I visited a spooky and magical new shop in the heart of Edinburgh

There’s a strange new trend in the Capital

I lift off the glass cloche, and inhale the scent of a vegan soy wax candle named Cemetery Air.

It’s rather lovely - headily floral and earthy, with notes of funeral lilies, and lichen.

I’m in Wheel of Fate - a witchy shop that opened earlier this year on Edinburgh’s Haddington Place, after relocating from the other side of the city. Apparently, it’s a sister store to The Witchery in Salem, Massachusetts.

This Leith shop also offers DIY crafting sessions where you can make your own ribbon and wildflower-festooned broomstick. Or, buy one of the ready-to-fly versions that hang on the wall. Witches must use this shop like a branch of Arnold Clark.

There are also crystals, magic paraphernalia and freaky-looking bright green candles that feature South Queensferry folk custom favourite the Burryman, which involves a dude being covered in burdock burrs and paraded around the town every August. His effigy is the perfect Christmas present, for the person who has everything. I’m sure it’ll be featured in the festive gift guide in Witch? magazine.

I think about investing in the candle, but it’s a little too nightmarish. Thus, I settle on a wooden cast of a bird, leaves and grapes, taken from the 11th century misericords at Lincoln Abbey. According to a member of staff, it’s made by Oakapple Designs, who are the only company to have permission to take casts from medieval cathedrals and reproduce them.

I think how much I love him, as he nests in bubble wrap and purple tissue. However, it was a toss up between that and, also hanging on their wall, the strange frog, who is thought to represent one of the seven deadly sins, and appears to be committing harakiri by plunging a dagger into his tum.

They were an eccentric lot in the high middle ages.

Anyway, hooray for spending my pocket money in occult shops. I feel like I’m sticking it to the man. John Knox will be rolling in his grave - good, serves him right - as his place is part of Scotland’s current witchety boom.

The theme is being reclaimed by the TikTok generation. However, it isn’t just a subculture of graveyard-bothering goths who are interested in this spooky stuff. Just a couple of days ago, I’d been on Candlemaker Row, where there was a huge queue, almost all the way up to Greyfriars Kirkyard, for ‘metaphysical supply shop’ Black Moon Botanica. They even had a suitably attired warden outside, to make sure it didn’t get too busy inside.

This place also has a branch on Edinburgh’s Thistle Street, and sells protection rituals, oracle sets and runes, as well as bath salts and heart-ease teas.

The people outside were very average-looking folk, from all over the world. We returned the next day, first thing in the morning, and there was yet another long line of normcore tourists. It just goes to show, you can’t judge a spellbook by its cover.

Then there’s my personal favourite, Portal, down at the bottom of Leith.

This atmospheric shop offers tarot cards, palmistry sessions in their cute little back room, ceramic ghosts, crystals from angelite to blood stone, and ‘witchcraft supplies’.

I’m sure they hate me, because I always go in to browse, but never buy anything. It’s just that there’s something comforting about the shop. It reminds me of my teenage forays into the patchouli-scented Pie in the Sky on Cockburn Street.

Anyway, my tenuous theory about places like Portal and Wheel of Fate is that we get into stuff like this in times of turbulence, when we have no control. I mean, who wouldn’t want to stick a few pins into an effigy of Trump or Elon Musk right now? I’m quite happy to hex anyone who wrongs me. Or just the stink eye would do, if that fails.

This celebration of rituals, manifestations and the supernatural could be compared to the idea that skirt hemlines go up in times of prosperity, or that we all start visiting the gym in difficult years - our own bodies are (well, mostly) something that we can have a semblance of governance over.

Anyway, poor persecuted ‘witches’, back in the day.

I often think, if this was the 16th or 17th century, I would’ve been prime stake material. They would definitely have dunked me in the Nor Loch.

After all, I don’t have any children, I increasingly talk back, I’m getting to that vulnerable haggy age, and I’ve got the classic look. Also, I was born with three sets of teeth, with one lot removed when I was a kid. That would’ve been pretty freaky in the days of zero dental intervention. No third nipple or weird birthmark, though I do sometimes speak in tongues when I’m tipsy. The only negative is that I’m allergic to cats, so I’d have to think about my preferred ‘familiar’.

I’d probably go for something very dramatic, like a black boa constrictor, though I’d give him a benign name like Cyril or Geoffrey, and make him wear a tartan bow tie.

There would be no live mice, but just Whiskas for tea. I’m sure I’d get given a wide berth in Leith Links, when local cockapoos started to go missing.

Anyway, I am embracing our new witchetty era, but mainly, my Wheel of Fate purchase. I may still go back for the frog,