“Metaphysical Shops and Activism,” Interview, Aubrey Fulbright and Wesley R. Bishop.

In late spring of 2025 Aubrey Fulbright, owner and operator of Romarin et Corbeaux, a metaphysical shop in Anniston, Alabama, sat down with managing editor Wesley Bishop to talk about the store, Fulbright’s history of activism, and the rising importance of alternative religions in American faith and belief. This transcript has been edited for clarity and length.

Wesley Bishop: Can you tell us a bit about your store, it’s history, and how you came to own and operate it?

Aubrey Fulbright: It happened during Covid. I had made a joke with my husband that I was tired of having to drive all the way to Atlanta or Birmingham to find a metaphysical shop. I grew up in metaphysical stores. I have a religious studies degree, and so this type of environment has always been a part of my life. The joke was, though, we should just open our own and my husband complete deadpan and serious said, ‘Okay.’ So we decided to try it and we started really small over on Quintard Avenue here in Anniston, and I had to move within the first 10 months because we outgrew the space. I did not realize there was such a need for a place like this in our area. I came to find out, I was really shocked, about the large hoodoo and voodoo community in particular. And it wasn't until this year, our fifth year of business, that I made the connection with Hurricane Katrina, that the FEMA place over on Fort McClellan. That's where a lot of the Hurricane Katrina refugees out of New Orleans that moved up here. And so that community of hoodoo and voodoo tradition moved up here as well.

WB: Fascinating.

AF: And I had not made that connection until we had gone down to New Orleans for my birthday this past year. It clicked all of a sudden like, ‘Oh my God. That's why we had that community up here in Anniston, because some people just decided not to leave.’ They didn't have anything to go back to or this worked out for them. But I moved down to Oxford and we were there for two years. I did a two year contract down there. Within the first six months I was looking for a new space to move back to Anniston. We live in Anniston. My kids go to the public schools here. We feel comfortable here. I wanted my tax dollars going back to the community. But the main reason was because I was getting death threats down in Oxford. I had a woman call up and say, ‘I hope that God strikes your store and it burns to the ground.’ My response, the only thing I could think to say was, ‘Well, that would be really sad. I have two cats here.’ I really don’t want anything to happen to them. I also got social media threats. I couldn't really take those to the police because they don't take social media stuff seriously unless it's consistent harassment. But I had one person say that they hoped that I woke up and my children were dead. There was a woman who owned a metaphysical store in California and she had put out a pride flag and a man walked in, shot her point blank behind her counter, killed her, and walked right back out. Like it was nothing. Three days after that, I had a gentleman from Texas message me and say, ‘You know what happened in California? You are next.’ I have a little all inclusive pride flag sticker that I keep on my door because we are inclusive to everyone— all religions, all faiths, all ethnicities and sexualities, genders, all of that. I found this building and we were able to kind of finagle an interesting contract to where we are renting for two years, and at the end of that we get to purchase it. So, this coming January, I will own the building outright. We're in the historic part of downtown Anniston… well it used to be. It was built in 1900 and we've done extensive research on the building itself. It was a bakery originally and a confectionary candy store.

WB: Nice. I love candy.

AF: (Laughs) And the owners are some characters. Everyone always talks about how the Nobles and the Tylers built Aniston. Well, the people that they don't talk about is the Jebel brothers, and it's a whole family. It was a Greek family, and they owned probably five to ten different businesses in Anniston—  fruit stands, the bakery. George, one of the brothers owned the Peerless And they had a couple of businesses. They opened up another confectionary down in Birmingham. So that's an immigrant family that doesn't really get credited with actually owning a good portion of downtown Anniston and being a part of the establishment of it, I feel. So, I have a lot of pride in this building for that. We hope to do renovations to get it back to how it looked as close to 1900 as possible. There’re not too many pictures that we can go off of. [00:08:00] I know this is probably going off on a tangent, but we just fell in love with the building and we were able to, we yes, jumped on the chance to move in and make it what it is today.

WB: That is great to hear. Circling back to what you said with the threats. So, the police didn't even take seriously the local threats.

AF: None of them were fully local. They had ties to local people. So, the gentleman from Texas was the brother of somebody who lived in Wellborn. And to be perfectly honest, I didn't even want to involve the police

WB: Because?

AF: One was a person was in South Carolina. There was another one in Tennessee, the guy in Texas. There were no real tangible things. And having worked with the police on a domestic violence issue, knowing what their stance on social media is, it was like, okay, yeah, I'm not going to worry about that.

WB: Have the threats and animosity changed since moving to Anniston?

AF: So immediately when we moved to Anniston, I have not received a death threat since.

WB: What do you think that's about? If the threats were not local, why would they stop threatening once you came to Anniston?

