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Bridgeport Shop Celebrates 25 Years Selling 'Spiritual Goods'

By Ed Komenda | February 16, 2016 6:00am
 Augustine's Eternal Gifts recently celebrated its 25th year in business in Bridgeport.
Augustine's Eternal Gifts recently celebrated its 25th year in business in Bridgeport.
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DNAinfo/Ed Komenda

BRIDGEPORT — Inside the colorful storefront of Augustine’s Eternal Gifts, you’ll find a place where spiritually strayed neighborhood folks buy tools to jump-start their souls. 

Lining the walls behind the cash register at 3327 S. Halsted St., you’ll find hundreds of bottled oils. In the back of the store, the shelves are stocked with candles.

But this isn't your average gift shop.

“It looks like a candle but it’s really a spiritual tool,” said the Rev. Carolyn Hennes, who this month celebrated the store’s 25th year in business.

Though the shop opened in 1991, Hennes bought the business in 2002. “I bought the good name of Augustine’s, and we transformed it into what it is today.”

 Augustine's Eternal Gifts and Spiritual Goods in Bridgeport has been offering "apothecary for the soul" for 25 years.
Augustine's Eternal Gifts and Spiritual Goods
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Today, customers come to Augustine’s from all over the South Side and beyond, looking for a streak of good luck in any one of the arenas of life.

The most popular items on Augustine’s spiritual menu are the candles. You might buy a candle to improve a rocky love life, and another to reverse a financial slump. There are others for protection and health.

“We read the messages that come through the candle,” said Hennes, who reads stories in the way a candle drips, the flames dance and the smoke floats away to disappear into nothingness.

Hennes credits her success to listening to a candle that told her to sell spiritual goods instead of toys and candy.

For the skeptics out there, Hennes offers consultations to reveal the parts of their spirits causing trouble in their lives.

Based on her readings of their souls, Hennes can help her clients choose the appropriate oils, crystals, scents or candles to help align their energies and get them on a road to improve themselves.

When it comes down to it, she said, it’s about fighting negative energy — a wrecker of the human spirit.

"We can heal the spirit and the soul,” Hennes said.

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