical scene — classes, flea markets, and a broad interfaith stock. Recent reports on its storefront status have been mixed; check current listings before visiting.
"A stone's throw away from the Velvet Underground and Andy Warhol's Factory, William Burroughs' bunker, and the legendary Chelsea Hotel was a scene far more esoteric than perhaps even they could have imagined." — James Wasserman, on 1970s Chelsea, In the Center of the Fire