Beware the Witches of Hollywood

Tinseltown’s ‘Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble’ shop.

By MARY FRANCES GURTON, L.A. Independent Staff Writer

Got magick?

At Panpipes Magickal Marketplace in Hollywood, factions from every sector of the occult underworld can find what they need for paranormal or supernatural magic — black or white — witchcraft and sorcery, wizardry, astrology, alchemy, practical mysticism, voodoo, divination and fortune-telling.

“We cater to all traditions,” says owner Vicky Adams, 38, dressed a la Elvira at the shop’s Cahuenga Boulevard location. “Everyone has a right to practice what they feel, what’s right for them.”

Pagan symbology dominates throughout the store and is joined by that of Nordic and Celtic rites denoting the confluence of wide-ranging influences at what is known as the world’s oldest occult shop, first opened in 1961.

Jymie Darling, 36, and Adams, partners in the store and in life, have owned the shop since 1998, but both have been involved with it for much longer than that.

And their passion for the occult has existed for even longer, stemming from the years each spent at Catholic schools, Adams in Australia and Darling in Los Angeles.

“I take the ‘Wow’ out of the occult,” says Darling, the store’s lead alchemist whose doctorate in Ancient Religions from Cambridge University informs her explanation of occult history and the pair’s philosophy of tolerance and open-mindedness.

“The basic law of physics is that energy never dies, it just changes formats. So when a psychic or diviner speaks to someone who’s died, they are simply speaking to a different format. Human beings are basically an energy format.”

The philosophies of all religions, pagan, Christian, and otherwise overlap and influence each other throughout history, the pair stresses.And just how did two good Catholic girls wind up in a place like this? “You get out of Christianity or other organized religions,” says Adams, who explains that the Australian Catholicism she was exposed to focused on the strength of women, “because you don’t want to be directed by fear or because you want to find a way to have a direct contact with the divinity.”

Darling said a teacher at the Catholic high school she attended in the Valley told an entire class there was little difference between a book of Grimm’s Fairy Tales and the Bible.

“He wasn’t there long after that,” said Darling, her tousle of red hair and thick black eyeliner a clear indicator of her characterization by many as a witch, a term she said is as often misused as it is misunderstood. “But the bottom line is there are a profound amount of similarities between the religions. All are right, and all are not right.

“I prefer to be referred to as a occultist.”

The owners have literally been terrorized as a result of those misunderstandings, even having bottles thrown at them when they leave the shop, among other assaults.

A “Biker for Christ” came into the store, smashing up the glass counters while telling them they would burn in hell forever for their beliefs, Darling said.

“Every Friday someone comes and puts a pile of Christian tracts under the door,” says Adams. “What I don’t like is [feeling] ‘Why can’t I do what is right for me, when I let you do what is right for you?”

Meanwhile, the pair have been used as consultants for TV shows and movies such “X-Files,” and most recently “Pirates of the Caribbean,” for which they helped the producers accurately portray various voodoo scenes.

Actress Patricia Arquette, star of NBC’s hit series “Medium,” is rumored to be a regular.

Of the many difficulties that come with being a practitioner of her variety, Darling says, “If I can change or open one mind about what we really do, I feel that I am a complete success. I’m out of the broom closet, literally.”