From Tarot to UFOs, Seven Stars Bookstore Features Occult Works

The strains of classical music float through the Seven Stars bookstore in Central Square, quietly weaving past the comfortable armchairs and the clerk reading at the checkout desk.

While everything about the store suggests that it is just another outlet for the latest Tom Wolfe novel or a Harvard professor's literary critique, a glance at the shelves quickly proves otherwise.

Lined upon the walls are Anarchy magazine and Indigenous Woman.

Not exactly your usual lineup of Newsweek and Time.

That's because Seven Stars is an "occult bookstore," according to longtime clerk Phillip Johnson, and it sells everything from tarot cards to gemstones.

Its specialty, though, is books.

Interested in UFOs? You can catch the latest from Whitley Streiber, the author of the Communion series. Streiber claims he was abducted by aliens on December 26, 1985, while vacationing in upstate New York.

If something more direct is to your taste, Seven Stars also carries the Ultimate Alien Agenda and The Idiot's Guide to Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Or you could browse through one of the many books on Roswell, New Mexico, the site of a purported UFO crash.

However, the store also caters to those with more earthly desires. According to Johnson, the best-selling book at the moment is Multi-Orgasmic Man, a book on helping men improve their sexual technique.

"That book sells like hotcakes," Johnson says.

Johnson's comment causes a tall man with spiky blond hair to pause on his way out of the store.

"Yeah, I just bought that book the other day," the customer affirms.

Beyond extraterrestrial life and how-to books, Seven Stars has many other types of books.

The store has a religion section, including shelves on various Eastern religions like Hinduism, Islam and Taoism.

There is a section on women's studies, as well as two shelves devoted to astrology, which dominate the store.

Johnson, who has been working at Seven Stars for over 10 years, has fond memories of the place.

He moved with it when it left its original location at 58 JFK St., where it was called Shambala, over a decade ago.

A phone call interrupts the quiet ambience of the store.

The woman on the line is inquiring about whether the book she ordered--How to Know the Higher World--has come in.

"All kinds of people shop here," Johnson says with a smile after assuring her that the book had arrived.

He lists some recent hot sellers, proof of the customers' diversity: Horns and Crescent, a Cambridge-based pagan magazine; Tibetan jewelry and books; and Conversations With God, Neale Donald Walsch's New York Times bestseller.

While customers are drawn to the bookstore's atmosphere, Seven Stars does a large part of its business is done in special orders from around the world.

"We had one of our customers who got a degree from Oxford tell us that there are only three esoteric, occult top-level bookstores in the world, and we are one of them," Johnson says proudly.

Also, each year a Sorbonne professor from Paris comes to Boston and orders books from the store.

"He'll order boxes of books, ask me to ring them up and ship them to him in France," Johnson says, smiling. "He can't get them anywhere over there."

But for such a diverse clientele, Seven Stars has a multitude of more mainstream books.

If you're not in the mood for High Times, the magazine for pot smokers (this week featuring the Beastie Boys' DJ Mix Master Mike), then you can also find books on Bill Clinton, environmentalism and exercise.

Seven Stars is located at 731 Mass. Ave. in Central Square.