By Opening its doors on March 31, 2023, The Elemental Shop is a passion project brought to life by owner Tracy Williams.
Out of all the places she’s traveled, she is most inspired by New Orleans and Puerto Rico. Williams assembles the inventory for The Elemental Shop with the mission of having inclusive items of nationality, origin and topics.
“Sometimes on my day off I would drive all the way to Joshua Tree just to find a store like (The Elemental Shop) and I was looking for products, decks or candles, oils that I didn’t see at other shops,” Williams said. “And so after doing that for probably a year, I decided to create what I couldn’t find.”
2/24/2024 - Tracy Williams, 39, inside her business The Elemental Shop sorting her inventory. Photo credit: Leila Alarcon
She looks for books written by Black and other POC authors about protection and shadow work, Kemetic (Ancient Egyptian) topics and dream dictionaries. Along with looking for spiritual items she normally couldn’t find, Williams wanted to include parts of spirituality that others normally would not.
“This store to me, I tried to highlight the less glamorized parts of magic … we’re taught that the dark, dark things are bad,” Williams said.
Williams compared her experience with the less desirable side of dark magic items to her experience growing up as a Black woman with a darker skin tone.
“It’s kind of how I feel about my skin tone, to be honest. Growing up a little chocolate Black girl, we’re taught that it’s not as pretty or not as wanted and things like that and I kind of feel like that when it comes to magic.”
2/24/2024 - Various Candles can be found inside The Elemental Shop. There are intention candles, spell candles and prayer candles. Photo credit: Leila Alarcon
When she would go to other metaphysical stores, Williams found the decor to be ‘boho chic’ paired with white walls, the complete opposite of the dark colors and dark wood featured in The Elemental Shop.
“There’s peace there’s lessons to be learned in everything. I wanted to embrace that darker side and still show that beauty in it.”
The Elemental Shop came about because of Williams’ passion for inclusive spirituality and she looks for ways to contribute to the inclusive community that made her open the store in Long Beach.
“They wanted to hear about what brought me here and that experience of being inclusive from the LBGT+ community, the art walk, even the way that I’ve been accepted as a Black-owned business,” Williams said.”… and literally celebrated by everyone as a Black-owned business, that translates into what I’m trying to do in the spiritual world for the store.”
2/24/2024 - The Elemental Shop carries various spiritual items for different spiritual practices of many origins. Photo credit: Leila Alarcon
The Elemental Shop has an upstairs loft that Williams has set up to resemble a classroom to host formal training in herbalism, candle magic, tarot and oracle reading, mediumship and even a Reiki certificate program.
These programs, as well as yoga and meditation classes offered in the spring, are a part of the community service Williams does.
“We’ve been able to work with other practitioners and either allow space for them to come and work from here so they’ll do their host readings from here or host events from here as well,” Williams said.
Williams said it’s part of the Long Beach way to build community in the ways she can. As The Elemental Shop approaches its first anniversary, Williams continues to hold inclusivity and wisdom as values to her store’s environment.
Her travels have helped her realize that “higher powers” will be different if they come from people with different backgrounds.
2/24/2024 - Materials for herb-related practices can be found at The Elemental Shop. They carry books about herb practices and different kinds of herbs. Photo credit: Leila Alarcon
“Of course, our gods will look different. Our parts of the world do, right? And so I want this to be a very collective and inclusive space,” Williams said.
Williams hopes that regardless of a person’s beliefs and background, they’ll find a middle ground and maybe learn from each other.
Located on 312 Elm Avenue in Long Beach, The Elemental Shop is open every Tuesday through Sunday.
