Hiring a witch is no longer something that requires wandering into a mysterious little shop, consulting a woman with an alarming number of candles, or hoping your grandmother knows somebody who knows somebody.
You can do it all from the comfort of your couch. From there you can compare services, read reviews, choose your price point, and even shop around for supernatural intervention.
Capitalism, people, has finally figured out how to monetize magic.
And business appears to be booming.
There’s a Spell for That
The Etsy witch entered the broader cultural conversation after Social Media influencer Jaz Smith hired one in hopes of securing good weather for her wedding.
It worked out rather nicely.
Her wedding became a social media spectacle, complete with the kind of gorgeous weather that makes brides everywhere wonder whether perhaps the caterer and photographer are no longer the only vendors worth booking.
Other people have since turned to online witches for considerably more than sunshine. There are spells for jobs, relationships, protection, housing, legal problems, removing obstacles, attracting love, and keeping the love you already have.
There are soulmate drawings, candle rituals, spells designed to improve your luck, and even weather spells for children's birthday parties.
In other words, if human beings worry about it, somebody somewhere has probably figured out how to sell a spell for it.
Etsy officially banned the sale of spells and other metaphysical services promising a specific outcome in 2015.
Bargain Basement Woo Woo
Yet spiritual services remain easy to find on the marketplace, often presented as entertainment or accompanied by physical products. Prices can range from less than $10 to hundreds of dollars.
Which raises an irresistible question: What exactly are people buying?
Because I don't think the answer is simply “magic.”
Maybe We're Buying a Little Control
It would be easy to laugh at all of this. A weather spell? A protection candle? A ritual to help with a court case? Come on.
Except humans have been doing versions of this for thousands of years. We pray before surgeries, carry lucky objects, perform rituals before important events, make wishes before blowing out birthday candles, knock on wood, and cross our fingers.
Sports fans wear the same shirt they wore the last time their team won because, obviously, changing shirts at this point would be irresponsible.
Most of us have a little magical thinking tucked away somewhere. We just give it different names.
And that is what makes the rise of the Etsy witch more interesting than the novelty of purchasing a spell online. People tend to reach for the supernatural when the ordinary world stops feeling predictable.
Right now, quite a lot feels unpredictable.
The Spells Are Changing Because Worries Are Changing
One man, who sells spells on Etsy, has said that customers frequently purchase spells not just for themselves, but for people and events they care about. His perfect-weather spell, originally associated with weddings, became popular for other occasions after a customer asked him to adapt it for a child's birthday party.
That tiny detail might tell us more about this trend than anything else. People aren't necessarily trying to become all-powerful sorcerers.
Sometimes they just want Grandma's outdoor birthday party not to get rained out. They want their daughter to get the job, their friend to find love, or someone they care about to be safe.
And lately, that last category appears to be becoming more important.
Another owner of a major Etsy shop \, has said demand has shifted toward protection as immigration raids and political uncertainty have left some customers frightened about what could happen to themselves or people they love. She has also seen interest in spells involving housing, employment, court cases, and other legal matters.
Even love spells have changed. Rather than simply asking for help finding romance, some customers are seeking help holding relationships together while financial pressure threatens to pull them apart.
That is where the Etsy-witch phenomenon stops being merely quirky internet culture. Look at the spells people are buying and you get a surprisingly intimate inventory of what people are afraid of losing: a home, a job, a relationship, safety, stability, and a future that turns out the way they hoped.
That's not really a story about witches.
It's a story about anxiety.
We Have Always Called on the Supernatural When Life Hurts
The technology is new. The instinct isn't.
For centuries, people across cultures and social classes have turned toward spiritualism, divination, ritual, and other supernatural practices during periods of grief and uncertainty.
In the nineteenth century, Spiritism became especially influential in Brazil.
Based on the teachings of French educator Allan Kardec, the movement combined ideas about Christianity, reincarnation, spiritual evolution, and communication with the dead.
It attracted followers across social classes and eventually became deeply embedded in Brazilian culture.
Elsewhere, Spiritualism fascinated scientists, intellectuals, aristocrats, and even royalty. Queen Victoria lived during an era when séances and attempts to communicate with the dead became enormously fashionable.
There was a heartbreaking reason for some of that popularity. Death was everywhere. Child mortality was high. Wars separated families permanently.
Medicine could do little about diseases we now routinely treat. For grieving parents, the possibility that death might not completely sever a relationship was extraordinarily powerful.
Séances To Talk To The Dead
Mary Todd Lincoln famously held séances after the death of her son Willie. Her interest in Spiritualism deepened after Abraham Lincoln's assassination.
It's tempting from the comfort of the twenty-first century to dismiss such practices as superstition. But imagine losing your child in a world without antibiotics, grief counseling, modern psychiatric care, FaceTime videos, digital photographs, or even a reliable understanding of the disease that killed him.
