Editor’s note: Today’s article briefly mentions domestic violence.
GREENVILLE, NC – “My personal practice is a syncretized blend of Hermetic philosophy, Neopagan pantheism, Wiccan ceremonial techniques and mythology, Witchcraft, and the occult sciences,” says Heron Michelle, a Witch, author, and owner of The Sojourner Whole Earth Provisions in Greenville, North Carolina. “It is focused on achieving balance, happiness, and effectiveness in life. I’ve come to call it the Pentacle Path of Modern Witchcraft.”
Michelle is also the high priestess of the Sojo Circle, a Reiki master, tarot reader, clairvoyant, and author of the book Elemental Witchcraft: A Guide to Living a Magickal Life through the Elements.
The Wild Hunt‘s Jake Leibowitz recently sat down for a conversation with Michelle about her experiences as a practitioner, teacher, author, and business owner.
Heron Michelle [courtesy]
The Wild Hunt (TWH) – What drew you to this particular path?
Heron Michelle (HM) – Since I was a small child, imagery and cultural allure of the Witch and of magick always spoke to me. I craved a divinity within nature, and an interconnection with a Great God/dess of creation.
Mainly, the things that drew me to Witchcraft were the cooperation, high ideals, ethics and personal sovereignty. That seemed the antidote to the hateful enslavement preached within the Evangelical Christian cult in which I was raised in Taylors, South Carolina.
I discovered Wicca and Neopaganism when I was 18 and have pursued that different kind of co-creative partnership with Divine Love for 30 years now. Ultimately, I didn’t find what I was looking for among the Witching traditions to which I had access; however, each tradition held nuggets of what felt like the Truth and were effective.
In a similar eclectic style to forefathers like Gerald Gardner, I gathered those nuggets, syncretized them, and then forged a new tradition. Through writing publicly about it, teaching those mysteries and practicing those techniques with others for a decade, that path was honed into current form through the trial and error of first-hand experience.
TWH – How and when did you make the decision to open your own store?
HM – I decided to open The Sojourner near the end of 2007, during the harvesting and integration part of my Great Work of Magick that year. 2007 was my first year of magickal work following my first self-initiation into Witchcraft. I dedicated my Great Work studies to elemental fire that year and whoo-boy, was I transformed!
Shortly after that dedication, I was physically assaulted in public by my father-in-law, over my protection of my young children. Then my mother died unexpectedly, stripping me of my excuses, and thrusting me into a whole new level of sovereignty. With the help of her spirit-guidance, I finally realized I was in an oppressive marriage, which I ultimately ended.
Grief taught me so much about what was important in life. By November, I realized that I had to “be the change I wanted to see in the world.” I had to be the one to “light a candle, rather than curse the darkness.” I was 33 years old that year, and I finally grew up and stopped waiting for someone else to create the world I wanted to live in. I realized at long last what my Sacred Mission, my Highest Divine Will, was supposed to be in this lifetime: build the Witching community and live this Witching life out loud and proudly in public.
With the inheritance from my mother’s estate, I devoted my work and resources to creating a safe, public haven for folks like myself that was easy to find. It took many more miracles, much magick, and the hard work of many witches to open the doors of the shop by March of 2009. We’ve now been open for 13 years!
TWH – What was that process like?
HM – The process of opening the shop took a long time. It was complicated, arduous, and way more expensive than I expected, both financially and personally. Gathering up Witches for any cooperative purpose is like herding cats — lots of hissing pride, posturing, and in-fighting to navigate.
My naivety is what started the process. My fiery divine purpose (and no small helping of my own pride) kept it going, even when things seemed impossible. I paid many tuition payments to the school of “learning things the hard way.”
I also joke that for the store to open and survive the first eight years, four people had to die! Every time we faced having to close, an elderly family member of mine would pass away, and I’d inherit just enough money to pay off our debts, infuse money into new inventory, and pay my bills at home so I could go a little longer without a salary.
My divine guides took excellent care of me and the shop in many creative ways to make all this possible. The details of those stories each affirm to me that magick is absolutely real, and this work is in alignment with their Divine Will.