AF: Well, again, I think they have ties to people here. All of them had relatives that were from here [specifically Oxford] or they used to live here or something. They had some kind of tie to the place, to the area. Now also, I do have five churches that are actively preaching against us, and they do preach that if one of congregation comes to shop they’ll get hit with excommunication… And it's so odd to me, especially on that front, because my very first bookshelf that I have in the middle of the front of the store is nothing but Christian books and Bibles. But a lot of people will walk right past that to then see that I have Greek mythology, Irish mythology, Egyptian mythology into Wicca, into Hermetics, and then, ‘Oh God, this is a devil's store!’ And they turn around and hurriedly get out. There's just such this level of fear and also just being uneducated. You can see that in this area for sure. I guess I need to make that caveat too, I'm not from this area. My husband is, but I'm not. You can see how people think here who never leave here. One of our kids— we were in Alexandria at the time— their teacher had introduced herself as, ‘I've lived in Alexandria my whole life. I went to Alexandria High School and then I went to Jacksonville State University and got my teaching degree, and then now I'm a teacher here at Alexandria High School.’ And I was like, oh honey, you've never left. How are you going to teach world history when you have not even left your area much less the state? And the churches, too, is also a part of that bubble. Where you go to church three times a week in this area, you can't get away from it. And so, you hear people talk about echo chambers and all that kind of stuff, like that's a hell of an echo chamber when from birth to death you never leave the county that you grew up in. And so that's the uneducated aspect of it. Anything outside of a particular Christianity is inherently evil. That is so strong here.

And one of the things that I teach a lot of people too is, only one out of the thousands of faiths, cultures and religions in the world, there's only one that believes in Satan— that is the devil—  and that's Christianity. They're the only ones who believe in him or believe in that. So, you have a whole wide world of people that this belief doesn’t apply to, and a lot of times that will get some people to have a light bulb moment, and then I can go, ‘Okay, cool. Maybe we can start decolonizing and deconstructing the Christianity that you've grown up.’

WB: That’s very interesting. Can you talk a little bit about your background? Where you're from, how you got involved with metaphysical stores and your activism?

AF: Well, again, I think they have ties to people here. All of them had relatives that were from here [specifically Oxford] or they used to live here or something. They had some kind of tie to the place, to the area. Now also, I do have five churches that are actively preaching against us, and they do preach that if one of congregation comes to shop they’ll get hit with excommunication… And it's so odd to me, especially on that front, because my very first bookshelf that I have in the middle of the front of the store is nothing but Christian books and Bibles. But a lot of people will walk right past that to then see that I have Greek mythology, Irish mythology, Egyptian mythology into Wicca, into Hermetics, and then, ‘Oh God, this is a devil's store!’ And they turn around and hurriedly get out. There's just such this level of fear and also just being uneducated. You can see that in this area for sure. I guess I need to make that caveat too, I'm not from this area. My husband is, but I'm not. You can see how people think here who never leave here. One of our kids— we were in Alexandria at the time— their teacher had introduced herself as, ‘I've lived in Alexandria my whole life. I went to Alexandria High School and then I went to Jacksonville State University and got my teaching degree, and then now I'm a teacher here at Alexandria High School.’ And I was like, oh honey, you've never left. How are you going to teach world history when you have not even left your area much less the state? And the churches, too, is also a part of that bubble. Where you go to church three times a week in this area, you can't get away from it. And so, you hear people talk about echo chambers and all that kind of stuff, like that's a hell of an echo chamber when from birth to death you never leave the county that you grew up in. And so that's the uneducated aspect of it. Anything outside of a particular Christianity is inherently evil. That is so strong here.

And one of the things that I teach a lot of people too is, only one out of the thousands of faiths, cultures and religions in the world, there's only one that believes in Satan— that is the devil—  and that's Christianity. They're the only ones who believe in him or believe in that. So, you have a whole wide world of people that this belief doesn’t apply to, and a lot of times that will get some people to have a light bulb moment, and then I can go, ‘Okay, cool. Maybe we can start decolonizing and deconstructing the Christianity that you've grown up.’

I grew up mostly in Atlanta. I was born in Charleston, South Carolina. My dad had joined the Air Force, and so we had moved around a little bit, but I mostly grew up in Atlanta. My mother is a teacher and also a big activist. So, I grew up doing women's rights marches, equality rights, religious freedom, huge push with making sure that the church was separate from state and separate from public schools in Atlanta. I grew up with constantly doing that kind of work, but also, again, going to metaphysical stores where my mom’s people were. She loved it, that's kind of her vibe.

I also grew up with the Episcopal church and that denomination for the Christian faith is more progressive. I'm probably going to offend a whole bunch of people on this one, but to me it was more cerebral, more academic in the way of its thinking. It was very much this whole kind of, if you came in and you asked a question, you weren't shunned. And if they couldn't answer the question, it wasn't just, ‘Well, you have to have faith.’ It was more like, ‘That's an interesting question. I don't know the answer to that. Let's look it up together,’ or ‘Let's try and research it together and find an answer.’ And so having that kind of faith was cool. And growing up, my mom exposed us to so many different religions. We went to Buddhist temples, we went to Harry Krishna, we went to Jewish temples. Just that exposure to all of that really gave me my love of religions and cultures.

I was fortunate enough, I got to travel the world growing up as well. Getting to see the different languages, the different cultures, again, instilled kind of that love of it. And then, yeah, the activism just kind of was always there.

WB: Why do you think this was all so important to your mom?

AF: She was a child of the sixties… I guess woman of the sixties and women in the women’s rights movement made this all a huge thing for her. We also grew up in a predominantly mixed cultural region of Atlanta.

WB: What part of Atlanta specifically?

