Kevin Andrew Murphy wrote a pretty solid bit for the Mage: The Ascension game that featured a good magic shop. He's got the whole thing posted at
http://www.sff.net/people/kevin.a.murphy/s...olden_pear.html , so I think I can get away with posting the setup for the talismonger shop. If you have time, you should go check out the whole thing, I remember it fondly.
[ Spoiler ]
Grimm has his shop doubled-down two side streets off Haight. Great camouflage, by the way. The window has more psychic crystals and suncatchers and Shirley Maclaine books than you would think the world could possess, and any serious practitioner just rolls her eyes and walks on by when she comes to Grimm's Occult Specialty Shoppe.
Which is a mistake, of course, 'cause it's got some really cool stuff once you get past the façade, and I don't mean the Crowley Tarot deck. (Honestly, Strength is not Lust, no matter how much you want it to be, and in my humble opinion, Evil Old Uncle Al should have gotten together with Siggy Freud. They had a lot in common.)
. . .
I came in and browsed through the Susan Seddon Boulet postcards--while she may be trendy, she does know something about metaphysics--and waited while Edith Blanton went on with her latest mystical rant: "So I says to my son, 'Norman, she's no good for you!' My spirit guides say it, my OUIJA board says it, for goodness sake, Martha down at the bakery says it! But does he listen? No . . . He just goes on defending that shrew he took for a wife, and here I am, my heart breaking, and how can I expect him to listen to my spirit guides or even Martha at the bakery, when he won't even listen to his own mother?"
Grimm nodded, glassy-eyed, looking every bit the patient Lord Ozymandias listening to the peasants' complaints.
But Granny Edith was entertaining all the same, and behind the stereotypical Jewish grandmother exterior was a heart of gold, and a lot of mystic trivia, even if she did change her belief system as often as she changed her socks.
"I'm going to try voodoo," Edith said, thumping down a can onto the counter. "If 'Devil Be Gone' powder and 'Uncrossing Oil' don't get rid of that woman, I don't know what will. Which loa do you pray to to get rid of awful second wives?"
Still impassive, Grimm went to his shelf of Catholic paraphernalia and came back with a large votive candle in a brown glass holder. "St. Jude." He set it down amid the rest of Granny Edith's purchases.
I nearly choked to keep from laughing. For those of you who don't know, St. Jude is the patron saint of really big miracles, and he's the one Catholics (and Voudoun and Santeria types) pray to when they don't know what else to do. Either Granny Edith had a really big problem, or else Grimm was having a joke at her expense and had decided to give the Patron Saint of Lost Causes a chuckle amid His more serious requests for cancer cures and miraculous rescues.
Granny Edith just smiled as Grimm rang up and wrapped up her purchases and gave her a simplified Voudoun ritual suitable for octogenarian Jewish grandmothers who wished to be rid of obnoxious second-daughter-in-laws. I waited, continuing to look through postcards even after Edith had left the shop, until Grimm finally took the bait: "Alright, Penny. What do you have for me?"
I glided over to the counter--no mean feat, 'cause what I had in my lunchbox was not only hot, it was heavy--and set the pail on the counter with a clank like the cask in 'The Castle of Otranto.' (Goth classic. Read it when you have a chance.)
I looked around, making sure that Edith had been the last of the Shirley Maclaine groupies and crystal-hunters, then looked off at the rack of metaphysical refrigerator magnets. "'Light the candle, draw the curtain, put the lock upon the door . . .'"
It was a line from some seventies pop song I'd heard when I was a kid, but it was one of the most potent charms I knew, and Grimm took the hint, going and locking the front door and turning out the 'Back in Ten Minutes' sign. "Back room stuff?"
"Definitely back room."
I picked up my lunchpail and let Grimm usher me through the velvet curtain into the back of the shop. That's where he keeps all the worthwhile stuff, aside from the Boulet postcards. Treasures there to die for, and I'm pretty certain that's happened with a few of the things he's got, at least the Borgia poison ring and the Knights of the Golden Circle ceremonial sword. (The Knights, by the bye, were this splinter group of the KKK who were into all sorts of weird metaphysics and were trying to outdo both the Masons and the Golden Dawn--a neat trick if you can pull it off, and they almost did.)
Grimm let the curtain fall down, then lit the candle in the skull-shaped holder (which, tacky as it looks, is more than it seems). He'd done the charm in reverse from what I'd sang, but it was close enough for most magic, and anyway, it was his shop.
"'And lo, the seal was broken,'" I quoted and undid the catch of my lunchpail.
"'And Greenpeace appeared, and lo, his face was wroth,'" said Grimm. "'"What are you doing to that seal? Fie and for shame!"'"
I rolled my eyes. He had me there. A true Goth can appreciate wit, and I'll admit, we do set ourselves up when we get our most pretentious.
However, I had my trump card as I took out the reason for my errand, wrapped in finest Ice White silk (from an antique Chinese funeral robe--you can find them in Chinatown if you know where to look). I carefully unwrapped the silk, which, if you know anything about metaphysics, is good for insulating things other than Tarot cards, and looks really classy on top of it.
It fell away, and there sat the Golden Pear.