Detroit is one of the most fascinating cities on the planet. Stumbling onto hidden gems, such as Esoterica Rare Occult Books and the Huckleberry Explorers Club Museum-General Store-Community Gardens, near Warren and Lawton, is why.
I’m chatting with Dr. Morgan Meis and Dr. Justin Sledge. PBS Books is filming us three book nerds chit chatting about wondrously rare hyper-scarce antiquarian books. We’re sitting in the middle of Detroit inside a house from 1917 transformed by Morgan and his wife Shuffy into an incredible art installation called the Huckleberry Explorers Club.
Becoming enveloped in the world of Morgan & Justin is sort of like slipping into the 1999 film The Ninth Gate, where book detective Corso hunts down rare volumes around the world. This is especially fitting, considering Morgan & Justin are being featured as international book hunters in an upcoming television series.
Welcome to the officially weird. Let’s get into it.
Bio and Background?
Morgan: I have Midwestern roots. Decatur, Illinois to be exact. However, I grew up in the Hollywood Hills. Then went to college in New York City where I met my wife, got a PhD in philosophy, had one foot in academia, the other in the art world, and so forth. My wife Shuffy and I came to Detroit in 20165. Living in NYC at the time, we were hearing many strange and fascinating things about Detroit, which has always been an intriguing and creative city. So we visited the city briefly, then went back home, packed a U-Haul, and moved here. No job, no prospects, something was calling us. My wife is becoming an ordained Zen priest and we lived in a zen temple in Hamtramck for a while when we first moved here.
Justin: I was born in Jackson, Mississippi, and trained in Hermetic philosophy at the University of Amsterdam. I was finishing grad school in philosophy when my wife Alana got a great job here in Detroit. Working as an adjunct was wearing thin rapidly, so I started the youtube channel, Esoterica. Then things really took off.
Morgan: Justin and I met and became friends when my wife was looking for a Jewish congregation. Justin’s wife is a Rabbi there. We became the “philosophy guys”, studying ancient philosophy. Justin specializes in Latin, I handle the Greek, etc.
Esoterica Rare Occult Books
Justin started a Youtube channel on the academic study of the Occult . That Youtube channel started to grow. It’s now approaching 1 million subscribers.
Justin: Our book business is an extension of the Esoterica Youtube channel, which is accessibly academic. I cover topics on alchemy, the occult, esoterica, and more. We even interviewed a prominent Dead Sea Scrolls scholar. I started out as an antiquarian collector, then started selling in order to subsidize my collecting, and here we are. The antiquarian book world is so hermetic, many don’t know how to access it. The Venn diagram of those interested in the occult and antiquarian often overlap at any 16th century book of magic.
Morgan: Our catalogs usually feature 50 or so volumes. Alchemy, magic, Kabbalah, witchcraft, the Inquisition, theosophy, mysticism, Neoplatonism, etc. To subscribe to our catalog, get on our email list. The cost of books typically range from a few hundred dollars to several thousand dollars.
Justin: We focus on some of the more minor, harder to find stuff. We have an 18th century book of exorcisms where magical amulets are used. It was banned by the church. We have a textbook on demonology, books on ghosts, copies of Del Rio’s witch-hunting manual which is one of the more popular and well-known books.
Morgan: Some people buy these books to put them on altars for religious purposes. Some clairvoyants don’t want to touch them in fear of bad mojo. My personal opinion is I’m a practicing Catholic and these books do have some type of indescribable aura. Handling them often times feels intense.
Justin: The books about summoning spirits and conjuring demons frighten me less than an Inquisition manual detailing how to trick people int confessing so you can torture them. It’s the books that have been used for genuine evil that frighten me. People throughout history have had very strong feelings about these books. These books were suppressed and systematically targeted for destruction, such as Pico’s works still marked “PROHIBITO” on the cover, the first book banned by the church. The fact that some of them have survived creates a sense of awe when you hold them. And I love the marginalia in them, details in the margins. One of the books is of a Elizabethan-era scholar who talked to angels and another has notes from a practicing magician.
