I’ve been meaning to write this article since Memorial Day weekend, and it appears later than I am writing because the shop I discovered during my mini-holiday is having an event this weekend, which I won’t be able to attend as I am presently in New Orleans at another event.
My good lady wife and I have a little hideaway over in Central Texas that we escape to when time permits. It’s situated in New Braunfels, Texas, which used to be a sleepier little town on the freeway between San Antonio and Austin. Like much of Texas, the urban areas are sprawling outward, and people anxious to “get out of the city” are dragging the city along with them. When we first moved to San Antonio after getting married in 1990, the gap between that city’s virtually rural outer loop and the edge of New Braunfels was significant. Now, it’s not all that noticeable, as the bedroom burgs between have all grown together.
Still, if you manage to get down into the old heart of this German settlement on the Guadalupe river, you can find eateries, antique shops, a surprisingly good night life, and a weekly farmer’s market. And not too far down Castell Avenue from Krause’s Biergarten (I highly recommend if you are into German food, and that’s also where we found the farmer’s market on Saturday) is the Empress, a unique little crystal, card, and book shop situated in an old house.
I have a penchant for local witch shops, and I believe in supporting them as much and as often as I can. I’m lucky enough to discover them almost everywhere I travel, but I have to say I didn’t expect to find one in New Braunfels.
Central Texas, outside of Austin, tends toward the conservative, and smaller towns typically have a number of active Catholic and Protestant congregations. So I have to confess to not expecting much when I saw the banner during a visit last year (the shop had closed for the day and we were already heading back to the big city). I was somewhat surprised to see that they were still a going concern this spring.
Now New Braunfels is a tourist town, and summers on the Guadalupe bring a wide range of people to engage in tubing and other water sports to escape the oppressive Texas heat. And I guess the influx into Texas from other areas has had an impact on the interest in all things witchy, so I am happy to report that the Empress is alive and well, and seems to be doing good business.
And that is well deserved, because it is one of the friendliest and most interesting shops I have visited in a long time. My readers will know that I am heavily vested in Tarot, and one of the metrics for a new shop is what kind and how many decks they have available. Imagine my surprise to not only see a large number of decks (though I already owned a lot of them) but that each deck had an open set of cards in front of them so that potential buyers could pick them up, look at the images, and get a feel for the cards.
I have said before that I respond first and foremost to the images on a set of cards. Reading the accompanying book comes later (if at all) so the ability to go through and see every…single…card in every deck was tremendous. I don’t recall ever being in a shop that had done that with more than maybe one or two decks at most, and here they have all the cards, for all the decks.
From a business perspective, that’s not a big deal, really. They can use the cards as demos for the various readers that work the store, and eventually sell the open pack at a discount. But the willingness to put that out there shows an understanding of the audience; of the community of strange folks like me who will appreciate it, that I have found in few other stores. It is the impression of openness and support for the community that inspired me to write this entry, and I hope to be able to develop a long standing relationship with the Empress and her business.
I did find two decks that I was drawn to, not already in my collection. One was the Runic Tarot, which reimagines the standard RWS style images through the lens of Norse mythology and the Rune tradition. So these can be read as standard Tarot, or the Runes to be found on the cards can be read as a Rune casting, or both. As I am only superficially aware of the Rune system, I can’t speak to how well this works, but I did run across an old text on Runecasting while booking that weekend, so I hope to have a better handle on it.
The other deck was the Magickal Botanical Oracle by Maxine Miller and well known occult writer Christopher Penczak (whose book Instant Magick I also found in the used book store that weekend; do not discount such coincidences, my friends, they point you where you need to go). Although my collection of cards is substantial (50+ decks now I think) most of them are traditional Tarot with only a few oracle decks. The majority of those tend toward things like the Ogham tree alphabet, or related Celtic topics typically from sources I am already familiar with elsewhere like John and Caitlin Matthews. So to get a new oracle set for me is a high bar (especially when I have an upcoming trip to New Orleans and am notorious for splurging on cards in the many shops to be found there).
But these cards, well. I cannot speak too highly of them. If you have any bent toward green witchcraft, they are worth every penny. I just found myself getting lost in the images for hours. Though the pallet is quite limited they are so ripe with symbol and layered with an almost living line work that they fascinate, inspire, and captivate.
I’d initially walked past these, as they were in a different area than the Tarot, and the wall of books in the next room had already caught my eye. But my wife called me back in and asked me if I had them. A brief shuffle through the open deck and I immediately added them to the deck in my hand. My good lady wife doesn’t see herself as particularly witchy, mind you. But she has a gift for finding things that resonate with me. That’s probably from having had me around for most of her life (and most of mine). If she tells me to take another look, I take another look. I was well rewarded.
The very impressive thing I found about this deck was that it stimulated ideas that were later to be found when I went back into Penczak’s accompanying text, which is by no means a “little white book”. That is an extraordinary thing for oracle cards. I might expect, given my many years of working with Tarot, to parse out meanings similar to those I experience with other Tarot decks, and that those meanings would jibe with the book. Here these cards handled fresh from the wrapping were giving me the same messages that Penczak had obviously gotten from them. There is definitely something in there looking back at us.
The gist of the deck is that it’s 33 cards give us insight into both beneficial and baneful plants in the Witches Garden. The dynamic drawings capture the spirit, literally, of each plant, and the 224 page text is about working with the plant spirits as spirits, not only for their herbaceous qualities. In this manner, the soul of the plant becomes accessible to those who may, for many reasons, not be able to work with actual mandrake or belladonna or others in this variety. The selection includes some I would not have expected, but there were no omissions that I felt of consequence. As an herbalist since my teen years, and very familiar with many of these plants, I nonetheless found the deck to be a powerfully refreshing approach and very useful tool, both in divination and magical workings.
So this unexpected side trip to the unexpected little shop in a small town in Texas netted unexpected fruit.
I’ve set this post up to drop, while I am participating in Heather Graham’s Writer for New Orleans. Unfortunately that means I won’t be able to return to the Empress for their celebration of the Summer Solstice which is happening on Saturday June 24th at the store located at 451 S Castell Avenue in New Braunfels, Texas from 11 am to 4 pm.
In addition to the store itself they will have a number of guest vendors, Tarot and card readers, and artists in attendance.
If you find yourself in the area I strongly encourage you to take to the time to go experience this very friendly community focused shop and all the people it has brought together. I think you will be rewarded.
Support your local witch shop, because they support you!
Road trip!!