Crone’s Hollow
Address: 3834 South Main Street
Telephone: 801-906-0479
Website: croneshollow.com
District: South Salt Lake
“Crone’s Hollow is a place that came from love, and we welcome everyone.” TaMara Sorensen never planned to open a witchcraft store when she arrived in Salt Lake City as a twenty-year-old on vacation in 1979. She simply never left. The mountains and adventure called her, and she built a long career in customer service, working with the Sundance Catalog for over thirty years and teaching customer service courses at Salt Lake Community College. But alongside her day job, she was quietly finding her path in a different world.
In the early 1990s, TaMara read an article in the Salt Lake Tribune about witches. The piece mentioned Fertile Ground, a local bookstore. So, she went to see for herself. “I said, ‘I’m interested. What do I need to know?’” she remembered. The books handed to her that day set her on a new path. She studied on her own for about a decade before joining Earth Haven Coven in the mid-2000s. It was there she met Rita Morgan, the coven’s witch mother, and Rita’s brother, Roy Moorman.
The friendships forged in the Earth Haven Coven circle became family. When Roy was killed in a car accident in 2010, the entire community grieved deeply. Out of that grief, TaMara and Rita resolved to create something lasting. They envisioned a safe, welcoming space for witches, pagans, and the simply curious - a “hollow” where people could learn and connect. Rita, with her immense depth of knowledge, was seen as the Crone: in witchcraft, a wise elder, often a woman who guides others. The name Crone’s Hollow was born.
The shop first opened on South Main Street in 2011. After five years, when the landlord decided to sell, Rita and TaMara purchased their current building to ensure Crone’s Hollow would have a permanent home. It was a learning experience in every way - how to run a business, how to serve their community, and how to grow together. “People had been saying for years they wanted a place to learn tarot or witchcraft,” TaMara said. “It was beautiful to watch those things come to fruition.”
April Souleret, Rita’s daughter, had grown up around all of this. Born in Richmond, California, she moved with her family to Salt Lake City in 1978 at age eight, spending the school year here and summers with her grandparents in California. She remembers her mother’s early steps away from the Mormon church and into Wicca - a goddess-centered belief system focused on moon phases and ritual that was the foundation for many American practitioners in the 1980s. “It always made sense to me,” April said. “I got to create my own path and walk it the way I wanted to.”
April’s own life took her in many directions: working at ski resorts, teaching anatomy and pathology, bartending. But she never wanted to sit in an office. Then, in 2017, Rita became terminally ill with kidney disease after decades of health struggles. She passed away in September 2019. Knowing the end was near, Rita and TaMara had asked April to join the store in 2018. At first, she resisted. “It was not the plan. I never thought I would take over when my mom passed,” she admitted. But with time, she came to see it as a gift. “I am very grateful to this day that I said yes. A lot of things came together, and it was the right choice.”
Today, April and TaMara run Crone’s Hollow together, keeping Rita and Roy’s spirits alive in the work. A photo of Uncle Roy hangs on the wall, and the back ritual room is named “Roy’s Room” in his honor. It is used for coven meetings, weddings, classes, and community events. The building itself has grown into a labyrinth of spaces: a main shop, a statuary room, a reader room staffed with psychics seven days a week, the green room for overflow readings, a workshop, the so-called spider closet (a name inherited from a terrifying black widow encounter in their first location), and even a fairy garden out back.
The shop’s shelves are filled with tools of the craft. They maintain the largest magical apothecary in Utah with over 150 herbs, alongside oils, tarot cards, books, ritual knives called athames, statuary, candles, incense, cauldrons, and jewelry - often with stones or symbols like Thor’s hammer or a pentacle. Much of what they sell they make themselves: conjure oils designed for specific purposes, hand-poured candles, beginner witch kits, and their signature house-cleansing kits complete with instructions. “Our philosophy is that people should be able to practice their own craft with their own energy,” TaMara explained. “We do not just sell tools. We teach people how to use them.”
For those unfamiliar with witchcraft, April adds that it is less about fantasy than it is about self-empowerment. Fire in a cauldron, for example, can be used for cleansing rituals or meditation, writing down what you wish to release and burning the paper in the flame. “Everything that witchcraft is, is also science,” she said. “These are tools to help people empower themselves, to get their subconscious in touch with their conscious mind.”
Events are central to Crone’s Hollow’s mission. Each October, the Utah Black Hat Society, which TaMara co-founded, hosts the Witches High Tea at the Grand America Hotel - a tradition now two decades old. April and TaMara also produce Fairy Fest each spring, a family-friendly celebration with vendors, food trucks, creature encounters, costumed dragons and lions, and fairy lore. Halloween season is their busiest time, with additional events like Adopt-a-Familiar and ritual gatherings filling the calendar.
What April and TaMara want to convey to outsiders is that witchcraft is not something to fear. “A lot of people hesitate when they hear the word,” TaMara said. “But we are not anti-anything. We are pro-love, pro-community. Our readers are vetted for their ethics. They are truly tapped into the divine.” April agrees, explaining that they do not practice black or white magic and do not even believe in that distinction. To them, Crone’s Hollow is like any other shop, only the items they sell are meant to help people enrich their lives. Above all, they want visitors to understand that it is not a place of darkness, but a place of love. “Let your witchiness soar. That is what we try to do here - give people not just products, but the knowledge and confidence to walk their own path.”
