For many years, Sean David Morton was the star of the esoteric community in New York City and was nicknamed “America’s Prophet” because of his world predictions.

Now he sits in the federal penitentiary in Tuscon, Arizona. He claims he is a political prisoner, jailed because he drifted into right-wing radio; however, authorities say that he used his credibility as a psychic to defraud more than 100 of his clients of over $6 million dollars in 2006 and 2007. He was also convicted of IRS fraud, filing several tax returns due on non-existent overpayments.

I met Morton back in 2001, when he was headlining events like Mark Becker’s bi-annual New Life Expo at the Hotel New Yorker.

Charismatic, witty, with the Irish gift of gab, Morton would draw hundreds to his talks. Unlike many of the more ethereal New Age speakers at the expo, Morton spoke about current events and politics, with a little bit of metaphysics thrown in. He was street smart and grounded – and yet had a mystical aura around him.

He would hold court in the bar at the Hotel after each night at the Expo, surrounded by a group of New York metaphysical oddballs – and he was the alpha oddball. I remember one evening there was a guy dressed as an Indian, a woman who had been conversing with the Archangel Michael since she was a young girl (“a gifted mystic,” Morton called her) and a NYC real estate broker who some type of military background that “red pilled” him into the conspiracy world.

Back in the day, I recall how Morton often merged conspiracy theories into metaphysics. Like David Icke, Morton had an esoteric cosmology that placed the “light workers” (like him) against the evil forces of the world (i.e. China, Muslims extremists … and later Hillary Clinton and the Democrats).

His own background was mysterious. A former nightclub promoter, Morton says he had a spiritual awakening in his late 20s that brought him to England, then India, where he claims he
met the Dalai Lama.

He once told me that he was the reincarnation of a Tibetan monk, who was killed during the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1947.

He claimed that when he first went to Dharamsala, Indian, the home of the exiled Tibetan community, a monk recognized him and handing him prayer beads and shawl that belonged to him in his previous life.

Morton claimed that he learned “Tibetan Time Transference” during his time in India, in which he could “trade places” with individuals from the future.

In 1994, he did a public event in California, where he allegedly did a “time transfer” with his grandson from the future – a chap named “Vajra from the Morton clan.” During the channeling session, Vajra claimed he was living in 2064 as a “sovereign citizen” in post-America area called “New Omaha,” that included parts of what was then Canada. The series of lectures became known as the “Vajra Chronicles.”

So, I have to say, the timeline presented by Vajra is eerie to say the least, in looking at it from 2020 – and much of it has come to pass. Although the timeline is off by a few years here and there, it seems to be happening.

Vajra claimed that the US becomes embroiled in the “last great conflict” which starts in 1998 and lasts around 27 years. It starts with a war against “Islamic Jihad” and eventually involves China.

He calls 2025 as the “lowest spiritual point for humanity.” He claimed that China invades the United States, coming down through the Bering Strait and through Canada, “killing everything in their path.” The final battle occurs in Denver, Colorado, where the Chinese were finally defeated in the “Plateau of Judgement.”

He said that the wars finally end after a meteor hits the earth, knocking it off its axis. He also discussed a pandemic that isolates people and the eventual destruction of New York and Washington, DC in a type of post-meteor civil war.

In Vajra’s telling of future US history, America eventually re-emerges as a type of Utopia, with a 13-state federation, led out of destruction by a type of female avatar called the “Immanuella.”

The Vajra Chronicles reads like a science fiction story. However, after 9-11 and the wars against Islamic extremism, a lot of people in the metaphysical community began paying more attention to Morton’s prophecies.

In way, the Vajra Chronicles came true for Morton, a personal metaphor for his own transformation and struggles. Like Morton, the sovereign citizens of the future utopian US called “New Jerusalem” fought the “dark federal forces” of the the New World order, who tried to take the guns away from Americans right before the great wars and exploit the citizens through taxation.

Back when I worked at the US Mission to the United Nations, I would take Morton to lunch at the UN when he was in town. He seemed to revel in proximity to world leaders. I recall taking him to an empty General Assembly Hall. He was enthralled and went to the podium and began giving a speech, as if speaking the leaders of the world .

Morton was a man who felt he had a special mission in the world, He seemed sincere about it and felt that he had a role to play in the destiny of the United States, as a type of prophet, whose role it was to guide the country into an enlightened new age.