Morgan: But it isn’t all doom and gloom, boys and girls. We do have some books that make you feel good! Transmuting lead into gold, achieving union with God, that sort of thing. We also saw a copy of De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (1543) by Copernicus at the New York Antiquarian Book Fair that was for sale for $2.5 million dollars. I wanted it!
Some Fascinating & Notable Books
Collected Works by Pico marked “Prohibito.” Published in Basel mid 16th century. Sold for almost $4,000.
Swiss alchemist Paracelsus (16th century). Combines alchemy and magic and the transmutation of metals. This volume is $2,500.
The Records of Dr. John Dee in his Conversations with Spirits (1659). Supposedly communicated with angels. This angelic language is still used by occultists. He was the royal astrologer to Queen Elizabeth. This volume is in the $10K-$12K range.
Utriusque cosmi historia (1614) Robert Fludd. Book about hermetic philosophy. Famous for its woodcuts.
Justin: I also have a 17th century manuscript grimoire, a book for conjuring spirits.
Book of Paracelsian alchemy rebound in medieval sheet music.
We love incunables, such as the House of Aldus (printed 1516), a collection of pagan wisdom.
Personal Book Collecting
Morgan: I still have a huge philosophy library from my academic days mixed, with literature and art books. A first edition of Byron’s poetry in my early twenties made me fall in love with older books, rare books, first editions. Then I found out it was possible to acquire really old stuff, 16th-17th century books.
Justin: My antiquarian collecting was inspired by my working at the Ritman Library in Amsterdam, aka: the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, which is a UNESCO world heritage site. They have foundational works harkening back to the earliest days of printing. My oldest book is a copy Augustine’s City of God (1487) and the jewel of my collection is a first edition printing of Agrippa Three Books of Occult Philosophy (1533). It’s also important to remember that rare doesn’t mean old, old doesn’t mean expensive. Market demand drives the price.
Huckleberry Explorers Club
Morgan: This is an everyday objects shrine, comprised of objects my wife finds. We’re open to the public on weekends in the afternoons. We have a backyard community garden, where, especially on Sunday afternoons, a community of people gather to take care of it. She named this place Huckleberry. It was based on an excerpt from a letter in which Emerson was making fun of Thoreau (picking huckleberries).
Some of the Fun Personal Stuff
Morgan is many things, including a journalist. He writes for The New Yorker, Harpers, Virginia Quarterly Review (VQR), 3 Quarks Daily, and Image Journal. He also founded the Flux Factory arts collective in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which has since relocated to Long Island City. And to round everything out, he even lived in Sri Lanka for a bit.
Morgan: We lived in a small jungle village outside Colombo, Sri Lanka. We awoke most mornings to a troop of purple-faced monkeys eating our jackfruit. Unfortunately, Sri Lanka is possibly the world’s worst book collecting climate due to the intense humidity. However, there was one gentleman who had an astonishing collection in a climate controlled house.
Morgan: My dissertation was on Walter Benjamin and the New School of German Idealism. I’m very into the German romantic idealist tradition. My fifth book is coming out at the end of August.
Justin: I’m contracted to write a book about the history of Western Esotericism using surviving historical books as witness to that history.
Locally, you can find Morgan at the Prince Café and Justin at Bumbo’s Hamtramck.
Bucket List Books
Morgan and Justin are currently seeking:
The Formicarius (1475) by Nider. It’s the first conspiracy theory, witchcraft, leading up to the witch trials.
Atalanta Fugiens (1617) Michael Maier, alchemist/esotericist, features early Rosicrucian woodcuts, possibly world’s first multi-media book
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499) sells for a cool $100,000
Contact
Huckleberry Explorers Club Museum & Gardens
2660 Buchanan St.
Detroit, MI 48208
