#treadwells

If you’re in the U.K. and you have the money to buy new books why not consider supporting an independent business like treadwells? They haven’t asked me to put this on here but honestly their customer service is impeccable both online and instore. I have only visited in person a few times but the staff have always been naturally friendly.

It was nice opening this parcel to the smell of the free incense stick and the personalised handwritten note about the book I have just purchased. And a free bookmark always comes in handy too!

You don’t get this sort of personal touches from a company like Amazon. And their prices are fair and competitive too.

After much waiting the Skeptical Occultist Journal volume four is now in hand. I have begun trimming the custom hand marbled dust jackets and packing orders and they should start going out in the post at the end of the week.

After the mess with the printers over the winter it is a great way to start spring. I have reopened orders on the site and they are already going fast. Thank you to everyone who waited through the storm with us.

This issue is fantastic, crowned with a triumvirate of women making great things happen in the world of occult books. In this issue you will find interviews with Erzebet Barthold from Hadean Press, Christina Harrington of Treadwells bookshop in London, and Jane Cox from Troy Books - each gives us a great deal of hope about the future of occult publishing.

Packed full of book reviews, literary pieces, tales of occult gatherings and bits of near forgotten folklore this issue of the Skeptical Occultist may be the very best! Despite the mad rambles of this old wizard.

Treadwell's Books has been a part of London occult life for more than a decade. A center for London's disparate and motley occultists, witches, and magicians of every ilk and path to celebrate and meet.

Between weekly events, book launches and tarot readings Treadwell's is a home away from home for occultists the world over. From regular lectures and presentations by Phil Hine, Michael Staley, Hannah Sanders, Chris Josiffe, Robert Wallis, Owen Davies and dozens more to walking tours of the British Museum and Bloomsbury's occult history it's a place to linger, searching for that rare bit of booklore, meeting others on their own path. Some incredible people have found their way through Treadwell's door, a couple of friend's even found each other and eventually married because of Treadwell's. Its a magical place in many ways.

Having moved seven years ago from its first location in Covent Garden it is now tucked away down Store Street in Bloomsbury. A bigger space upstairs and downstairs lends itself to more events, with a comfortable downstairs that is even available for lettings for various group functions, public and private.

Behind Treadwell's is proprietor and "presiding spirit" Christina Oakley Harrington. In between her sold out Magical Bloomsbury Walking Tour and otherwise busy schedule I managed to chat with her about London occulture, her passion for books and running a bookshop in 21st century London.

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Christina Oakley Harrington of Treadwell's

While Treadwell's has only been in London since 2003 it seems to be a fixture that is much more firmly rooted in the occulture of London than its teenaged years belie. How have you come to be so central to the occult community of London?

Gosh, are we really? I have to give the credit to the wonderful people who've come through the doors of Treadwells for that. I've been hugely inspired by London's history of occult communities and in particular, the exciting occult renaissance of the 1880s and 1890s, when the Order of the Golden Dawn and the Theosophical Society had hundreds of members and there were gatherings, rituals and conversations happening every night of the week. I saw that such a renaissance might be possible in our own day if there was a bookshop which was actually a meeting place -- and I saw from history that such a place needed to offer a combination of hospitality, friendship-building and events space.

We hosted our first event within a few months of opening our doors. Since then, it's never been fewer than three nights a week that we're here. That's why we can't open any earlier than 11 am during the week and at weekends we certainly couldn't start any earlier than noon. All our late nights here!

What misbegotten adventure led you to opening an occult bookshop?

I got involved in paganism and the esoteric community in 1987 in the US, where I lived for eleven years. In 1989 I moved to London. It was the Atlantis Bookshop under the ownership of Caroline Wise which was the hub of activity and occult community creativity -- she was a force of nature, hosting conferences, promoting groups, advertising pub moots, and generally making me (and other young people) welcome and feel so inspired. Through her we got to meet magical orders, attend rituals, learn about magic from practitioners. She kept the channels flowing. If you went into her shop, she'd bombard you with recommendations, hand-made fliers, posters and postcards. So I opened Treadwells just as she was retiring from owning Atlantis, and felt that in that regard, she passed on the baton to us. Caroline's been a huge supporter of Treadwells and she's my personal inspiration of what an occult bookshop owner should be.

Do you collect books yourself?

I do! My collection is pretty eclectic. I don't have the completist gene, so I don't need to own full sets of things, mercifully. Then I get bored. I collected all of Dion Fortune's first editions, then once I had the full set, I didn't care anymore, so I sold them. I now have her work in paperback, which I've marked up with my marginal notes and personal opinions in the front and rear covers. So I work most of my books pretty hard. It's from my days as an historian, that I have opinions on what I'm reading and want to debate with the authors, or agree with them. So the margins of my books show that.

