The Metaphysical Haberdashery

What happens when there is nothing you can do to fix someone else’s troubles? A journey with the rune Hagalaz led me to a family high in the mountains of Mexico, where a damaged crop, a bowl of chicken soup, a handful of nance and a seat in the dirt became a story about resourcefulness, dignity and the quiet gift of simply being with one another.

I had been wondering about the stairs all day. Not what was upstairs. That was the mistake. The question was: Where do the stairs go? At the top, a pair of heavy dark-red curtains waited, and from somewhere beyond them came the sound of birds.

A raven, an impossibly long waterfall, and a little silver gift carried by the current. Sometimes the strangest things arrive when you stop looking for answers and simply follow what happens next.

The proprietor has been awake for some time. Armed with copper wire, questionable diagrams, and an urgent need for coffee, he is attempting to persuade electricity to heat the kettle. Unfortunately, electricity has ideas of its own.

What happens when you stop trying to invent a story and simply pay attention to what appears? An experiment in imagination, intuition, consciousness, and the curious difference between creating an image and discovering one.

There’s a mysterious door behind the counter at the Metaphysical Haberdashery. One day, I decided to open it. Beyond it waited a forgotten room, old family letters, a silver necklace, and a garden where someone seemed to know I was coming.

A six-petalled flower stamped into butter to protect it from witches. The same ancient symbol covering a 17th-century church built to evangelize the Maya, thousands of miles away. Coincidence, decoration, protection, or something more? Sometimes pulling a thread in Scotland leads somewhere entirely unexpected in Yucatán. 🌼

I’ve spent much of my life exploring magic, yet some part of me has always been afraid to truly let people see that side of me. Then I walked into a courtyard at York Castle and experienced something that made that fear suddenly make sense. What if some of the fears we carry didn’t begin in this life?

Apparently, my microphone has gone rogue. While I was innocently attempting to create a new Facebook group, it quietly overruled me, renamed the group, and offered a suggestion of its own. The troubling part? It had a very good idea.

There is a peacock. I’m not sure where he resides, but he has a habit of appearing in the oddest places. At first, he was merely a running joke at The Metaphysical Haberdashery. Then I found a woven peacock in a tiny hotel in Yucatán. The next morning, another was waiting on my bed. Both were made of thread. And that is where things became interesting. 🦚🧵

I was innocently building my new website when an eccentric Victorian gentleman appeared in my imagination. The curious part? Chat had apparently met him first.

I think my website has a peacock running things, an eccentric store proprietor, and a rogue microphone in charge of building it. In truth, the whole process has become very Harry Potterish.

High on a windswept mountainside in Glencoe, something strange happened. The landscape stopped feeling unfamiliar, and I began to remember.