TWH – How has your personal practice influenced the way you run your business?
HM – My Witchcraft practice is based on cooperation. If I were to pick a style of governance that enacts my “highest ideals” of Divine Love, it would be social democracy. I try to model our corporation on that kind of acceptance, sovereignty, and shared partnership among equals. We are well-known as a safe haven for LGBTQ+ folks and supply many books and pride products to support them.
I call our staff the Sojo Dream Team; we are diverse in our fields of magickal expertise and demographics. As profits improved, I raised all our salaries up together, including profit-sharing bonuses. I also contracted with a sustainability consultant, who helped us establish rigorous recycling programs and earth-friendly business practices. Our apothecary manager will not stock any endangered plant materials, and we nudge our customers towards more culturally and environmentally sensitive options. Obviously, we do not carry the books from any Pagan authors known to have white supremacist sympathies – which are sadly too numerous.
TWH – Do you find that there are inherent challenges with being both an active practitioner and a business person?
HM – I do struggle with the tensions that arise between my personal practice and the “general store” approach to my business. Our motto is “Equipping the paths less traveled.” That can refer to lots of different paths, many of which aren’t exactly compatible with each other. We try not to play “gatekeeper” by limiting what we sell according to our personal beliefs.
For example, most of our customers are of African descent, and so we largely cater to the magickal traditions with African roots like Hoodoo, Vodou, and Conjure. I’m not especially knowledgeable about those traditions, so I’ve hired staff who are themselves practitioners and can advise on their use. I let them make those purchases to ensure those products are authentic and appropriate to the needs of those practitioners. We let demand dictate supply, to some extent.
However, the longer I’m in the metaphysical business, the less tolerance I have for some of the fringier “New Age” things that I know are designed to be the highest profit margin snake oil. Also, the deeper into my own practice I dig, the less I’m attached to the physical trappings of Witchcraft. If a customer were to ask me “which of these products do I need to be a Witch like you?”, my most honest answer would be “Nothing. You need none of these things to be a Witch like me.” But I also know that I got where I am today because in the beginning, I cultivated relationships with all these physical friends of plant, stone and bone, using all this aesthetic equipment. I know these “things” can be keys to opening up pathways in the mind and spirit.
Witchcraft is ultimately about our interconnected relationship within the material world. Then we work past the illusion of material separateness into our spiritual unity. All the baby steps between those two awarenesses are valid and necessary.
The front door of The Sojourner Whole Earth Provisions in Greenville, SC, with Pride and Black Lives Matter flags [courtesy]
TWH – You’ve had some, let’s call them, “adventures,” with certain community members at the store. What kinds of situations have you been dealing with, and how have they been resolved?
HM – Oh yes! Many adventures. The street preacher whose visit in 2017 was covered by The Wild Hunt never returned. Our conversation has become the stuff of legend around the store, but for some reason he doesn’t invite a rematch. Alas.
During the 2020 election cycle, a young man placed a large yellow “Antifa Hunting Permit” sticker on our front door, which we construed as a threat of violence and a hate-crime, so we called the police. Their investigation revealed a Trump-supporting youth whose feelings were hurt when he asked for a Trump campaign buttons and our associate told him coldly that we do not carry any campaign merch at all. He placed the sticker as a joke. He was determined to pose no real risk to us. The DA and SBI dropped their case against him as it didn’t rise to the legal definition of a hate crime. Needless to say, it really scared us at first.
TWH – Protests aside, how would you describe the relationship between your business and the community?
HM – Generally speaking, I think we are accepted and appreciated by those who matter. For example, during a recent conversation with a physician, I mentioned that I owned the store, and she gushed with gratitude that we were there, because she has a transgender child who is exploring Pagan religion. Despite her being a Christian, she could bring them to shop with us, and they felt accepted, welcomed, and our presence affirmed their rightful place within our small-town society. It also affirmed that their spiritually diverse family could all share in coexistence because look at all these diverse books coexisting on these Sojo shelves!
