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Wiccan leader saw retail in her future

Teri Gurnell's Dragon Den sells the basics from cloaks to crystal balls.

By JODIE TILLMAN
Published October 30, 2006

ADVERTISEMENT [Times photo: Janel Schroeder-Norton] From left, Wiccan leader Teri "Dragon" Gurnell meets with Dragon Den customers Tristan Johnson, 25, Greg Stratton, 26, his 14-month-old, Calista Noble, and his financee, Shelly Neal, 30. The store opened last month.

HUDSON - Deep in the subdivision, among streets named for trees, there lives a witch named Teri Gurnell.

She casts spells and speaks to spirits. She is high priestess of her coven. She has a spiritual name, Dragon.

But she does not cackle at convention. She has a heated swimming pool, a 2002 Kia Sportage and a classic American dream: To run a successful small business.

Gurnell started an Internet business about a decade ago to sell things modern-day witches (who are known as Wiccans) demand: cloaks, crystal balls, Book of Shadows. It has been a steady home business for Dragon, bringing in about $45,000 in sales a year.

This month, Gurnell opened her first retail store, the Dragon Den, in a stand-alone building at the USA Flea Market. She has one employee, a young woman who is taking Gurnell's Wicca 101 class.

Non-Pagans are welcome to shop at her store, which will also offer body art and spiritual readings, fairy knickknacks and swords. Believers, meanwhile, can also find such necessities as oils, herbs and altar items for their rites.

"We opened Friday the 13th," said Gurnell, 44. "Which is, for us, a very lucky day, which is awesome."

Wiccan and Pagan-owned businesses have benefits for Wiccans and Pagan employees, chief among them this: They won't get fired or ostracized for their beliefs. Most businesses don't promise that kind of security, forcing Wiccans and Pagans into leading double lives, Gurnell said.

Her husband, for instance, is also a Wiccan, a high priest. But for fear of losing his job with the railroad, he hides his beliefs.

Wiccans are often viewed as devil-worshipers, but they do not even believe in the devil. Or heaven or hell. They pray to gods and goddesses, which ones depending on what exactly they need.

They cast spells to protect themselves and others or to ask for guidance on such modern-day worries as being in financial debt, Gurnell said. She compares the practice to Christians praying to God. Sometimes, she said, a spell can be as simple as just talking to the gods.

Some Wiccans believe they can also talk to spirits.

Gurnell says she's been seeing spirits since she was a child, the first being her great-grandmother. She sat beside her on her bed. "She came to me in full form," she said. "The bed sagged."

Spellbound

Wiccan beliefs and practices are so flexible they are hard to define, but they do have a fundamental rule: Do no harm, to others or yourself.

Punishment and rewards are meted out in this life, not another; do harm, and you're getting it back three times. That's why most Wiccans, Gurnell said, don't cast spells to hurt others by making them do something against their will, like making a wayward boyfriend come back.

"I don't think we'd be human if we weren't tempted," she said. "But we don't do it."

Perhaps this code shapes Wiccan businesses, Gurnell says.

Witches don't cheat each other, she said. Over the years she's been selling items on the Internet, Gurnell said, she's always been willing to accept checks. The few that bounced were always paid, along with her bank fees.

Gurnell, who also does psychic readings, says she has waived her $80 psychic consultation fee in certain cases. One man, she said, came to her and asked her to get rid of the spirits bothering him. The man, she said, seemed not to be haunted by ghosts, but mentally ill. "If I was unethical," she said, "I could've taken that guy to the cleaners."

A nod from a hawk

Gurnell's stories often contain some element of foreshadowing. That includes the story of this latest chapter in her business.

She was about to tell the story this week as she sat by her pool in Hudson. She was wearing a silver amulet and a sundress and smoking Bridgeports. Her gentle pit bullterrier mix, Peanut, was lying near her feet.

Suddenly she stopped talking and lowered her cigarette.

"Look at that," she said, in her Long Island accent.

Next door, a hawk had landed on a neighbor's roof and seemed to be staring down at her.

"Something is going on," she said. "Last time that guy came, I ended up in Denver."

Denver, it turns out, is significant to the story. This past June, when all she had was the Internet business, she was debating whether to go to a Pagan trade show in Denver.

She said she almost didn't go. She was talking on the phone with a friend and asking aloud whether she should attend.

Then she saw the hawk out by her pool. He seemed to nod. Being someone who believes in signs, she had no choice.

It was at the Denver show that Gurnell for the first time agreed to act as a distributor for two businesses, selling cloaks and wooden boxes to hold trinkets and tarot cards directly to customers rather than just over the Internet.

A few months later, she sold those items and others as a vendor at the Pagan Pride Festival in downtown New Port Richey. She did so well that she began to believe the demand for Pagan and Wiccan items in Pasco was stronger than she thought.

And the Dragon Den was born.

[Last modified October 30, 2006, 00:21:16]