THE NEW AGE OF WITCH GRIFT🧿

This post is part of my Full Circle series of Full Moon posts where I look back at older work with new eyes. Full Circle posts are free to read, but are made possible by paid subscribers.

In light of new conversations online about spiritual paths, paywalls and grifters, this month I return to one of my more popular long reads posted a year ago,  THE WITCH IS REEL IN. 

What’s an old witch to do? In four decades of jumping the hedge* nothing prepared me for the witchy bandwagon that’s now barrelling over things I hold sacred. In my many years of practice, I have been taught a great deal by teachers and allies on both sides of the hedge. I am old school, perhaps from the oldest school—where covens met in secret, where anything worth sharing had to be coded in runes, embodied in image, chanted in song or written in poetry. Divining the signs was a test. You might have help, but ultimately it was your work to do and by doing it you earned the trust of the spirit world. These tests, and your response to them, shaped your path and your integrity. Passing them took time, risk and solitude—deep listening, one’s full attention and the willingness to fail and try again. 

I am aware that what I make is part of a larger ‘witchy aesthetic’—a fad that is now eating itself, and us with it.

Where I come from, spiritually speaking, you don’t widely share the secrets/wisdom entrusted to your care. You don’t leverage them for followers, and you don’t sell them. I’m overwhelmed and disoriented by what is going on at the moment in this newly emerging New Age cottage industry. What was a fad perhaps ten years ago has not matured into a deeper and more profound presence in the world but instead metastasised into something else entirely, fed by the voracious machine of big social media. 

@Cat_LeFay on Mastodon recently posted a fascinating thread about the ability of long-time Pagans to spot a grifter. A year ago, I wrote about a similar aspect of witchsploitation* in The Witch is Reel In, exploring the hostile takeover of social media by fake ‘witchy’ accounts undermining community on IG. The post is also about the dizzying commercialisation of witchyness, and how I was expected to ‘play witch’ for publicity’s sake when promoting my book about the victims of the Scottish witch hunts, Ashes and Stones.

I have been divining since I was an adolescent in the 80s, doing spell work since I was in my twenties. At the beginning, I didn’t have a name for what I was doing—it felt like lived poetry, a way to access other forms of being and knowing. Only later did I hear the labels—Pagan, Wiccan, Heathen. Witch didn’t even come into the picture for me until much later. In the 90s I reached out on Pagan listservs for allies. I wanted to find a coven and a teacher—I yearned for spiritual community. People came forward, willing to teach me or provide me with a coven for a fee. An online row erupted about whether it was ethical to charge for apprenticeship or coven membership. I was a bewildered Basic, a bystander reading the ugly comments thrown back and forth. I left the group and became ‘a solitary’ for better or worse. This controversy has loomed large over the decades as I have walked this path. 

The algorithm doesn’t favour wisdom, integrity or experience.

I have a complex relationship to the question of commodification. For the last 13 years I have sold jewellery I’ve made as Feral Strumpet, and much of that is witchy-themed, inspired by totemic objects and my research into ritual and folklore. Before I turned to metal smithing, I had been chronically unemployed for six years. Feral Strumpet was literally a goddess-send, allowing me enough money to live and write. Any magic in the objects I make is imbued by the wearer and the path they walk, not by me—no matter the good intentions I hold as I make the designs. My awareness and mindset employed with certain pieces, especially ones using vintage fragments, is about letting the object speak to me about what it wants to be. There is a subtle distinction between art and spirit. I am aware that what I make is part of a larger ‘witchy aesthetic’—a fad that is now eating itself, and us with it.

We must risk and turn toward each other with our open hearts and minds—if even just for a few moments—yet big social media asks us to do the opposite.

Sometimes money is a necessary representation of energetic exchange. We still live under a capitalist yoke, and because of this we must be acutely aware of the ethical framework of our own practices as well as those who would like us to pay them for their services—who is offering what, why, and for how much? Who are their teachers? Before we pay for healing, instruction, ‘community’ or spirit connection we need to ask these questions. Let the plague of grifters infiltrating our shared spaces be a wake up call. If we are offering spiritual anything—and I know many in my online community are—we must be prepared to answer these questions with open hearts.

Everyday someone new follows me on IG or Substack offering ‘healing,’ ‘wisdom’ and ‘community.’  Yet this isn’t limited to online spaces. Recently there was a local event offering ‘inclusivity’ ‘connection’, where attendees would be ‘seen’ and ‘heard’, but would also need to pay a goodly sum for things that are integral to healthy community. There was absolutely nothing about the organiser—not even their surname or training or why they could heal ‘wombs’ or ‘generational trauma’ as advertised. 

Many of us walking a spirit path outside of organised religion are a vulnerable demographic—some of us survive with PTSD, chronic pain and illness. We have had to look for help outside of established institutions that are perhaps unsafe for us. As we search for connection and respite from suffering, we find there are many who are ready to give it to us—for a price. Some of us have perhaps become wounded healers ourselves.

An extreme example of witchy chicanery is unethical Tarot ‘readers’ on TicTock. There’s a plethora of threads on Reddit discussing the toxicity of many TicTock fortune tellers—this is but one example. It’s a perennial topic. Life online has become ruled by popularity contests and narcissistic display—this can’t be good for pagans, witches, or anyone. The person we see all the time offering spiritual advice online may not be the best person to dole it out. The algorithm doesn’t favour wisdom, integrity or experience. Fake practitioners who thrive on manipulation and click-bait catastrophising have access to an audience of thousands.

Nothing worth holding in our hearts will come easy. We must risk and turn toward each other with our open hearts and minds—yet big Social Media asks us to do the opposite. It exploits our friendships and connections for profit and asks us to compete with others in our community. IG, Youtube and Tic Tok have birthed myriad spiritual pyramid schemes suggesting we could sleepwalk into enlightenment, be ‘coached’ into power or abundance for the right price, or that the uncanny coincidences of the algorithmic dream we are served in our feeds are tailored to our best selves; they are not. 

All my writing and teaching is spirit-led in one way or another. What I share with you comes straight from the secretive, messy work I do as a hedgewitch as well as the discipline of a writer’s life. The two are inseparable—the spirit work informs my writing. I am willing to sell the writing—indeed, I need to. It is my (dismally paid but) only real job. 

The spell I can offer is this; our attention is powerful magic. May we aim it well.

* I prefer the moniker hedgewitch—with all its liminality—to describe my eclectic, solitary, shamanistic practice.

*A term coined by Diane Purkiss in The Witch in History in reference to Shakespeare’s witches in Macbeth.

More to Consider

Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel is a fascinating and darkly funny novel about psychic ‘grift’ and its relationship to trauma. It takes place in the 90s, during the tail end of the last ‘new age’ resurgence. 

Mastodon—Fancy trying a better social media experience? Something slower, kinder, and infinitely customisable? I’m on the wandering.shop Mastodon instance, but there are many other communities, and most talk to each other across the platform. If you have any questions about how to get started on Mastodon go here or ask me. If you are already there, please share your handle with me in the comments so we can follow each other! 

FYI—some of my teachers on this side of the hedge are: the wonderful people at the Scandinavian Centre for Shamanic Studies, the Heathen writings of Diana L. Paxson, Freya Awynn’s writings on the runes, all of Barbara Walker’s writings on knitting, lost women’s history, and being a crone, and the work of Jörgen I Eriksson on Norse shamanism and rune lore among others…