But it was difficult to determine where the “showman” Sean David Morton intersected with the real Sean David Morton.

Shortly after our lunches at the UN, Morton began going on AM Coast to Coast radio and several time mentioned his “source at the UN” when discussing his increasingly elaborate conspiracy theories. On one show he mentioned me by name, much to my chagrin.

My own journey took me away from NYC and I lost touch with Morton. I would sometimes tune into Morton’s late night radio show. He was talking less and less about UFOs and more about right-wing political issues.

When I knew Morton, he was giving “Remote Viewing” workshops and promoting the path of Tibetan Buddhism; however, he began giving workshops on becoming a “sovereign citizen,” in an attempt to abrogate oneself from paying federal taxes.

Morton, at one point, claimed that he was a diplomat from the “Republic of Lemuria and the Dominion of Melchizdek,” and tried to give back his social security number to the federal government, in an attempt to establish himself as a sovereign citizen.

Morton began promoting right-wing ideas, much like Alex Jones and became a staple of the late night conservative talk-show circuit.

At the same time Morton maintained his NYC fan base, with his Delphi Associates newsletter, that was like a new age guide to stocks and world events. He would make stock market predictions based on astrology and his own prophetic visions. He also apparently began investing money for clients, according to court records.

It was Morton’s dabbling in the stock market which led to his downfall. He was convicted of civil securities fraud for, among other things, taking investment money from clients and pocketing it.

Morton maintains that the federal government – specifically Hillary Clinton – went after him because he became a far-right radio host. He has described himself as a “political prisoner” of the deep state.

However, his days as a prisoner may be over. His wife Melissa announced that he would be released from prison on 4 January, on medical grounds. He developed a serious tumor on his neck and needs an operation. She has been appealing to the public for donations to help Morton re-adjust to society.

Since his incarceration, the New Life Expo has never been the same. One long-time vendor told me at the last Expo that the Morton was the main draw for the event and the crowds were never the same since he went to jail.

“A lot of people came to the Expo just to see Sean,” he said. “Even if you don’t agree with everything he says or does, he has a fan-base that just loves him – even after all of the court stuff.”

Happy Winter Solstice and Yule Blessings from Esoteric NYC.

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Earlier this month NYC lost one of its elders, who influenced countless New Yorkers on their spiritual path.

Kaye Flagg, also known as Lady Vivienne, was the founding High Priestess of the Welch Tradition Coven in New York with Eddie Buczynski.

I credit Lady Vivienne for my beginning journey into the craft. She represents the portal I stood before and entered into my life change forever.

It was 1972 and I made my first visit to The Warlock Shop in Brooklyn heights, to purchase a crystal ball, that I still own to this day. Warlock Shop owner Herman Slater invited my then-husband David and I to the Pagan Way, a meeting place for new people to be introduced to circle, magick and understanding the ways of the Craft. From reading books I was already familiar with the process, but had only practiced solitary.

It was there we met Lady Vivienne. She hosted the Pagan Way in her living room. Lady Vivienne was so devoted to the craft, that she kindly allowed Pagan Way Meetups in her living room. Her generosity extended-to strangers like ourselves coming on a Sunday afternoon without even a prior meeting. The day I entered that room and joined circle changed my life forever. I never left the Craft, its concepts or principles from that day forward.

She did this for many of us, all to promote the Craft and the old gods. But most of all for the feminine divine, The Goddess of all creation.

So in honor of this pillar of the craft, we her children gather here today to share the beauty of The Goddess Speaks with you. Blessings on your journey our beloved Queen as you join the Mighty Dead and feast and make merry once again with our beloved coven in the Summerlands.

New York may be the financial capital of the world; however, many believe that it also is a esoteric capital of the world as well.

Manhattan is a big rock, granite to be exact, interwoven with billions of quartz crystals.  The island itself descends down into the molten core of the Earth. Manhattan is a fiery, passionate spiritual amplifier.  What happens in Manhattan happens to the world.

Some say that the island of Manhattan was part of the lost continent of Atlantis, and that there is an ancient “Solar Temple” located in the waters off of lower Manhattan, right near the Statue of Liberty.
Nearly every esoteric group in the 20^th century got its start in New York. It is a melting pot of traditions – Wicca, pagan, Santeria, Voodoo, New Thought and many more. The diversity of its spirituality reflects the diversity of the population.

