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Recently, I've been feeling like there's something in my way. Maybe it's a symptom of trying to "have it all." I'm a 30-something mid-career journalist with two very small children, and lately it's seemed like I'm just on the edge of something - domestic bliss, perhaps, or a big career leap, or maybe just empty laundry baskets - but I can't quite get there.
So I paid a witch on Etsy to fix it with a spell. Obviously.
On Etsy, magic is big business, and it's possible to pay a witch to cast a spell for just about anything, on just about anyone. Though the retailer banned "metaphysical services" in 2015, there are thousands of spells for sale, most tagged as "entertainment." For $17, you can place an order for good luck. Repairing a relationship costs $5. To make someone feel guilty, you'll need $9.99, and curses tend to start around $15.
My spell was performed by Avatara, of the Etsy shop NovaLunaTarot. Using the platform's messaging function, I provided my name and birthday, and I told her a bit about how I've been feeling. From her home in San Diego, she cast a road opener - a spell meant to "dissolve limitations" and give me "an unobstructed path toward my goals." She sent me photos of an altar, adorned with stones and tarot cards, where three candles burned. It cost $15.99.
Avatara joined Etsy in 2022 and has made close to 11,000 sales. It's the only platform where she sells spells, and it's her primary source of income. Business is up, she says, as interest in witchcraft grows.
And witchcraft is certainly having a moment. Videos on "WitchTok," a corner of the social media platform TikTok, have been viewed more than 30 billion times. Some 30 million posts on Instagram are tagged with "witch" or "witchcraft."
Chris Miller, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto, researches contemporary paganism, an umbrella term for spiritual practices and religions such as Wicca, druidry and others that revere nature. Despite a history marked by secrecy and persecution, witchcraft is now part of the mainstream consciousness, he says. That's in part because many millennials and Gen Xers grew up surrounded by pop culture references to witches.
"Think about all these things - ‘The Craft,' ‘Sabrina,' ‘Buffy,' ‘Charmed' - all being popular during adolescence," he says. "Now those people are in their 30s and 40s." They're fueling a retail industry worth more than $2 billion, both online and off; metaphysical shops and apothecaries are thriving across the United States.
Daysi De Dios, 41, remembers being captivated by the witch-rich pop culture of the 1990s. More than a decade ago, the first-generation Mexican American began learning about the healing folk magic practice Curanderismo. "I'm also a practicing shaman, drawing on my Mesoamerican roots and the tradition of Aztecs and Mayans," she says.
De Dios opened an online shop in 2017, then, in 2020, a brick-and-mortar in Montclair, New Jersey, called Houss Freya, after the Norse goddess of love and war. Housed in a former Lutheran church with an all-black paint job, the shop carries supplies for spells including crystals, herbs and candles, and hosts regular tarot, astrology and chakra readings.
Customers often come in wanting their "energy cleansed," De Dios says. She offers egg clearing - a process often performed by Curanderas that involves rolling a raw egg over the body before cracking it into a glass of water and examining it for clues about what might be negatively impacting the client.
Witchcraft has in some ways lost its taboo, De Dios says. "Where before it was more hush-hush, people are realizing that the negative connotation the word ‘witch' had at one point is just not the same."
Lindsay Squire, a Britain-based practitioner known to her half-million Instagram followers as "the Witch of the Forest," says some family and friends "thought it was weird" when she began practicing close to a decade ago. "They assumed straightaway that witchcraft is devil worship. Now, people are much more accepting and less judgmental."
Squire is a solitary practitioner, as opposed to someone who practices the craft within a coven of other witches, but she still found herself looking for community. She found it on social media. "Meeting like-minded people on Instagram was amazing," she says. "That was about eight years ago, and I've never looked back."
Squire posts videos of herself doing oracle and tarot card readings, and she has published more than half a dozen books about the history of witchcraft and the basics of spell-crafting. Her audience - and overall interest in witchcraft - is growing.
"I think people turn to spiritual things such as witchcraft to give them a sense of control," Squire says. "A spell is about manipulating energy to create change. It gives people a kind of strength and belief that they actually can have a little bit of control over what's happening. That's very grounding in a time where there's so much upheaval."
Melinda Nemecek, an Ohio-based content creator who has an audience of more than 300,000 followers on TikTok and Instagram, says she began dabbling in witchcraft "at a time when I had just gone through a divorce and a custody battle, and I was living in government housing as a single mother." Nemecek, 28, was drawn by "the idea of being able to manifest a better life for myself and control the bad things that were happening to me."
Nemecek's followers are often looking for what's referred to as "baneful magic; getting back at someone, making someone stop gossiping about you," she says. "There are a lot of people who have the idea that punishing someone who has wronged them will improve their life in some way."
Avatara won't perform spells to hurt other people. Most of her magic is of the self-help variety; her most popular seller used to be the cord cutter, a spell to help people sever unhealthy attachments. Now, it's the road opener she performed for me. She also offers spells for beauty and weight loss.
Squire says the bulk of her requests are for love spells. "You know," she says, "‘can you make this person fall in love with me? Can you make this person come back?" But Squire has rules around the types of spells she'll perform. "I don't do anything that will force someone to do something against their will," she says. "It's a moral thing. I wouldn't want someone doing that to me."
The obvious question to outsiders, though, is less about ethics and more about efficacy: Is there any real power in these spells? And how different is an online spell from the power of positive thinking, "lucky girl syndrome," vision boards or any number of self-help trends that come and go, promising to help us tap into forces that will bring us our wishes?
The more open a client is, says Avatara, the better her spells work. "It's an exchange of energy," she says. "It's not just about what I'm doing."
As I read the five-part incantation she sent, I tried to focus on making it come true. I'm not entirely skeptical; I trust science, but I also acknowledge that some things defy explanation. So for the sake of the experiment, I wanted to take it seriously. I took deep, centering breaths and closed all my other tabs. I turned off my background music and tried to stop my brain from multitasking for a moment. I read it out loud - words about how "motherhood and career no longer compete, they now cooperate" and how I would be "surrounded by professional momentum, well-paying offers and sustainable growth" - and imagined I could smell smoke from the ritual candles and burning sage bundle on Avatara's altar.
When I got to the end, nothing felt different. I spent the rest of the day checking my email for updates on a reporting grant I applied for, thinking good news would be proof that Avatara - and magic - is real.
No email came, and so far my issues all feel pretty much unchanged. I'm not sure my road is any more open. But I do feel a bit more hopeful. And why not? I buy the occasional lottery ticket. Of course I know the odds, but someone does win, and it won't be me unless I'm optimistic enough to buy a ticket. Maybe doors are about to swing open for me, and who's to say the spell won't have something to do with it? Plus I want it to be real.
De Dios believes the growing community around witchcraft transcends religion. It's for anyone who is looking for a renewed connection with nature, she says, and anyone who believes even a little bit in magic.
"It does not matter what spiritual walk of life you have or what religion you practice," she says. "Using nature as a source of energy is an ancient practice. It can really support your journey, whatever that looks like; to excel in your career, to help with trauma or to heal in some way, or just to live a more joyful life. What is magic? To me, it's just bringing in different energies, seen and unseen, to help you be more fulfilled and at peace. I think anyone could use a little magic in their life."