In the corner of my study is a shelf of books mentioning Treadwells, signed by their authors. Authors sometimes mention the shop in their novels, or in their guidebooks. Occasionally students and scholars mention Treadwells in the acknowledgments if we've helped them with their research - and that's so lovely. We have a commitment to assisting scholarly research where we can.

My collection is a working library of books containing ideas I love, historical research that inspires me, and lots of poetry -- which I use in contemplative reading and adopt into rituals I write. Big subjects I read are witchcraft, sapphic writers from Sappho through the 1920s, Renaissance planetary magic, and biographies of magicians of previous centuries. I've got an entire room for my books at home, and most often there are lots of them piled up on the desk with bookmarks stuck in, and intermingled are my various notebooks with quotes scrawled from the books I'm reading.

You mentioned a background as a historian, were you an academic before becoming a bookseller?

I was! I was a medieval historian. I taught for eleven years at a college of the University of Surrey. My PhD was at University College London with supplementary study at Jesus College, Oxford. The links between the world of scholarship and magical practice have grown wonderfully over the past fifteen years, so I relish reading the recent academic articles and studies of medieval magical texts and practice.

Do you recall the first book of, or on, magic you remember owning? Not a library book, but something that was your own?

I am sure I had children's books with witches as a very young child, as I was crazy about witches, and always wanted to try to do spells, and I even pretended to be able to fly (I had a children's storybook called No Flying in the House). However, I was very taken with a book whose name I can't recall, which I took from my parents' bookshelves, on superstitions and charms. I would copy the best charms -- in my opinion -- into a notebook, which I called my spellbook. I must have been about six, seven years old....

What rare items have come through Treadwells shelves over the years?

I'm so fortunate to see treasures coming through here. We have had a good smattering of Aleister Crowley first editions, Gerald Gardner first editions and books signed by Kenneth Grant. These are the staples of occult rare bookselling. But I love the offbeat stuff - we've got awesome zines. Zines are overlooked but are truly collectible as they're snapshots of the occult community at a particular moment, at the working coal-face, as it were. A faintingly exciting moment was when we got a very early Rider-Waite tarot deck, from a lady who had it in her attic, and had inherited it from her grandmother. We had people coming in just to look at it before we sold it to its current owner - during those two weeks we were honoured to be able to let tarot-lovers view it and appreciate it.

Some rare items are new - we've launched very limited edition items here -- nocturnal parties for books which are individually consecrated and inscribed and of which only one or two hundred copies are made. Those events are very magical, as it's just a small group of guests, lots of incense billowing, and good red wine flowing.

How has occult bookselling and publishing changed from your perspective over the last 14 years?

Bookselling now is a harder living than even twenty years ago, with London rents being high and with people having the option of purchasing on Amazon. But it's still vibrant, and getting even moreso. Reading occult literature inspires people to want to practice and meet others -- that's where the bookshop is crucial, and always will be. A bookseller is a curator, an advisor, and a bit of a therapist even, at times. I love that it's a continuity, a continuity of over 200 years.

Has the environment changed since the store moved to its current location several years back? Do you feel the community has grown?

We've been here at Store Street for seven years, having moved here after seven years in Covent Garden. I find it hard to believe we've been in Store Street just as long as we were in the old address. So uncanny! The community is different here than there -- and well, times change. In 2003 there was a tight connected community of people, and newcomers entered that network of people, socially. Now, it's much more open, less a community than a wider base of many many individuals who have overlapping interests. They will meet likeminded people at more niche events. I think it's because the era of subcultures is largely over, or so it seems to me. But Treadwells itself is a kind of community of regulars -- we get to know people whose vibe is in tune with ours and they keep coming back so next thing you know, we know all their kids' names and are invited to their art openings. But we are keen not to behave like a clique. So many occult-oriented people were outsiders at school that honestly, we don't need to replicate that in adulthood. A friendly gesture and a welcoming hello for our customers and new acquaintances: that's essential.

So many occultists I know scattered around the world have stories to tell about Treadwell's, visits on trips, meeting future spouses there, finding some bit of rarity they had long sought. Any insights into the future of occult bookselling in London and in general? Where does the plot take us from here?

I'm very excited about a new bookshop/occult event space in Seattle, Mortlake & Co, run by a wonderful chap named William Kiesel (of Ouroboros Press fame). It's got not only a range of rare books, but it also hosts intimate, intellectually-engaged soirees. I think occult bookselling is at its most exciting when it overlaps, not with the New Age, but with history and anthropology. By which I mean to say, when we widen our interest from the practice itself to include the people and the cultures that produced it. As an example, if you you love Enochian magic, check out Elizabethan court life. If you are drawn to hoodoo, learn about how African Americans lived in the era of slavery. If you practice traditional witchcraft, read a book on old cunningmen.

