The Boston Globe ran a feature on pioneering American Wiccan, Laurie Cabot and her original “Witch Shoppe” in Salem, opened in 1971. It begins:
‘Laurie Cabot, the woman who started Salem’s modern witch movement, never wanted to live there.
She pooled money with a friend to leave Boston after a divorce, and circumstances led them to Salem in 1971.
‘Once there, the 38-year-old Cabot opened a shop. It was called simply “The Witch Shoppe.” At the time, there was no need to be more specific. There were no witch shops, and there weren’t vendors selling pentacle jewelry, herbs intended for magical use, or other items for her shop to carry.
‘“I had to make everything myself,” said Cabot, who now teaches witchcraft classes and sells products ‘online. “I found an herbal shop in New Hampshire, they helped me, but everything else [I did myself]. Even my potions—I had to get old bottles, I couldn’t find modern bottles.”
Read the whole article:
https://www.boston.com/travel/history/2017/10/31/how-salems-first-witch-shop-started-a-movement/.