Then someone tells you there might be a way to speak to him again.
Human beings don't become less human simply because history eventually calls their beliefs irrational.
Then Houdini Came Along and Ruined the Party
Of course, where desperate people gather, opportunists are rarely far behind. Spiritualism eventually became plagued by allegations of fraud, and one of its most famous critics knew a thing or two about fooling an audience.
Harry Houdini, arguably the most famous magician in the world, spent years exposing mediums who claimed to communicate with the dead.
Which is wonderfully ironic. A professional magician devoted part of his life to proving that some other people doing magic were cheating.
But Spiritualism's decline didn't eliminate our fascination with the occult. It simply changed costumes.
Hollywood Gave the Witch a Makeover
By the late twentieth century, American culture had dramatically rewritten the witch. Earlier generations had often been taught to associate witchcraft with evil, sin, or danger.
Then popular culture gave us a different character entirely.
Hocus Pocus, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, The Craft, Halloweentown, Charmed, and Practical Magic presented witches who could be funny, glamorous, rebellious, vulnerable, romantic, and powerful. They had sisters and boyfriends. They had family problems. They worried about fitting in. Sometimes they saved the world.
The witch was no longer simply the villain lurking at the edge of the village. She could be the heroine.
More importantly, she became a woman with agency. That transformation matters because modern witch imagery is often tied less to fear of supernatural evil and more to independence, intuition, female friendship, and the appealing idea that perhaps you have more power over your own life than you've been told.
Today, the definition has expanded even further. Marvel gave us Wanda Maximoff and Agatha Harkness. Wicked gave another generation Glinda and Elphaba. There is no longer one cultural definition of a witch.
Which made her perfectly suited for the internet.
And Then WitchTok Arrived
TikTok did what TikTok does best. It took an existing subculture, introduced it to millions of people, and turned part of it into an industry.
WitchTok became a sprawling online world of tarot readers, astrologers, spellcasters, crystal enthusiasts, manifestation coaches, spiritual practitioners, and curious spectators. The occult no longer required initiation into some secretive community. The algorithm would bring it directly to you.
Watch one tarot reading and suddenly your phone would very much like you to know that someone with the initial J regrets losing you. Watch another and apparently money is heading your way.
Excellent. I'll keep an eye on my checking account.
But the interesting part is how seamlessly this world has merged with the enormous wellness economy. Manifestation sits beside meditation. Crystals sit beside skin care. Affirmations mingle with productivity routines. Tarot readings appear between Pilates videos and financial advice.
Practices that previous generations might have categorized as occult have been repackaged as self-care, spirituality, empowerment, and wellness.
And once that happened, Etsy was almost inevitable.
We Put Magic in the Shopping Cart
This may be the genuinely new part.
The Victorians held séances in drawing rooms. Mary Lincoln invited mediums to the White House. Today, you can purchase spiritual assistance using the same basic process you use to order a personalized coffee mug.
You search, click, pay, wait for confirmation, and leave a review.
We have taken one of humanity's oldest impulses, the desire to ask unseen forces for help, and plugged it into e-commerce.
There is something hilarious about that. There is also something revealing.
AI With Modern Technology
Modern technology was supposed to make the world feel more understandable. We have weather satellites, artificial intelligence, instant communication, medical imaging, GPS, predictive algorithms, and more information in our pockets than entire civilizations once possessed.
And we're still nervous.
We still don't know whether the relationship will survive, whether we'll get the job, whether the judge will rule in our favor, or whether our family will be safe.
We still can't control the rain.
For all our technology, uncertainty remains stubbornly undefeated.
Maybe That's the Real Product
I have no idea whether an Etsy witch can change the weather. Neither Etsy reviews nor beautiful wedding photographs can prove that a spell made the clouds disappear.
But I'm increasingly convinced that debating whether the magic is “real” misses the more interesting question.
What does purchasing the spell do for the person who buys it?
Maybe it provides hope. Maybe it creates the feeling that you've done one more thing when there is nothing else you can do. Maybe it transforms helpless waiting into action. Maybe spending $20 on a ritual feels better than sitting alone with uncertainty.
Humans have always created rituals around the things we cannot control. We pray, light candles, make wishes, and consult priests, astrologers, psychics, therapists, financial advisers, weather apps, and occasionally our mothers.
Some of those sources are considerably more evidence-based than others.
Human Pleas
But underneath many of them is the same deeply human plea: Please tell me everything is going to be okay.
The Etsy witch may look like a very modern invention, complete with digital storefronts, online reviews, and TikTok marketing. She isn't. She's the latest version of something ancient.
People still want someone to negotiate with uncertainty on our behalf.
We've just finally been given a checkout button. On Etsy no less.
. . .
