They want a broom with a view.
Bushwick occult bookstore Catland has launched a witchy fund-raising campaign to raise $15,000 for a green space and backyard worship area for spiritual rituals.
Joseph Petersen, Phil English and Fred Jennings want to install a garden for sacred herbs alongside a fire pit for the rituals behind their Flushing Ave. storefront.
If an Indiegogo campaign the owners launched Friday catches hellfire, so to speak, a concrete yard behind the bookstore could be transformed into a lush garden for pagans and those who love them by Memorial Day, the owners said.
“A lot of pagan traditions really worship nature and the moon,” said Petersen, a 26-year-old self-described “Chaos Magician” originally from St. Louis. “And having an outdoor space surrounded by the moon and green instead of by concrete will allow people to ease into that modality.”
Located within several blocks of Catholic, Protestant and Pentacostal churches, the year-old business sells Bibles and Kabbalah volumes as well as Hoodoo genital candles and homemade incense. Storefront signage still displays the plumbing supply store the shop replaced last February.
“The parks are an option, but if it’s, say, a Wiccan group that wants fire, it would probably be pretty difficult to do that in Prospect Park,” said Jennings, of Massachusetts.
Jennings and the others want to install an awning with shade to grow rosemary, lemon balm and lavender as well as the fire pit for a monthly “Witches’ Compass” events.
Astoria-based visual artist and fashion model Katelan Foisy recently hosted two dozen pagans during a monthly ceremony in which witches and Wiccans worshiped the Full Egg Moon, a full moon celebrated each spring by astrologists.
“It would really add to the aesthetics,” Foisy, 34, said of the updated outdoor decor. “The Witches’ Compass is about aesthetics, since you’re walking into a magical world.”
Courtney Weber, a Wiccan priestess who counts nearly 300 adherents in her congregation, “the Novices of the Old Ways,” moved her flock to the 800-square-foot store after growing tired of people snapping pics of them worshipping.
The Wiccans used the outdoor area for summer solstice and first harvest celebrations last year, but Weber noted the drumming and dancing would be much better in the garden.
“If we had a garden space, then we could be more present with the outdoor harmonies of the planet,” she said.
