Dear friends of The Raven’s Wing Magical Co-op,
We have painful news to share with you all. Rather than bury the lede, here is the situation upfront: we have come to the decision, as a cooperative, to close the doors on our Oakland shop at 536 Grand Avenue. Sunday, May 21st, is our last day of operation.
We let you know in our last newsletter that we had been struggling through a downturn in sales, & so many of you turned out to show your support with your kindness, your dollars, and your magicks. We are overflowing with gratitude for your generosity!! Thank you, thank you, and thank you again.
Even with your outpouring, though, things remain dire. We came to this decision after a lot of discussion, many brilliant ideas shared and workshopped, and many tears shed over the future of this sacred space. It is not an easy - or ideal - choice to make. But we made it together, in consensus, with deep love and trust for one another and for the magick we’ve created together in this space.
It hurts to have to announce this. It hurts to shutter the location that has held us all so lovingly for so many years. Oakland is the land that saw The Raven’s Wing born as the tiny chick that was The Sacred Well, the town that held our adolescence as The Raven’s Wing Magical Co., the community that stewarded our survival through the pandemic and our rebirth as The Raven’s Wing Magical Co-op. It hurts to lose our home here. We love you all so much, and we feel so loved and so cared for by you. But the Ravens must fly from this nest for now; we hope it is only in order that we may soar elsewhere.
The Raven’s Wing, as a company, a cooperative, and a magickal project, continues and will continue, as long as we have your support and your business. We are moving our operations fully up to our Portland location. Please visit us there, when you can!! Encourage your PDX friends to check us out. In addition, the online shop will still be open and doing business with folks all over the country, and we highly encourage you to continue sourcing your materia magica through us. Closing the Oakland shop is a decision made in service to the project of The Raven’s Wing as a whole, so that we can continue to share our work with you all, even as it takes on a new form. We will still desire - and need - your help and your community going forward.
We’re still working together as a cooperative to figure out next steps. We may transform, phoenix-like, into new modes of sharing our magick with you all; we’re discussing ways we can still have a presence here in Oakland, at vendors’ and readers’ faires, at magickal events, and in other spatial and temporal nooks and crannies across the Bay. Please, stay connected with us!! Stay tuned for whatever new ways we find to float our feathery physick out about town. This is definitely a blow, but we are not yet down for the count. You’re our community. There will always be corvids in Oakland.
We also feel strongly that the shop at 536 Grand Avenue needs to continue being a magickal nexus for this community. We’re seeking other metaphysical, magickal, healing-centered groups who would want to move into that beautiful space, to ensure that the Lake Merritt area continues to have an anchor for the magickal energies that our community brings to the Lake every day. We hope that you will lend your attention and your patronage to the magickal successor who takes over the Oakland shop. After all, it’s not like it would make a great notary office - so many years of incense are never gonna scrub out of those walls.
Thank you, thank you, thank you again, friends. You are The Raven’s Wing Magical Community, without a doubt. We are forever indebted to you for your love, for your patronage, for your presence in our shop and at our events. It has been a pleasure; a gift; a blessing to be among you all. This needn’t be the last we hear from one another.
Stay tuned for announcements on social media and over email regarding our final in-store events. Our last day of standard operation will be Sunday, May 21st. We are currently planning a gathering and ritual for both staff and customers to come through and celebrate the magnificent work we’ve managed to do together in this space for so long.
We are so grateful for your love. We hope to see you there; we bid you merry meet, and merry part, and pray, someday, we merry-meet again.