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky made New York City her home in the 1870s and founded the Theosophical Society in what is now Hell’s Kitchen area. She was attracted to the area, since New York state was the birthplace of “Spiritualist” and seance movement.  Blavatsky wrote the “Secret Doctrine,” which remains one of the most influential occult books to this day.

Norman Vincent Peale developed the influential “new thought” philosophy from the pulpit of the Marble Collegiate Church of 5^th Avenue and 28^th Street.

“We tend to think of California as the birthplace of the ‘new age’; however, New York played a very special role as a springboard for alternative spiritual ideas,” occult historian and New Yorker Mitch Horowitz has written. “America has become this laboratory for different religious ideas and a gestation tank where these ideas get remade in very popular ways.”

It was Raymond Buckland who first brought Witchcraft to the United States in 1964, living and opening his first coven in Long Island, NY.

In 1925, horror novelist H.P. Lovecraft moved to New York City.

He moved into a first-floor apartment at 169 Clinton Street in Brooklyn Heights, which ushered in a new era, some occultists believe.  Some say malefic, others say liberating.

Even though Brooklyn had not yet been gentrified and there were no “hipsters” living there yet, Lovecraft described his Brooklyn neighborhood as “something unwholesome – something furtive – something vast lying subterrenely (sic) in obnoxious slumber – that was the soul of 169 Clinton Street at the edge of Red Hook.”

So, it was perhaps no coincidence that Herman Slater and Eddie Buczynski opened the Warlock Shop at 300 Henry Street, not far from where Lovecraft used to lay his head.  The store became an important hub for the emerging witchcraft and neo-pagan scene in New York.  The pair would also make Lovecraft famous in occult circles, when they published the “Necromonicon.”

Slater, a wiccan high priest whose magickal name was Lord Govannon, began experiencing and reading about paranormal activities while recuperating from a serious illness.  Slater became known as “horrible Herman” because of the way he yelled at irritable customers.  He met Buczynski and the two became lovers and decided to open the store together.

Buczynkski, known as Lord Gwyddion,  was a Gardnerian High Priest of the Kentucky Line and from that created the NY Wicca, The New York Coven of Witches the original coven from that movement is still functioning today.  The Minoan Brotherhood founded by Eddie then developed the Minoan Sisterhood founded by Lady Rhea and Carol Bulzone (Lady Miw)

Buczynksi grew up in Brooklyn and Queens.  Initially, he wanted to become a Catholic priest, but instead moved to Greenwich Village and embraced his gay identity.  His friendship with Wiccan Leo Martello introduced him to the Wiccan religion and eventually to Slater.  Buczynski is the subject of the fabulous book “Bull of Heaven” by Michael Lloyd.

Lady Rhea, who volunteered and eventually worked there in the 1970s, described the Warlock Shop as having the atmosphere of a “grade b movie in the twilight zone.”

“I originally went to the Warlock Shop to buy a crystal ball and I never left,” she says. “I can still see the store in my mind.”

Rhea says that meeting Buczynski was a major turning point in her life.  He became her magickal mentor, initiator and together they want on to found the Minoan tradition, a witchcraft tradition for gay and lesbian witches.

“Eddie encouraged us to learn other traditions of magic – even Aleister Crowley,” says Rhea, who ended up joining the Ordo Templi Orientis during this time, as well the Rosicrucians.  Rhea creates her own eclectic approach to witchcraft to Buczynski.

Rhea recalls how she Buczynski would do rituals in the room above the shop.

“Herman would yell up to us that the store was busy.  Eddie would say we are in circle and Herman would shout up – hurry up down and make sure you close the wards!”

She says Buczynski would intentionally sometimes leave the wards open and “all hell would break loose in the store- sometimes books would fly off the shelves.”

The Warlock Shop was financially very lucrative and Slater and Buczynski moved the entire operation to a much bigger space at 35 West 19^th Street and called it the Magickal Childe.

As writer and one-time Magickal Childe employee Alan Cabal wrote: “The Magickal Childe was ground zero for the occult explosion in the 1970s.

Wrote Cabal, in his seminal article “The Doom that Came to Chelsea”: “the new store became a one-stop shop for any and all conjuring needs … one could find human skulls, dried bats, mummified cats paws and a wide variety of unusual jewelry … a room in the back of the store served as a temple and a classroom for the various strains of wicca that began to gravitate to the place.