AF: We were in a couple of places, mostly in the 1990s, but one was Tucker, Georgia, which now is everything's, so changed. Then she taught at Chamblee. And Decatur, that whole area. So that was kind of where we were. And so being in those spaces of multiple ethnic backgrounds lent itself to activism to create a… well, I don’t know, maybe not create… but instilled that kind of, I don't know the word to say… instilled a kind of understanding and wanting to create a kind of equality that we grew up with having had a lot of white privilege. Also, knowing from the very beginning what white privilege was even as a kid impacted me. And then also that anti-racism is a constant struggle. It’s not that you can sit here and go, ‘Cool, I've done all this anti-racism work now. I'm not racist as a white person.’ No. The way that our country is, it is a consistent fight against the systemic racism, and the institutions that were literally built on racism from the very start. And so you have to constantly fight against those.

WB: Coming from Atlanta, how did you end up in northeast Alabama? Distance, it’s not very far, but it often feels like it is a world apart.

WB: Well, I went to Georgia Southern University, and then after that I lived down in Albany, Georgia where I was with my first husband and where I had my kids. And after that I moved up to Illinois, which is where my father retired out of the Air Force. He had bought a restaurant in retirement. And so, I went up there to help out. About a year and a half later, almost two years later, in 2014 is when my ex-husband had gotten a job offer down here down in Gadsden. And we moved down here. And that's what put us here. I never thought I would end up in Alabama, but here we are.

WB: So you've been in Alabama for about ten years then?

AF: Yeah, it's about ten years now.

WB: Can you tell us a little bit about what makes a metaphysical store a metaphysical store? Also, maybe, explain how your store is a hub and center for local activism?

AF: Well, I try to describe the store as a bookshop first and foremost. Again, because of the area, when you put ‘metaphysical’ in front of it, it's like, ‘Oh, that's one of those Satan stores.’ But metaphysics is literally just the study of being and the universe. And so, it includes all sorts of philosophy, religions, and cultures. The study of astral projection, or the idea that there's past lives and near-death experiences, and psychic mediumship, all these kinds of different— I guess esoteric be the word—  kind of fields. Here though, the way that I get my books is people come in and request a book. I'll then get two to three copies of it. So now when you walk in the store, the books that I have, this is your community, this is what your friends, your neighbors, your coworkers are actually reading. And it kind of gives a sense of, ‘Okay, cool. I'm not the only one.’ And so in light of what is going on politically, and then also where we are in Anniston, as I started learning more about the history of Anniston and how pivotal it was to the Civil Rights Movement, that's where the activists kind of kicked in…  [And it’s interesting] the thing I saw the most online when getting ready to move was ‘Do not live in Anniston!’ And when we moved down here, we originally moved to Weaver. Then I came down to check out Grace Episcopal Church looking for a church for the boys and that kind of stuff. And I happened to start exploring, and I saw the high school— and it was right when school was letting out— and that was when I saw that the school was majority Black. And literally, excuse my language, I said, ‘You racist motherfuckers!’ That's the only reason why y'all are telling people not to move to Anniston is because it's majority Black. And so at that moment, I was like, absolutely, we are going to get involved in Aniston, because then I know that this is what I want my kids to grow up in a community that is actually a community.

(Thinks for a moment).

AF: White people don't have community often. I wanted my boys to know and understand that diversity was good. And I wanted them to be as culturally diverse as we could in Alabama. So that's is what instilled and started the whole activist part. But then it really kicked in when Roe v Wade fell, knowing and understanding how politics work, how bills and how law decisions work. I knew that it was a domino. I knew that once a Roe v Wade fell, everything that was in the 14th Amendment is now up to debate because of one particular sentence. The way that Alito overturned Roe v. Wade, that it has no precedent or tradition in the original constitution. That meant all of these rights and legal protections were now in question.

WB: Yeah, I hate Alito. I think he's by far one of the worst justices that the Supreme Court has ever had.

AF: When Alito and the Court said that, it was like, ‘Okay… what else doesn't have precedent or tradition in the original constitution?’

WB: Yes. You see it right now that the conservatives are talking about repealing birthright citizenship.

AF: Yep.

WB: Yeah.

AF: Right after Roe fell, you saw all these Congress members and senators come out, ‘Fantastic! Now do Brown versus Board of education!’ and ‘Awesome, now do gay marriage!’ and ‘Williams v. Connecticut for contraception.’ And it was like, ‘Oh, so many people do not realize what they have done.’ They do not realize how massive this is going to affect doing activism.

So, of activism is having an understanding of your government on even the most basic of levels, and that means understanding laws. And so, you have to keep up with these laws, you have to keep up with what's going on in the government, not just in your state either.

There are seventeen states that essentially work together. Their strategy is that two or three states will pick a topic, trans rights for example, they will try to pass laws on trans rights and if it fails in those states, three other states out of the 17 will pick it up. If it passes there, all the rest of them are able then to pass similar types of legislation. And it's the same thing with other issues. You have a different set of two or three states that pick up abortion and they do their restrictive laws. And then the other seventeen follow suit... And so that's a huge, seventeen states is a big portion of the country. That's a big sway. For example, I was watching Ohio vote and put in a law that said that if an ectopic pregnancy happens that the doctor has to take the ectopic cells and implant it in the uterus first before they do the abortion. There is literally no medical precedent for that at all. And I am like, ‘Are you serious? That's not how the body works. That's not how any of that works.’

But Ohio passed it. And that was, to me, that was kind of the first red flag of, this is not good. And then a few years later was when Roe fell and it was like, this is crazy.