Any upcoming events or releases you would like to mention?

I'm particularly proud of our commitment to traditional, classic tarot reading. The art of reading the cards takes over a decade to master, but one can learn enough to have a meaningful experience in a single day. We offer one-day workshops, eight-week courses and even intermediate brush-up days. Tarot cards came out of the Italian Renaissance, so the symbolism is rich and deep, and it's the same symbol code you find embedded in Renaissance art. If you study the tarot cards, your trips to art museums suddenly become much more exciting.

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Discover Treadwell's Bookshop for yourself:

Golden Dawn: Hidden History – 8th July 2019

An Ankh, once belonging to Reginald Gardner, who was one of the founding chiefs of Whare Ra.

To Treadwells last Monday for an evening entitled “Golden Dawn: Hidden History,” featuring a talk by GD expert Dr Tony Fuller. The small meeting room was packed (the event was sold out). I noticed a large number of dodgy characters from the London occult scene (i.e. people I knew!)lurking in the audience,…

The inaugural Magickal Women Conference took place last week in London, on the first, sweltering day of June, and I was lucky enough to attend this ensorcelled summit, lipstick on and press pass in tow. 

This was a landmark occasion in occult x academic (occademic?) circles, a groundbreaking gathering of female experts from various disciplines and traditions. So many magical women (and their men friends) under one roof! Little wonder then that the air was palpable with excitement when I arrived, stepping through the bustle of the foyer. 

Tickets for the event at South Kensington’s Queensgate Center – a huge, bright, (accessible) rabbit warren of a venue – promptly sold out, and since most of the master classes and workshops were at full capacity, I spent the majority of the day in the main hall, drinking in the combined wisdom of the day’s speakers.

[Rebecca Beattie on the nature mystic novels of Mary Webb and Sylvia Townsend Warner] 

There was a wealth of occultural knowledge on show throughout the day. My own personal highlights included the opening speech by esoteric doyenne Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki, who gave us levity (“I’ve done ritual dress and I’ve done ritual undress”) and gravity in equal measure. I was deeply moved by Ashcroft-Nowicki’s words on what it means to survive. She urged us to think about our ancestors spiritual and genetic alike (a theme echoed throughout the day, in other talks): “We are here today because of those who came before us.”

As a working-class witch who spends a great deal of time thinking about lineages of survival, I appreciated this affirmation. I was grateful for writer, speaker and Secret Lore of London editor Caroline Wise’s comments on class privilege during her talk (on Fellowship of Isis founder Olivia Robertson). As a queer witch, I was also glad to hear Wise highlight the lesbian women who were  – and perhaps continue to be – marginalized by Wicca’s historical emphasis on heterosexual hierarchies within priest x priestess-led covens. 

Keynote speaker Christina Harrington-Oakley (founder of Treadwells bookshop) also touched on privilege, focussing on issues of property, ownership and leadership (#WhoOwnsTheLease) in both historical and contemporary occult communities, using the Battle of Blythe Road as an example. I was thrilled to hear her thoughts on power and gender in occult circles and how she – and we – might navigate toxic masculinity when it rears its ugly. She followed this up with a poignant reality check on the many obstacles facing the female practioners of my generation: growing wealth disparity; precarious housing; and a lack of IRL magical spaces we might access, let alone own. I enjoyed her nod to “pushing back the furniture” and the way women continue to map an arcane sphere over the domestic one. 

[Treadwells’ Christina Harrington-Oakley, giving the keynote speech. Photo credit: Jenn Zahrt] 

While Harrington-Oakley emboldened us to reclaim our ground, Shamanic practitioner Caitlin Matthews inspired us to find our song. When a logistical set-back temporarily halted her talk, Matthews’ showed us how an unplanned interruption might be transformed into a moment of transcendence, uniting us all in spontaneous, wordless song. What a thrill, to fill that cavernous white hall with the rising thrum of our collective voices! If Matthews invited us to send our song into the world, Alkistis Dimech (dancer, choreographer and Scarlet Imprint founder) prompted us to embody our magic via a rousing speech on anatomy, movement, science, sex, gender and “the occult body, which is the female body…the overlooked female body.” Like Ashcroft-Nowicki, Dimech is also concerned with survival; she was the sole speaker I encountered who referenced the very real threat of human extinction. Dimech’s presentation was both salutary and a call-to-arms, and I found myself delightfully overwhelmed by the time the afternoon drew to a close, giddy with inspiration, flush with new ideas and in the spellbinding company of new friends. I’m sure everyone who attended this lovingly curated event felt the same way.