I hired a witch on Etsy to fix my life

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4 days ago

Wicked part 2 starring Cynthia Erivo, Image: Instagram/@wickedmovie
Image: Image: Instagram/@wickedmovie
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. The online marketplace where people can buy and sell unique handmade or vintage goods, banned 'metaphysical services' in 2015, but there are thousands of spells for sale, most tagged as 'entertainment.'
For $17(R300), 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.
Recently, I've been feeling like there's something in my way. Maybe it's a symptom of trying to 'have it all.' So I paid a witch on Etsy to fix it with a spell. Obviously.
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. 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.'
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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.
Customers often come in wanting their 'energy cleansed,' De Dios says. Witchcraft has in some ways lost its taboo, De Dios says.
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.'
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'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.
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.
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?'
The obvious question to outsiders, though, is less about ethics and more about efficacy: Is there any real power in these spells? 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. When I got to the end, nothing felt different.
De Dios believes the growing community around witchcraft transcends religion. 'Using nature as a source of energy is an ancient practice. 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,'she says.