WB: What kind of activism does the shop primarily organize?

AF: We are mostly mutual aid and community based. Also, educational. I had a copy of Project 2025 that I printed it out as soon as it came out.

(Points to it).

AF:  Your recorder is sitting on top of it right now. A lot of people don't understand either, is that Project 2025 is not new. It has been around since the 1970s and early 1980s. This is just the latest iteration of it. And so, in 2023 when it came out and became public, I printed it off immediately and put it in a binders and showed and encouraged people to come in, read it, take notes, whatever, sit here and learn. And a few people did. And then the election happened. And when Trump became president again, it was kicked into high gear. So in November when he was elected, it was starting to gather resources. It was starting to get things ready for when the institutions and the systems start to fail. The one thing going on right now that is truly new is that a lot of the white population is being negatively affected for the first time. Black and brown communities have already dealt with this for generations. They know how to come together, have solidarity, safeguard against systems that were not meant for them to use. And so, my mentors, the Black women that I listen to, the Indigenous voices that I listen to, my teachers, we started to implement those kinds of community building. The way I start out is food, shelter and medical are going to be the most important. When people don't have access to those three things, panic sets in. Once panic happens, it leads to desperation. Desperation is where that leads to harm. It leads to harm of the self or harm to others, which equates to crime in some communities. So immediately your first reaction should be— let's find the organizations that are already in place. Because that's another problem with a lot of white activism. It often assumes, ‘Ooh, I see a need. Let's build something new and reinvent the wheel.’ And now you're pulling resources away from organizations that are already established. You're just splitting it up now and it's not going to benefit anybody. So, it should go to organizations that are already here, and it's bolstering them as much as possible with things like raising funds. The food that I collect here are for three Episcopal churches that do a beans and rice ministry. You can go to each one on a different Saturday and get basically a week's worth of dry good foods and canned foods and that can supplement a grocery bill. So it's getting canned foods to those churches. Every time I go to the grocery store, get an extra canned good of each thing that I buy and take that and donate it. If you go ahead and bolster those kinds of things up ahead of the need, you mitigate that panic, you mitigate that desperation to where you lessen the harm in your community. And so that's where we start. That was the type of activism that I was taught to do. Right now we are in a fascist authoritarian state. Now. I know some people want to say, ‘Oh, we're not there yet.’ No, we are. We very much are. If you study any amount of history of past dictators, of past authoritarian that we're already in the midst of it, when Trump was inaugurated, he started a military tactic of attacking three institutions a day— a financial institute, a social institute, and then an infrastructure institute. So, in doing that, every single day, you do a couple of things. One, it overloads the courts. So, you are able to get a lot of the kind of things done you want. And you start out with small things that have kind of a big impact. And people fight back, they say, ‘We'll get this in court.’ And then once the court gets backlogged, then you start hitting the bigger rights and targets, and the court is backlogged to where some of these things, it takes longer for them to get to, and it throws everyone into a panic. They don't know where to go. They get overwhelmed and then they get paralyzed, and they don't know what to do.

(Thinks for a few moments).

AF: This is crazy. And I have to say again, I know I'm probably going to upset some people, but I've always known that Alabama's education system was not great. I did not know how severely undereducated people are in this area until this has happened.

WB: Can you give me an example of that?

AF: Not knowing fundamentals, like civics. For example, no knowing what an executive order is versus what a law is. Not understanding what the Supreme Court is, or what checks and balances are. One of the first things that we did after inauguration was we had a movie night and we invited kids and adults, and what we showed was the Schoolhouse Rock episodes from the 1970s on the government. We did that government series, and then we answered questions. And so, we fully took it back to five-year-old level and started answering questions on it. You had people who, because they were, again, in a bubble, not understanding what a tariff is.

(Thinks some more).

AF: If there's anything that pissed me off about the election— Okay, full disclosure, I'm not a Democrat, I'm not a Republican. I've never been either one of those. I'm far left of that. Yes, Trump became president. Was I shocked or surprised that he became president? No, because our country is inherently racist and misogynistic. It just is. So, I was not surprised that he was elected. Again, I hoped that he wouldn’t, but I was not shocked. What made me mad was the day after the election, the top Google searches, the very first one was, ‘What is a tariff?’ And then the second one was, ‘Can I change my vote?’ Are you kidding?

WB: Yeah.

AF: And everyone is saying things like, ‘Oh God, we're going to be like Hitler!’ No, America is doing what America has always done. Hitler learned from us.

WB: This is something that I actually find very interesting. People compare us to 1930s Germany, and sure, we can go back and forth on that. There are comparisons and similarities. But the thing that I try to stress to people is you don't have to go to 1930s Germany to see this. You can go to 1870s America when Reconstruction was falling.

AF: Yes. You can go to the 1850s with the Fugitive Slave Act. You don't have to go that far geographically to actually see similarities of what we are experiencing now. It's called the Gilded Age. It was the first and second Red Scares. We are literally repeating our history, not anybody else's. We're repeating America's history. And because America did, a lot of people don't realize that Hitler sent his lawyers over here in the 1920s to learn about the indigenous [00:37:30] reservations. Those are concentration camps.

WB: I agree. So, you've done organizing, then, to educate on this. And you hand out education materials. for educational materials. Have there been any specific actions you have done on these issues?

