I arrive at the offices of Red Wheel–Weiser–Conari promptly at 11:11 a.m., as requested by Brenda Knight, associate publisher and director of special markets.

Why, I ask Knight, did she schedule our meeting for 11:11?

“Because that’s angel time!” she brightly explains. “That’s when you can connect with angels — 11:11 a.m. and 11:11 p.m. We also like to have meetings at 4:20.”

Red Wheel–Weiser–Conari is one of the largest publishers of esoterica: occult tomes, metaphysical explorations, spiritual guides both serious and playful, and lots of other books that poke at the boundaries of our shared reality. Its oldest imprint, Weiser, was launched by Samuel Weiser out of an antiquarian bookstore back in 1929, when the press began rereleasing occult classics that had fallen out of print. In the late ’50s, having predicted the counterculture craze for Eastern philosophy, it released a spate of Buddhist and Hindu titles. Eventually Weiser passed the press on to his son Donald, and in 2000 business partners Jan Johnson and Michael Kerber bought it, adding East Bay native Conari Press to the fold in 2002.

With its roots securely planted in a to-die-for occult backlist that includes Aleister Crowley’s life’s work — the whirlwind novel Diary of a Drug Fiend, the massive, lifetime’s-worth-of-reading-material Magick, the ever-popular Thoth tarot deck — the publisher has a foundation of street cred. It also has enough consistent sellers to fund a diverse and innovative stream of New Age titles geared toward a public hungry for a glimpse of the unknown -- and for practical advice on enjoying the already known. Forthcoming books include topics such as how to cope when all hell breaks loose in 2012, the end of the Mayan calendar; practical things humans can do to stop beating the crap out of our host planet; and the work of scientists who are using the tools of their trade to solve metaphysical mysteries and make contact with the famed “other side.”

The publishing house has also been enjoying a swell in sales thanks to that little literary sensation The Da Vinci Code. “I’d like to point out that we had the Green Man book and kit before everyone had Da Vinci fever,” Knight says proudly, referring to the verdant dude of pagan myth who made a cameo in the Code. “We had books all about Knights Templar in the backlist, so we were prepared for the Da Vinci mania. And what’s cool about it is, people who wanted a good escape and to read the book everyone was talking about, they’re taking a deeper look at the divine feminine and Western mystery traditions. So thanks, Dan Brown, for leading people to our backlist!”

Red Wheel–Weiser–Conari finds some of its authors through manuscripts that come over the transom and others by scouting popular paganesque gatherings like Pantheacon, where Yoruban priestesses rub elbows with druids and vampires and the occult underground’s top thinkers present papers academic-style. The publishers are also startlingly adept at drawing the proposals and authors they’d like to work with. “If we mention people, we sort of conjure them,” Johnson says. “We don’t get every book; we don’t get that book that we bid on. ...