We recently connected with Frey StormCrow and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Frey, thanks for joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

I was started off in Seminary when I was young, I always had an interest in religion, I just had not found the right one yet. I met Judith ‘Jade’ DeFrain when I was 16 and started studying under her in the 90s, not to just be part of an order necessarily, but to learn how to run an occult shop. I had an interest in plant medicines, poisonous plants, and hermatics. I ended up officially working for her in the early 2000s.
In the world of metaphysics, it is the natural order of things to keep traditions alive and pass wisdom onto the next generation. What better way to keep that going than to start my own business with my own vision of what a shop should look like.
When I was in college I started making custom recipes for practitioners. My first official product, packaged and labeled, was graveyard dirt. I registered the business and had Martinique Louise Fisher, my now wife, illustrate the Logo. From there we started building the business together, me with a focus on plants, hermetics, Martinique with her focus on folk traditon and European history.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Our products are all handmade, every skill we have ever learned as artists, be it painting, wood working, or making recipes, is used to make our tools. We handmake our planetary squares out of proper metals, hand pour our beeswax candles, carve our wands out of different woods, write and blend all of our recipes for our incense and oils, and take special orders for practitioners of a multitude of backgrounds. Our specialty other than making custom items is writing spells. We hold classes after hours and invite teachers and speakers from many different practices to share their knowledge.
Our focus is on community building, we run our own coven out of the shop, as well as host other events for different orders and covens around California. We host fairs four times a year that showcase over 50 vendors, and hold both public and private rituals around the Wheel of the Year.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Since 2012 we have been doing fairs, usually Pagan Prides, around Southern California on the side and working. In 2015 we ended up homeless. We were already living hand-to-mouth, and the complex we were living in decided they were going to jack up the rent, they refused to renew anyone’s lease, and only gave people a month’s notice. At the time, the ‘homeless problem’ in California was on every media outlet’s mind, and people were begging for rent control. Section 8 was a two-year wait minimum. Martinique was working as a substitute teacher, I was making products. We ended up on the street. We decided the safest bet was to get out of the city, we bought a tent and lived in the RedWoods Bureau of Land Management areas. We set up an altar, asked the gods for protection, and I began working on my personal Book of Shadows and Cording system, and we started carving out our classes, a plan for a shop, and a plan to make it out of homelessness. We waited for Martinique’s last paycheck from the school district and got the most run-down Ford motorhome you have ever seen. We called him Morty and he was our home for the next year and a half. Our best bet was to go back to where she had work now that we had a safer roof than a tent. We were constantly called on and moved off by cops, and we ended up parking in a neighborhood populated by people who were not citizens. That stopped the cop calls but did not stop the harassment from the occasional gang member. Martinique continued working as a substitute teacher, I edited videos for our channel and made candles and oils using the generator. We hid money from her student loan collectors until we had enough to open a small shop in a run-down strip. We lived in the back of the shop until we made enough to live a close-to-normal life.

Have you ever had to pivot?

Pivot is just a part of business and life. Adjustments always have to be made, sometimes it is adjusting prices, creating new items, and not being afraid to try something new. When we came into the scene, there was more of a sense of secrecy, closed covens, and hiding information that was usually already published and readily available if you knew where to look. There did not seem to be a strong sense of community, fairs felt like a place to make money then return to your corner when the day was done. Most different groups didn’t seem to talk or come together as much, and it seemed fractured. We hated that. We were always more giving and open about information or where to look for information. While there are definitely things that should be kept hidden like original recipes, private Work, coven rituals, or secret society connections, the things that are readily available and have been for centuries in a philosophical library do not fall into those categories.
It was the community that had to pivot more than us.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.freyshermeticsupplies.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/freyshermeticsupplies
• Youtube: youtube.com/c/freyshermeticsupplies

Image Credits
Photos of Frey’s Hermetic Supplies by Coven member Asleifr