AF: So, veterans rights is one that's really important to me as well. My husband's a veteran of the Iraq War and has a traumatic brain injury. He was blown up basically over there. He does depend on the VA for all of the VA's shitty qualities. It is… it's terrible. But it was a system that was set aside to ensure that a subgroup of our population was taken care of in some way or fashion instead of making it better, instead of funding it more, instead of ensuring that it runs better, the answer for the Republican Party is to defund it even more because it's so much cheaper to bury a veteran than to take care of them. And we have the most veterans than we ever have had because of the twenty plus year Afghanistan campaign and because of Iraq. Our actions were serving as a point of contact for several mutual aids and national organizations, and some international organizations. If there's any kind of legislation that happens down in Montgomery that has to do with increasing benefits, increasing different types of therapies for veterans, we would go down to Montgomery and support it, lend a veteran voice, that kind of thing. We have held plenty of protests in front of the VA clinic on Veterans Day, demanding that the VA provide better healthcare.

WB: Where's the VA clinic here?

AF: It's in Oxford. Next to Lowe's down there on 78. But now on the flip side of it though, we went down there and did a show of solidarity with the VA staff because of them being illegally fired. So that's one of the actions that we did. I started having community meetings to help people not be overwhelmed, to focus people and make sure that resources were getting out. And we found out that there is another group that was meeting as well. And so, I've kind of been back and forth giving them resources, helping them out. And we've done a few protests since. We had done a protest for the National Park Service, again, for the illegal firings over here, just right here on Noble Street.  And that includes the Anniston bus depot. But then you have the Birmingham Civil Rights Museum, that's the sister, and there's only five employees between the two. So because of that, it's not able to stay open as often. I think they're only open on Wednesdays. They're trying to change the hours to be more available. But again, with the cuts and with everything happening, we don't know how long that's going to last. And it also starts to beg the question of these types of monuments the current administration does not want, for several reasons. They don't want people having this history and knowing this history. So we're having to watch it closely and figure out a way of maybe that the city can buy, or the city can upkeep the facility.

WB: With the National Park Service protest, how many people attended? What was the response?

AF: We ended up having about 40 people show up. We had an overwhelmingly positive response. I think we only had two or three people that were kind of like, ‘What is this?’ And, ‘That's wrong.’ We had put a couple of signs out there that weren't necessarily related to the National Park. One was saying how Elon Musk is ‘the immigrant who's taking your job.’ And I guess it was really because this was about them gutting the jobs for the federal workers, but had somebody comment about that. Argued, ‘That's not true, and blah, blah, blah.’ And it was again, another moment though of talking about how someone is so uneducated was like, ‘He's not an immigrant. He came over here legally.’ And it's like, that's not the definition of what an immigrant is, he's still an immigrant, whether illegal or not.

WB: Well, for full disclosure, I was there when that exchange happened. I was recording and reporting because I like to try to cover as much as possible in terms of local social movements. In my opinion, what very much was going on there was the man, who was essentially counter protesting, was saying Elon Musk is not an immigrant because Elon Musk is white. It was a racialized comment.

AF: Yeah, a hundred percent. And so to then, immigrant is used as a racial slur, right? It’s a  way to put down a person of color down who is not from the United States, because apparently if you're white, your status doesn't matter because…

WB: Racism.

AF: Right, because of racism. Right. I mean, this whole idea of you can strip someone of their citizenship or legal status because you want to is so messed up. That means the next Democratic administration could strip Elon Musk of his citizenship. And when you're point that out to people like, ‘Well, no, not him.’ And it's like, so you really just mean this is white supremacy? That's actually what's going on here.

WB: I'd be curious to get your thoughts on something I’ve noticed here. When I talk to people about the local history, like for example the Freedom Riders, people often pass the buck in terms of responsibility. When I point out that people in Anniston burned the buses some will try to argue it wasn’t ‘them’ but it was ‘someone else.’ Like the people who did all the bad things were from another town. So, they will say it was people outside of the community. That it was the rural people who did it. It was the Klan. And by implication they and their families, if they are white, are allowed to remain innocent. Because according to them it was all outsiders who did the bad stuff. Never them.

AF: This gets into something else that I'm teaching as far as activism goes. Our language is so important. Specifically, how we name and blame things. We should be intentional with exactly where we place that blame. So, one thing I've been telling people is— change your language. Stop saying ‘Trump,’ stop saying ‘Elon Musk,’ or ‘DOGE,’ and replace it with ‘Republican.’ Because this is a Republican administration. It’s a Republican Congress. It is a Republican Supreme Court. It is the Republican Party that is doing this. We need to be mindful of this language because when this ends, and it will end, you don't want all the Republicans who voted for all of this to say, ‘Oh, that was just Trump, though.’

WB: Makes sense. Building off of that, can you talk a bit more about your education efforts? Specifically the literature and packets you hand out. You have told me about this before when I stopped in to shop, you said that you decorate the flyers, pamphlets, and reading material with specific fonts and art work. Why is that?

AF: This is something I had learned by working with advocacy groups that combat violence against women. What you do is you  use these pretty fonts, have flowers on the border, make sure they're colorful, print on pretty paper and pretty fonts because typically white males who are of that mindset, they don't really pay attention to pretty paper and pretty fonts. They see it as ‘woman’ or ‘girly’ and therefore ignore it. So this is a way that we can safely get this information into the hands of women and other people that might not be in a safe situation. And so that's why we do that.

