Behind closed doors, in the privacy of their homes, there are Detroiters out there performing magic rituals and trying to cast spells to get what they can’t get otherwise.

The tools they use in their ceremonies, including candles, scented aerosol sprays, incense and aromatherapy oils, often come from Discount Candles, located on Gratiot at Russell, adjacent to Eastern Market.

Most of the customers here are poor and low-income minorities, mostly traditional religious people who turn to unconventional spiritual methods outside the church walls. “Black and Hispanic are the two biggest ones,” said Donna Adams, seen at left, who co-owns the store with her brother Robert, 65. ”They’ve been doing this for many, many years. But more and more white people are starting.”

Adams, who refused to give her age (“any woman who will tell you her age will tell you anything!” she insisted) bought the store a few years back, when it was Fuchs, a store that passed through four generations before the last owner, the great-granddaughter of the founder, sold the old building to Adams.

Inside the main room, freestanding racks display bundles of colorful glass candles imprinted with intentions and the faces of saints. Hundreds of bottles of aromatherapy oils stream along a shelf from one end to the other behind the counter. Little bags of herbs hang from pegs on the back wall.

One of her best-selling candles is called “Stop Sex.”

“That’s when they think their man or woman is fooling around with someone else,” Adams explained. “You don’t want them to be able to enjoy sex unless they’re at home where they belong. And what’s even more funny is I’ll have the guys come in and call me aside — ‘I think my wife is doing one of those on me.’ I say, ‘Why do you think that?’ They’ll say ‘I just know. What can you do to get this off me? I gotta get this off me!’”

The customers’ requests are a barometer of life among the poor in the city. When the economy goes bad, people come here, trying to use the means of another world to influence this one.

“I’ll never forget that lady that needed $12,000,” Adams said. ”The house was going into foreclosure on Tuesday. I got her a King Solomon candle. I said ‘he helps you make the right decisions.’”

The King Solomon candle directed the woman to go gambling.

“She just said the spirit came over her and she’s not a gambler, she’d only been to the casino once. She said ‘I didn’t know which casino to go to; I’m going to go to Motor City, that’s the only one I hear about,’ but she said the spirit told her to go to Greektown. And that’s where she went. God found a way, God led her to the right machine and her prayers were answered. She came back in she said she won $65,000 with her last $100 bill.”

“They have such faith,” she said. “They truly believe if they burn this candle and say their prayers and take their baths they will get what they want. I can’t tell you how many come in here and say ‘I got that house, I got that car, I’m out of foreclosure, I got that $12,000 I needed. They’ll come in on a Friday and say I need $12,000 by Tuesday.”

Deb Foggio, 52, of Plymouth, a regualar customer, has known Adams for years. “She’s committed to the community,” she says. “She’s been here a really long time. She’s good to the people that come here. She really connects with them person to person.”

In a side room, Rosie the card reader sat tucked in a cove, at a cloth-covered table, dragging on a cigarette. She reads the future of her customers with an ordinary card deck, a talent passed down in her family.

“The grandmother, the aunt or whoever, they always used to throw the cards out just to see,” said 69-year-old Rosie, seen at right, who goes by only that name. “Must have a little Gypsy in them or something.”

She’s a reader, not a psychic, she noted. In the cards, she said, she can see people’s marriages coming, marriages breaking up, loved ones dying, misfortune on its way. She’s one of two readers here.

Though she got demonstrable skills with the cards, she’s essentially a good listener. “I am more or less a therapist,” she said. “A lot of people come here just to talk, and what the cards show sets them off to talking, and they can spend quite a while here talking.”

As in the candle store, her customers are mostly the believing poor.

“I have basically a black community, like the younger girls, you kind of want to teach them a little bit nicer quality, and I’ll just throw a word or two to make them think a little bit before they get themselves into different types of problems. I like them. One of the biggest problems is money, and ‘not that he doesn’t love you; he loves you very much it says, but the guy’s having financial problems. Cut back, get a job. Are you looking? Well why haven’t you?’ A lot of people come to me just for ‘Is he any good for me?’ First they kick him out, then they want him back.”

Whether they come to buy candles or find their future in the outspread cards, the customers’ needs center on everyday issues – money, court cases, jealousy and fear over love, hard times at work. Rosie said the store provides troubled people an important service.

Adams agreed. “Rich people can afford psychiatrists, poor people have to go help themselves,” she said.

Discount Candles is located at 1400 Gratiot Ave. Hours are Monday-Saturday 10 a.m.-6 p.m. For more information, call 313-566-0092.