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Behind the shelves of amethyst crystals, incense sticks and decks of tarot cards, educational witchy lessons will be held in Blackthorn Mercantile’s event room. Lisa Stanger created the North Williams mystic supply shop in the fall of 2020, transitioning it from a children’s boutique. Deliah Alexandra started off as a tarot card reader at Blackthorn Mercantile, but saw potential for something more.
She teamed up with Stanger to found the Blackthorn Mystery School, a centralized in-person hub for Portland’s mystics, launching in early September. Blackthorn Mystery School’s instructors will teach classes about metaphysical and ritual arts, scratching an itch for Halloween and back-to-school season all at once.
“I’m trying to bring Portland back into its weird roots and its in-person community,” Alexandra says. “I just want people to feel like they’re being welcomed into it.”
Blackthorn Mystery School’s curriculum for the upcoming season is a mixture of personal work and lessons on ritualistic practice framed around Alexandra’s self-styled concept of The Descent, which focuses on inner work, grief rituals, spellcraft and ancestral reverence. Each instructor has their own pathway in separate archetypes: The Alchemist, The Oracle, The Keeper, The Flame and The Architect. Blackthorn Mystery School’s instructors pull from mystic traditions from around the world, teaching ideas tied to Hinduism and Celtic, Slavic, Italian, Egyptian and English witchcraft.
The practicing Portland readers, who specialize in both tarot and Nordic-Germanic runes, will rotate seasonally. Many incorporate shadow work (“facing the parts of yourself that need to be addressed,” Alexandra explains) and mentorship in spiritual practices such as crystal gridding, which involves placing crystals in a mandala formation for specific intentions.
Alchemy instructor Natalie Therese Garcia of the House of Artemis’ first class is Sept. 5, called Rituals for Alchemy & Shadow Work. Oracle pathway classes, taught by Pharoah Fluker, focus on concepts like dream interpretation, use intuition and communicating with spirits. Rhiannon WillowFae specifically emphasizes dark goddesses, which are divine figures with a harrowing tale of tragedy. Her pathway teaches about mythology while connecting stories to the self for healing.
“Getting people through those journeys helps them through their own shadow work,” Alexandra says. “The story doesn’t end in a villain era. You gain wisdom from this tragedy.”
Students may either sign up for classes in advance or drop in as capacity allows. Each two-hour session costs $80, with a membership option that includes personalized tarot or rune readings for students. These cost $140 for one class, $220 for two and $300 for three classes, provided they are within the same archetype.
“If you take them all together, it would be a really expansive journey,” Alexandra says. “Every culture has its own folklore, and it’s really a build-your-own practice.”
Skeptics might scoff, or have literal expectations of magic to cast spells from Harry Potter, but Alexandra hopes would-be students don’t knock Blackthorn Mystery School’s courses until they try them out for themselves.
“I feel like it’s just a misunderstood world,” she says. “This is what this whole community is about: to help people understand it themselves.”
SEE IT: Blackthorn Mercantile, 3954 N Williams Ave., 503-208-2748, blackthornmercantile.com. 11 am–8 pm Wednesday–Saturday, 11 am–6 pm Sunday, noon–6 pm Monday and Tuesday.