WB: Are these flyers and information largely for resources on domestic violence then?

AF: We have a community packet, which is, yes, a full listing of local resources, but also I have a master list of resources that are like with news outlets because our news is often compromised. It gives suggestion for where to find information on social media and that kind of stuff. Another part of the community packet is divestments and alternatives, knowing that our government is owned by corporations. If we can divest from these companies then these corporations could tank, that's our power. And they're going to have to listen to us. They're going to have to make changes to appease us if they want our money back. And so, I have a list of alternatives and divestments, other things to use. I have a page about how to get legal documents, which is a huge thing. It comes from the UN refugee sector. It lists were to get documentation that is needed for the world to know who you are and where you come from. Another is about food. I have a packet on getting enough food for twelve weeks. We don't do doomsday prepping. We don't do hoarding because that causes violence as well. But the packet explains how twelve weeks of food is important because not only is it enough for you but also to sustain a boycott or action or sudden disruption in services.

WB: Thanks for sharing that. What other types of education projects do you have at the store?

AF: Another aspect is just teaching people about the political system. How there are alternatives. Now, most people will sit here and argue, you can't do that in America. We're a two-party system. You're right. And the thing is though, is if we keep using that rhetoric, yeah, we're never going to get out of this. There are a few things that we have to do in this country to get us out of the two-party system. Getting rid of the electoral college, getting rid of Citizens United and institution ranked voting would be beneficial. We can't do that. However, we can negotiate with the Democratic Party, and it needs to be pushed a little bit more to the left. And so everybody else who is independent or whatever understands that we have to work with the Democratic Party because they're actively not trying to take away our Constitutional rights. So that's that packet. It kind of explains it. And then my last packet is the actual activism. That one gets into the meat and bones of what does a revolution look like? It points out a lot of the performative whitewashed types of activism that's going on right now, how to avoid those, and then it lists resources on how things need to be done, how to protest safety. I even have a graphic fun looking one. That's how to prevent the cops from doing their jobs.

WB: Shifting gears a bit, can we circle back to the topic of witchcraft, paganism, etc. As a metaphysical shop how do you relate to these identities and areas of belief? And specifically, I am curious if you have found in the past few decades if there has been an increase in interest and why?

AF: Yes, there’s definitely been an increase. Probably for the past decade, there has been an influx in interest in it. A lot of it has to do with the church, the hypocrisy of the church. So, the Catholic church and all of the sex scandals, but then also the Baptist church and its sex scandals that have come out. People see the hypocrisy of it. The millennial generation, too, are not raising their kids in the church for the most part. And so there is this ability of not being in that bubble and trying to explore other ideas. You have people though, that were raised in the church and they experienced trauma, not just sexual abuse, but they may be gay, and their church absolutely condemns that. And they know that they have a relationship with Christ. They can feel that, but everything else around them is contradictory to it. And so they're trying to figure out their place. Social media has helped with that as well, of sharing those ideas of seeing other cultures and other religions. And then that was a  big push during COVID because you had people who all of a sudden were at home and they couldn't go to church. That bubble kind of cracked and they were able to read, look at other things, hear other things, and they started to say, ‘Okay, yeah, no, I don't agree with my church on this,’ or, ‘No, the church is wrong about that.’ And so they started to pull away from that and start watching shows like The Vikings… which look the first season was great. Loved it. I loved, and it was a decent show and everything. But I have so many people that are like, ‘I did the 23 and Me and I'm 3% Scandinavian. Show me your Viking shit.’ And it's like, okay, we've got a lot  unpack there…. Not that I'm discouraging other people from exploring other things, but to me cultural appropriation is very, very important that we are NOT doing that. And that we are coming from authentic sources, that we are coming at it with an academic kind of perspective. The authors of the religions that I have here, they are of people they talk about. They're written by people of that culture, of that faith… So much of the talk about Vikings is often white supremacy. There is a huge vein of that. I work with the museum in Oslo. I use the books that they recommend to make sure that white supremacy isn't in them.

Related to that,  I'll know when there's a TikTok trend or there's a Facebook trend or something like that because all of a sudden I'll get an influx of people asking for a specific thing. And then it's like, ‘Okay, let me go figure out what's going on.’ An example would be oregano. Oregano. I have herbs here. I make teas and that kind of stuff for people. But you'll get people that just want herbs and they're all food and medicine grade. I was getting low on oregano, which was kind of odd to me because it’s a common kitchen staple. And when I went to go order it, they were back ordered and I'm like, ‘On oregano?’

WB: And was this because of a TikTok trend?

AF: Yes, it was oregano oil! People had found out how beneficial it's to your house to have it. So, then all of a sudden it was like a craze and it was like, ‘okay?’

WB: Right. It's oregano. You can go pick it up at Publix.

AF: Yes, exactly. I was like, what are we doing?

WB: So there are definitely trends and fads wrapped up in some of this. Like the Vikings and spices?

AF: Right. Norse Paganism has definitely been popular.

WB: What else has been a draw for people in the past ten to fifteen years into… I don't know the word for it…  I guess paganism? Metaphysics, maybe?