But on the same weekend, while our general manager tended the register, a group of young men walked by the shop, whose facade is still dressed in rainbow LGBTQ+ pride decorations, and shouted “QUEERS!” into our doorway. She rushed outside and confronted them, demanding that if they have something to say, they can come inside and talk about it directly. Her ire scared them into scampering around the corner. I hope they learned a valuable lesson about taunting Sojo witches; we do not stand idly by and let hatefulness go unchecked.
TWH – You recently published a book, Elemental Witchcraft: A Guide to Living a Magickal Life Through the Elements. What was the genesis of this project?
HM – The genesis of the book goes back to a commission I received from Hermes and Aphrodite, my divine guides, who had years before tasked me to write these books. For years I’d said I would, but the project intimidated me, and so I just kept researching and researching instead.
Then in 2018 I specifically dedicated my Great Work project to submitting a manuscript to Llewellyn by the end of the year. In April, Heather Greene, who was newly an acquisitions editor for Llewellyn, reached out to me to ask if I’d consider submitting a manuscript. It felt to me like Hermes took matters into his own hands and put my name into her mind.
Anyway, I pitched a three-book series which laid out The Pentacle Path of Modern Witchcraft according to a Great Work Wheel of the Year calendar that I’d developed for use in The Sojo Circle. It has three layers of engagement: Elemental Mysteries, Lunar Esbats, and Solar Sabbats. And so those practices will comprise the series.
TWH – You have also been teaching classes at Pagan conferences. Is that something you had done before?
HM – I first presented my Great Work calendar and the Theology of Perfect Love workshops that I’d been developing with Aphrodite’s inspiration at the 2015 Templefest Lammas festival with the Temple of Witchcraft in New Hampshire. I offered them again at the first Mystic South in 2017, where I met Heather Greene. I submit to several festivals and conferences every year and enjoy traveling to discuss esoteric ideas with others. This year I’ll have headlined at the Florida Pagan Gathering Beltane Festival, and the Phoenix Festival Autumn Meet in Bell Florida this October.
TWH – Do you have any advice for people interested in writing and publishing?
HM – Start with a blog and hone your craft in short article form. Learn all the mysteries of academic research and proper citation – Chicago Style footnotes, rather than endnotes, is currently in vogue. Take up the magickal tools of Word and Canva programs, because you’ll be doing a lot of word processing and graphic design for yourself. Write about your passion, but don’t bother regurgitating the same old hackneyed stuff. Contribute something new to the evolving Craft of the Wise so we continue to evolve, rather than stagnate in fundamentalism and dogma.
TWH – What’s next for you?
HM – Right now, I’m most focused on the survival of my business, The Sojourner Whole Earth Provisions, whose sales have been in rapid decline for the past 15 months due to the economic recession. We’re busy building and promoting our e-commerce website, www.thesojo.com, to serve the esoteric community throughout the United States.
We’re also busy producing and promoting my on-line Elemental Witchcraft course in support of my first book. The course has students from all over the US and Europe! With the new turning of the Wheel gearing up again in August, we hope new students towel enroll to begin their Pentacle Path Journey with us.
I’ve been in the studio producing all the book’s guided meditations to the original musical compositions of my partner, Pranavam Das. Those recordings are part of the class experience we’re offering on-line, and their power and beauty blow me away.
The in-person retreats we had planned as part of my book’s classes have all been canceled. Those have moved entirely on-line now, but our production values have greatly increased. So far, we’ve invested $25K in the production of that 15 month-long course, to great feedback from our students.
All this while, hopefully, finishing the first draft of my second book, Lunar Witchcraft for Llewellyn.
Our coven, The Sojo Circle, is also offering public Grand Sabbat gatherings in-person this year for Beltane, Lammas and Samhain, at a beautiful retreat center in Tarboro, NC. These are offered as part of our Great Work intention to serve the larger pagan and witchcraft community again, since covid shut us down in 2020.
If all of that doesn’t kill me first, I hope The Sojourner will make it through this current economic struggle to serve for another 14 years in business.
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