Last month, Newsweek had a revealing piece about how millennials across the country are becoming more and more interested in witchcraft, using astrology and tarot "as tools for combating existential angst." The Times followed up that story today by delving into Bushwick witches, centering around the Catland occult bookstore. “There’s been a magical revival happening in New York City for two to three years,” said Damon Stang, the shop's resident tarot card reader. “I think it’s a nostalgia that people have for a sense of enchantment with the world.”
The store's three owners, Philip English, 28, Joe Petersen, 25, and Fred Jennings, 28, opened the shop in February in a former plumbing store on Flushing Avenue. “There are a lot of practitioners here who came out of the woodwork because this place acted as a beacon,” said 25-year-old Sofia Boothman, a photographer from Bedford-Stuyvesant. “It’s got a darker vibe, a little more intellectual.”
Not that it's all been positive: an article in Brooklyn Paper about the store's opening inspired many commenters to label the store another piece of "yupster/hipster sewage," another sign of mass gentrification. The owners were offended at the hipster charge: “It used to be that with witchcraft and the occult, the anger was directed toward perceived diabolism,” English said in response. “And now it’s directed at the idea of hipsterdom or gentrification. I have trouble making the connection. If you’re going to hate us, hate us for the traditional reason to hate us. Call us witches, not hipsters.”
