We are a small group living and working in the far west of Cornwall, UK. It is a very beautiful, spiritual and magical place, with hundreds of sacred sites, standing stones, circles and holy wells. Prehistoric activity can be seen and felt at every turn, from its lush, hidden valleys to its bare, weather beaten hilltops. West Cornwall flows with the energy of folklore and mystery, lashed by winter storms that roll in from the North Atlantic. It can be small and magical place and still yet wild, strong and protective at the same time. How lucky we are to live and work here.

Before we got together, we each used to follow our solitary or eclectic pathways in private, occasionally meeting to talk shop when our paths or interests crossed. Others found us by word of mouth, and so, years later, here we are today – a core group with associates and friends encompassing just about every branch of the esoteric arts imaginable, from flower and fey magic to the more muscular labyrinths of hoodoo and black magic, and from hedgerow paganism to the odysseys of shamanic and spiritual travel. We all use artefacts of magic - waters, crystals, herbs, flowers, historical representations, roots, stones and a host of other ingredients in our various arts, rituals and pursuits. Zuggans began with the search to find the things that everyone needed.

Today we stock an interesting range of genuine materials that are often hard to get hold of, prepared so that they can be used in the modern world. Back in the early days, locating and collecting then selling and distributing these materials revealed a host of problems.

We live in a modern western world where many magical materials are difficult to find, impossible or expensive to source or increasingly illegal to ship internationally or possess in person. There is also a moral imperative to protect precious natural material and life forms and, for lots of people, to do no harm. Overall, people’s modern, civilised lives have become totally disconnected from the real natural world and so the instinctive magic we are all born with remains undeveloped or withers on the vine. We set out to offer ways to rediscover some of these ancient gifts.

Magic is more art than science, so there is much to learn from practicing with materials and methods. There are many skills in life that take practice at the beginning, until eventually the penny drops and you get to the stage where you can’t even remember the learning curve at the start. Ideally, there would be a huge body of knowledge that you can simply pick up without experimenting over old ground. But, with huge areas of the original magical knowledge lost or destroyed, we have to experiment in order to regain the connections we once enjoyed between materials and methods on one hand and the flow of nature on the other. There is magick in everything. Magick is in every part of life. If we can regain that knowledge, we will regain the magical way of life we once lived before recorded history.

Material possessions are wonderful, but on their own, they make a threadbare and empty life. Magick can reinstall the every-day sense of knowing who you are, where you are, and where you are going. It can connect you with the flow of natural energy in the world and give you that sense of direction so many people seek.

We reached back into Compass philosophy and after years of work, we formulated safe, effective, legal ways to make use of the magick that resides in many things. You may call this magick the vibrational signature, the secret energy, the life force, qui, or any one of its many fascinating manifestations at human level. We call it the Zuggans, an old Cornish word meaning “the essence of everything”.

The “Back to basics” of Compass philosophy means we don’t favour one school or path above any other. By the same measure, we try to avoid popular terms and labels because they are loaded with baggage - all sorts of pre-determined ideas, good and bad - some designed to enlighten, some simply wrong and others designed centuries ago to obfuscate the uninitiated.

We call our product and our company Zuggans. The Compass philosophy behind it follows the essential pattern and process inside everything, commonly seen in things like mandalas, witches compasses, medicine wheels, magic circles and the wheel of the year. This universal pattern was the only thing to arrive through Big Bang or The Creation (or whatever cosmogonic truth you prefer), and has provided the entire blueprint for everything throughout the long process of evolution ever since. It is deeply occult, yet it is still with us, inside everything we see, inside everything we do and inside every single one of us.

From our humble beginnings sorting out effective and sustainable hedgerow materials for local practitioners, our circle of friends is now a web world-wide. We have thousands of materials and artefacts, and, while we continue to supply many old friends in private, we hope to offer an increasing range to a wider audience as steadily as we can.

So what are we? Well, we are a supplier of proper magical materials, a bit like artists’ suppliers. And, like art suppliers, we produce the very best materials that we can – it’s up to you to use them to create and energise your work in whatever field you have chosen.