AF: Well, for the spirituality side of it, it is pagan. But pagan is such a big umbrella term, and you do have people, again, you need to be more specific about it when it comes to what it is that you're wanting to do. Another thing that has happened with people doing the DNA tests is that it has led to people trying to get back to their roots and then figure out their traditions. And so Norse again is probably one of the largest in terms of a gravitational pull to it.

Witchcraft though is different because witchcraft is not a religion. Everybody, all pagan traditions practice witchcraft. Wicca is a religion that encompasses it and that you can practice witchcraft with. So, you don't have to be, if you do witchcraft, it doesn't mean that you are wiccan. If you are wiccan, it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to do all the different things of witchcraft. Wicca also is relatively new when it comes to religions, and it is… it's a collection of European traditions that kind of conglomerated together. And so the witchcraft here in America comes from a lot of traditions from Scotland, Ireland, England, and even into Spanish and Portuguese and Italian backgrounds.

WB: So, it's very European?

AF: Yes. Yes. And one thing that happen is a lot of popular ideas of witchcraft get picked up from Pinterest, TikTok, Facebook, those kind of places, and there's no real emphasis on learning where this witchcraft actually comes from.

Also, I don't like the term ‘witch.’ I don't like to be described as that, because in every language there is a word for witch. In every culture, a witch is someone who does a spiritual practice outside of that culture's mainstream practice. So, an example would be for the indigenous, western medicine is white man's witchcraft. When white men look at indigenous spiritual practices, that's witchcraft, that's demonic. In Judaism, King David went out in the desert and found a witch. She was a witch because she wasn't Jewish. She was from a different culture and practiced something different. So, it's always a derogatory term for someone outside of that culture or that spiritual practice. Now, when you look at that said witch, though, what makes them a witch, and what they are doing is they're a healer. Every single time they're doing some kind of spiritual practice for mental health, physical health, spiritual health, every single one of them are. And so, there is a resurgence of trying to reclaim ‘witch’ to be a good thing. I don't necessarily ascribe to that. I just much rather leave that alone. I’d rather say, ‘Here's a healer.’

WB: So, you prefer to be called a healer?

AF: I would be like a healer, or just say whatever tradition you are. If you're Irish, Pagan. Say, I'm just Irish. I’m Pagan.

WB: Got it.

AF: If you're a Greek, you're Hellenistic. That's what you are. It's getting back to what the actual culture roots are, not just this term.

WB: I think that makes sense. It’s an attempt to get away from this binary of “insider” and “outsider,” center vs. periphery. Is tarot a big one of the things you have seen interest in? Gems? I guess I am asking, what do people buy for their practices?

AF: (Laughs) So, this is going to be controversial. I don't ascribe to the typical hype that's on social media. Crystals are a billion-dollar business. It is. They're pretty stones. When you want to get into the idea that I have people that come in and they pick up stones, they'll put it down, they'll pick up a different one, and they're holding it, and then they'll pick up a different one because they're feeling the vibration or the frequency of the stone. Now, I'm not one to tell somebody they're not experiencing something. That's fascinating to me. That's cool that you can do that. If I pick up a stone, it's just a stone. Gems are not a big thing for me. They're just pretty.

However, where I get annoyed with crystals is watching the business side of it. I incorporate science into it. We have a stone called fluorite. It is green and purple. Now, there's some other variations of colors, but it's green and purple typically together. Traditionally, it is used for focus. It's good for students. It's that kind of thing, clarity of mind. And you might have a regular fluorite and you'll sell it for a few dollars. Well, now you've got people that go, ‘Well, this is green fluoride and it means clarity of your spirit, and I'm going to sell it to you for $3, but here's a purple fluorite. I'm going to sell it to you for $5. And that one's clarity of your heart and emotions.’

It's fucking fluorite. Why are we separating it? Because of money? That's all it is. I've got actual book on minerals and crystals, and so to sit here and watch where scientific meanings and cultural meanings for stones are pushed to the side, so all these extra meanings can be added to it. I find that annoying. And so again, when people come in,I'll absolutely sell you every single one of these stones if that's what you really want. But these new age books that are saying you have to have five different black stones. When black stones mean protection, they may have a tertiary meaning, but basically if what you're looking for is grounding and protection, pick your flavor out of the black stones. They all do the same kind of thing traditionally,

Tarot is a big thing. A lot of people like tarot, and there's a lot of history with tarot. There's a lot of wrong history about tarot as well.

WB: What specifically?

AF: So there is an idea that tarot is a closed practice because of the Romani people. No. That's a racist thing to say. To sit here and relegate tarot to just the Roma when that was used to harm that community is wrong. Yes, they had fortune tellers. Yes, they used tarot cards and crystal balls. But to automatically relegate that and completely skip over the history, that tarot started just as a card game, is bigoted and harmful. The cards started as a game that were hand painted for royalty, and they were given as gifts. People ignore that and completely skip over the Italian origins, and even the French cards that were made.

