Celestial Treasures: A Grove Shop for Serious Crystal Healers

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Welcome to Cult Classics, where our resident Miami expert Patricia Guarch Wise delves into our city's oh-so-fashionable history. Take out your notebooks, ladies and gents, because you're about to be schooled, Miami style.

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Photos: Karli Evans for Racked Miami

Celestial Treasures is the kind of store that makes people feel culty about the Grove. It's one of the last retail strongholds, a little look back at what people love about the neighborhood: the hippie, bohemian vibe.

Usually, we highlight single retail establishments with long long histories, places that have been around for forty years or so. Celestial Treasures has had multiple lives, in some form or another with different names and different locations, as there's always been a store like this in Coconut Grove's history. I was told it isn't really an "occult" store, but rather more a "new age metaphysical" store, a place for different religions, spiritual traditions, or magic. I looked up the word occult and it means a belief in something that isn't "knowledge of the measurable". That seems like a pretty apt description of Celestial Treasures to me.

Celestial Treasures is a lot to take in at once. Most of the things in the store are pretty small and are joined by even smaller texts explaining what they are and how to use their magic. There are crystals and books and herbs (some of which are poisonous to pregnant women) and incense and oils and more.

They have the self-proclaimed biggest crystal selection in all of Miami, but if you're interested in learning about healing with crystals, this might not be the best place to start. The vibe is more for the experienced, at least on the day I walked in, but if you know what you're doing or read-up in advance they definitely have a striking selection of colors, shapes and sizes of stones. Each little cup of crystals has a card that you can take with you explaining its properties. There are tumbled stones, black tourmaline (that you bury in the four corners of your house to keep negative things from coming near your home), rainbow colored stones, and huge special crystals that are all chosen specifically for the store.

I can personally dabble in crystal healing for 2015, but I did learn that if you want them to work they have to be against your actual skin or in a pouch in your pocket. We're already wrapping up the first 31 days of January, so by now our New Year's Resolutions are usually tiny little specks we can barely remember. Mine was to learn to cook Lebanese food and it's going swimmingly! Not to rub it in or anything, but it's pretty easy to stick with it when you make your resolution to eat...

In a week where we learned the neighbors of Celestial Treasures, like the tea and oddity shop The Olfactory Company and some eighteen other business that will be shut down for development of their property, it's important to give a little love to businesses like Celestial Treasures and the Grove's other little businesses that are full of personality. It will probably take more than magic to preserve the culty vibe of The Grove, but I'm willing to start there.
· Cult Classics [Racked Miami]