Magickal Childe was most famous for its publication of the famous “Necromonicon” grimoire – hence the Lovecraft connection.

The Necromonicon, also known Book of the Dead or it Arabic “Kitab al-Azif,” was a grimoire appearing in the stories by Lovecraft.  The grimoire was – according to Lovecraft – written by the “mad Arab” Abdul al-Hazred and teaches how to summon the “Old Ones.”

The Necromonicon was fictional.  However, as Cabal writes, a group of occultists, led by “Simon” (Peter Levenda) and Slater decided to “recreate” the grimoire and pubish it.

“It was a team effort,” Cabal writes. “Herman provided the sponsorship, whil the design and layout were the work of Jim Wasserman of the OTO, a raving cokehead from Jersey named Larry Barnes whose daddy had the production facilities and a fellow who called himself Khem set Rising (who also designed the sigils).  The text itself was Levenda’s creation, a synthesis fo Sumerian and later Babylonian myths and texts peppered with names of entities from Lovecrafts Cthulhu stories.”

The book was enormously successful and, even though it was “fictional,” some adherents swear that it worked.

Rhea and later Carol Bulzone both worked at the Magickal Childe.   Slater was having financial problems – mainly due to the fact that he did not pay taxes – and had decided to sell the store to Rhea and Bulzone in 1982. However, shortly after the two raised the money to purchase th store, he changed his mind.

“We were heartbroken,” Rhea says. “We decided to go out and open our own occult store. We found a great property on East Ninth Street that was only $1000 a month at the time.  Rhea and Bulzone ended up leaving Slater and opening Enchantments on 341 East Ninth Street in the East Village.

“At first Herman was upset, but he soon got over it,” She says.

She recounts a humorous story of how Slater was in a dispute with Larry Barnes and did not want to give Barnes the expensive copper plate used to print the leather cover of the Necromonicon.

“So he dropped the plates off at Enchantments to hide them from Larry,” she says. “When Larry found out they were at Enchantments, he came in like a maniac looking for them.  We gave them to him – we didn’t want a problem.”

Buczynski eventually died of complications from AIDS in 1989.  Slater soon followed and passed away in 1992, also from AIDS.  After his death, the Magickal Childe was never the same.  It eventually closed in 1999 and is now Sala One Nine, an upscale Spanish restaurant.

Enchantments became ground zero for the Witch and occult community and was a who is who of witches who worked and shopped there.  In addition to books, oils, enchanted candles and occult supplies, Enchantments also had classes, rituals, coven meetings and the famous Pagan Grove, run by “Joe and Jezibel” (Jezibel Anat and her partner Joseph Zuchowski – one of our readers).

The NYC occult scene was mostly underground in those days, before social media  and mainstream acceptance of witchcraft.

“Today anyone can call themselves a witch – you can even get intitiated into a coven online,” says Zuchowski. “But back when we were working at Enchantments, you really had to know someone who knew someone to get into a coven.”

Many covens were extremely selective and put their prospective members through a vetting process. “It usually revolved around inviting an individual to lunch – and then having the rest of the coven members in the restaurant watching from other tables,” Zuchowski says. “Afterwards, everyone would meet to decide if this person should be accepted in.”

Rhea says that Enchantments was “joyous” when she and Bulone worked there.  “We were all happy and everyone loved working there,”she says. “We had a backyard and could have a circle there.  I remember doing lots of rituals to Lakshmi there – at one time we have 50 people out in the back chanting to Laskhmi.”

Rhea eventually went her own way to spend more time raising her daughter and sold her half of the business to Bulzone.  Lady Rhea went on to open Magickal Realms in the Bronx and was the head of readers for Original Products for many years.

Bulzone also ended up selling the store and moving on.  The original Enchantments ended up closing and the location is now the Immigrant wine bar.

The new owner of Enchantments, Stacy Rapp, moved the store down the streets to 424 East Ninth Street. However, the store no longer offers reading and classes.

Before the pandemic, Lady Rhea and many witches involved in the original Enchantments would hold monthly rituals at the Immigrant.  The new wine bar is lovely and retains some of the magickal energy of the store.

Anyway, this just scratches the surface of the occult history of New York.