You expect a certain amount of witchy imagery around Halloween. It is still somewhat eyebrow-raising that nestling among the daily agendas, fitness trackers and chore charts available in Evernote, a popular note-taking app, you can find a full moon and new moon reflection template.
The moon templates invite you to reflect on how you plan to receive intuitive downloads and how you are physically, emotionally and spiritually affected by the moon. The template was offered by an actual witches’ coven, with links to its online shop. Among the stickers, grimoire (spell book) templates, and tarot decks for sale, this coven offers a monthly or annual membership which gives access to “magical guides for the astrological seasons, regular community coworking calls, and access to regularly updated materials on empowered spell crafting, symbolism and divination”.
Witchcraft is everywhere. TikTok, the social media platform where it is really simple to create and upload video clips, is probably the most influential platform for Gen Z. The short clips are addictive, the exemplar of the quick dopamine hit on which social media thrives.
WitchTok really took off during the pandemic. It is not hard to see the appeal. WitchTok seems to offer a measure of control over the unpredictable
TikTok has a thriving witchcraft-based subgenre, quaintly titled WitchTok. #Witchtok had 33.2 billion views up to last week. #Rishi Sunak had 409.1 million and #Joe Biden had 7.3 billion. The content ranges from people who just seem to like the aesthetic (lots of black clothes, heavy eye make-up, candles, herbs and tarot cards) to full-blown demon worship.
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WitchTok is just one TikTok sub-genre. For example, #cottagecore has 11.5 billion views, focusing on a dreamy aesthetic championing a simpler, more rural and sustainable lifestyle.
Part of TikTok’s appeal lies in the “For You” page, which has curated content for each user. Unlike other social media platforms, it does not just feed you more of what you have expressed interest in, but what the TikTok algorithm judges will pique your interest. So, in theory, you never know what will be displayed on your For You page. It might be WitchTok.
If your eyeballs stay on a WitchTok video for more than a millisecond (just a slight exaggeration) it will feed you more.
WitchTok is obviously popular but it also has many detractors, from those who claim WitchTok is full of mostly privileged white people culturally appropriating everything from Hinduism to sacred indigenous rituals, to the sceptics who sneer at those who actually believe in spell casting.
The detractors can be loosely grouped into those who are serious practitioners of witchcraft who feel that WitchTok cheapens and commodifies an esoteric spirituality, Christians and other theists who feel that dabbling with witchcraft and the occult can only end badly, and atheists who cannot believe anyone is taking this seriously in a post-Enlightenment world.
Then there are those who see it as an inevitable but regrettable outgrowth of identity-based politics amplified by capitalism and social media. There certainly is a great deal of selling, including everything from divination tools to satanic summoning spells. You can buy witch supply kits at Walmart, though thus far, not in Penneys or Dunnes.
WitchTok really took off during the pandemic. It is not hard to see the appeal. WitchTok seems to offer a measure of control over the unpredictable.
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Some feminists see it as empowering as it draws upon supposedly female forms of spirituality and therefore actively challenges forms of spirituality feminism finds patriarchal. They see the witches hunted in Europe and the American colonies as their persecuted forebears.
While the extent of witch-killing was nowhere near the millions once posited, the fact that between 40,000 to 60,000 people were convicted over three centuries, of which about 80 per cent were women, is appalling in itself. Witches were not always burned or drowned; many were hanged after extensive torture.
Long before WitchTok was a gleam in a capitalist’s eye, schools occasionally witnessed a rise in anxiety, depression and self-harm when students dabbled in the occult
The extent of witch persecution varied from region to region and was carried out by both Catholics and Protestants. Robin Brigg’s book, Witches & Neighbours, suggests that it was primarily a village phenomenon, where neighbours attempted to protect themselves against the depredations of alleged witches. Witch trials were rare in Ireland, with only a few celebrated examples.
Witch trials went on right into the Enlightenment but that world is light years away from the confused, chaotic, commercialised and often crass world of modern online witchcraft.
Should we be concerned that teenagers are summoning demons in their bedrooms, or hexing disliked peers? Your answer to that question might seem to depend on whether you think demons and hexes are real. Regardless of your beliefs, it certainly signals a hunger for something, whether it is control in a frightening world or an authentic spirituality. Christian churches might meditate on why they are signally failing to meet the spiritual needs of these young people.
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As usual, anyone already at risk through mental health difficulties is most likely to suffer more. Long before WitchTok was a gleam in a capitalist’s eye, schools occasionally witnessed a rise in anxiety, depression and self-harm when students dabbled in the occult.
Now that social media platforms are pushing the occult at young people as part of their attempt to bump up profits, those kinds of harms can only be exacerbated.