And this, again, gets into what your belief system is about tarot or how to use 'em. Tarot is not spirits or ancestry or talking to ghosts. Tarot is psychic. It is my energy with your energy. They're just pieces of cardboard. The ‘magic’ is you. It's your intuition. As you read the cards now, the card has meanings, it has symbols, and it has symbolism. To me, it's almost like a sounding board. You may have a question and in your own mind, you just can't figure out the answer to it. So then you pull cards using your intuition to try and answer this question, and the cards might give you a different kind of perspective on it. It's kind of like, ‘Hey, on Thursday you're going to have potentially some trouble with communication.’ Well, now you're forewarned Thursday. I need to watch my communication. So then on Thursday, if nothing is wrong with your communication, is it because the cards were wrong or because your intuition was wrong? No, you knew what to do. So, you changed your own fate with it to a certain extent. Does that make sense?

WB: No, what your saying makes sense. You explain it well. And so, popular sellers then?

AF: Oh, very much. Yeah, we sell a lot of tarot.

WB: Why do you think that is? As you pointed out, tarot has been around for a very long time. Why do you think its popular again?

AF: I have my own theories on it. Part of it is you have collectors. They're gorgeous. You've got a whole bunch of different artists and that kind of stuff making the decks, and they're fun to collect. And so you do have that kind of aspect of it. But also I think a lot of people inherently have this feeling of we are not in control. Capitalism is killing us. And so we are trying to seek and find things that we can control. And to me, I feel like tarot is one of those things where you can sit here and go, this is what's going to happen for me for the next three days.

WB: Its for certainty then?

AF: Yes, and it’s also unfortunately about capitalism though too. With the advent of social media you have people who are making money off of doing tarot readings more than probably they ever have, and they don't have to be good at it. A lot of 'em are just bullshit.

WB: Is that bullshit just bad fortune telling then at that point? Or is it something else?

AF: I guess? Yeah, it is just bad tarot reading. Here at the shop I have a psychic medium, Carrie. She is fantastic at what she does. She teaches classes too. We have an intuition development class here, and we're very, very strict on how we present ourselves in that. We are against scamming. We are there to be transparent. We're hoping that we can kind of dispel this fear around the practice too. We have several customers that show up, and they'll get here and immediately realize what we are and turn around and run right back out the door. ‘Oh no, the psychic stuff. That's demonic.’ So we're trying to help dispel fears around it as well. And so yeah, there's a lot of bad readers out there. We have stuff like that with the dowsing rods that became very popular, and I had people coming in wanting dousing rods because they thought that they could do ‘yes’ and ‘no ‘answers with 'em. That's not how dousing rods work. I literally bought a book that is the 500 year history of divination with dousing rods. It is for finding dead bodies. It is for finding water and things that are lost, and that's it. You can't sit here and use it and go, ‘Will, Bobby Sue, marry me when he gets out of jail? Yes or no?’ that's not what that's for.

And you have people that are using it for those kinds of things. So you see that with the divination world of it's exploitive of people because again, during COVID, people started questioning life. Another theory that I have though too is that we do, as a species, we collectively lost millions of us in a short amount of time. Everybody knew at least somebody who lost somebody to COVID. That's grief, that's uncertainty. And then to sit here and have an administration in a government that is suggesting some of the most ridiculous ways to combat it with injecting bleach and UV lights, it's just like what? That's uncertainty. And so, there you have it. Trauma from the church, can't rely on them. And then trauma from the government, can't rely on them to give us good science or to tell us what direction we need to go in. So then you start to find other ways to explain your situation, explain your feelings, explain your lack of control and that sort of thing. And so, I think that's why this has exploded. Yes, in the past ten years, but especially in the last five years.

WB: Final question, as a metaphysical shop, are you in conversation with the other metaphysical shops in the region or nationally? Is there a community or is it kind of everyone doing their own thing?

AF: Yes and no. It's interesting. Since 2020 there were like three other shops that had popped up and then they didn't make it and shut down. Why we lasted? I don't really know, other than the fact that we're a little more, I guess, neutral… or that we represent everyone. So, we didn't pigeonhole ourselves. Some of 'em were just doing hoodoo, and then that didn't really last really well. Others were just doing witchcraft and the Pinterest witchcraft stuff, and that didn't last. But we're kind of open to all of that and educate, and again, have community events and that kind of stuff that aren't necessarily related to metaphysics. I even have a band book section as part of our activism. But yes, I work with other metaphysical stores. There are a few though that don't work with us.

We have a few that will follow and then copy what we do. We've had some that tried to do active harm to us, be it because they thought that it would uplift their business. But for the most part, we all kind of work together. Birmingham has a good community of 'em. We go over there and shop over there. We refer customers to each other. Again, with me having herbs, there's a couple of stores over there that have herbs. If they don't have one that I might have, they'll refer a customer out this way and vice versa. I don't sell Blue Lotus. It's a critically endangered flower, and so I don't sell it. But there's other shops that do.

And then it's the same thing in Atlanta. There's a bookstore over there that I kind of grew up in, which was the Phoenix and Dragon Bookshop, and I refer people over there all the time. So we do work together on that front. But then also, like I said, there's others that isolate themselves because they're more capitalism driven.

And with my store in particular every penny I make goes right back into the store, be it through a holding events or just inventory, that kind of thing. I also work with nothing but really small distributors. If I can get a book directly from the author, that's who I go to. My incense, while it's a mainstream incense, I get it from a family in India. I work with their small business. Having those kinds of relationships kind of helps even with the tariff situation that's going on right now.

WB: Thanks for your time!

AF: Thank you! I hoped I answered all of your questions.

(Laughs)

I know I can definitely go on tangents!