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FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2025
10/31/2025 4:00:00 PM
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The Witch Economy Is Booming
The Etsy witch trend has taken witchcraft into the mainstream. These online witches are making their magical services available to anyone willing to pay for them. Want a job? Or a boyfriend? There’s a spell for that. WSJ’s Chavie Lieber explains why it pays to be a witch. Jessica Mendoza hosts.
Further Listening:
- Etsy: Big Commerce or Crafters' Community?
- Lady Gaga, Low-Rise Jeans, and the Next Recession
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Full TranscriptThis transcript was prepared by a transcription service. This version may not be in its final form and may be updated.
Jessica Mendoza: My favorite witch ... don't we all have one? ... is probably Hermione from Harry Potter.
Hermione Granger: It's leviosa, not leviosa.
Jessica Mendoza: There is a witch for every personality. There's the kooky sisters of Hocus Pocus.
Winifred Sanderson: I put a spell on you, and now you're mine.
Jessica Mendoza: Or for our more sophisticated listeners, how about the Three Witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth?
Three Witches: Fair is foul and foul is fair. Hover through the fog and filthy air.
Jessica Mendoza: For the most part, witches are known to be scary, nightmarish, and this has had some very real consequences throughout history. Tens of thousands of people, mostly women, have been burned at the stake or otherwise executed for being accused of witchcraft. Today, in this economy, witchcraft is back.
Chavie Lieber: It seems like the business of witchcraft is pretty mainstream at this point. I think people are really interested in magic as a whole.
Jessica Mendoza: My colleague Chavie Lieber recently wrote about witches, and she says that these days, you don't need to go into the deep dark woods or to Hogwarts to find one. Just like everyone else, they're online.
Chavie Lieber: They are on Instagram or Shopify or TikTok, but I think Etsy is really the go-to. I hired an Etsy witch and it 100% worked, and here is my true story. Yesterday morning at 8:00 A.M., I paid an Etsy witch. She casted four spells for me. If I could have someone cast a spell to hopefully speed my manifestations and my wishes and my dreams along, I'm here for it. I paid $14, and it was the best $14 I've spent.
Jessica Mendoza: #Etsywitch has become a viral trend. These online witches are making their magical services available to anyone willing to pay for them. Want a boyfriend or a job, or a clear sky on your wedding day? There's a spell for that.
Chavie Lieber: If you go onto Etsy, you'll just find thousands and thousands of witches, or people who say that they're witches, and they are selling all sorts of spells, enchantments, good luck charms, et cetera, for all sorts of prices. It looks like it's a witch's market.
Jessica Mendoza: Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Friday, October 31st. Coming up on the show, why it pays to be a witch.
Music: (Music)
Jessica Mendoza: In thinking about the business of witchcraft, one of my first questions was who is actually paying for these spells. I talked to Tatiana Fernandez. She's 33, lives in Los Angeles and works in social media, and for a long time she, like me, was witch-curious.
Tatiana Fernandez: I was raised in the era of The Craft and Teen Witch.
Jessica Mendoza: Yes.
Tatiana Fernandez: I've always wanted to be a witch.
Jessica Mendoza: Same.
Tatiana Fernandez: I'm also scared. Everyone's like, "Whatever you do comes back to you in threes." I'm like, "Okay, okay. I'm not going to do any of it."
Jessica Mendoza: Well, can you tell us what led you to buy your first spell?
Tatiana Fernandez: I started a job last year in the middle of summer, so 2024, and then I got laid off from it in March of 2025.
Jessica Mendoza: I'm sorry.
Tatiana Fernandez: I was so confident, just because I've always gotten so many replies from any job applications that I put out. Recruiters have always been hitting me up. I've never struggled to get a job, ever in my career.
Jessica Mendoza: To her surprise and disappointment, the weeks became months, and still no jobs were coming through.
Tatiana Fernandez: It was really tough, putting out so many applications out there, endlessly fixing my resume, just not getting any replies back. After two months or so was when I started getting really antsy and anxious about it. In this country, we only get unemployment for X amount of months, so I'm like, the time is ticking, for sure.
Jessica Mendoza: Tatiana was getting desperate. Finally she thought, "Why not?" She gave in to her witch curiosity and bought a spell, paying a witch $4.95 on the online marketplace, Etsy.
Tatiana Fernandez: I was like, "You know what? I've been already praying about it. What would ... a little bit of reinforcement, that wouldn't hurt." I was like, "You know what? It's $5. I can spare the five bucks. I know I'm broke, but not that broke yet."
Jessica Mendoza: Okay, so in your head you're like, "Well, why not get a little reinforcement?" How did you decide which spell, who to reach out to, which witch? Which witch.
Tatiana Fernandez: It's funny, because for this I was just like, "Whatever. I'm just going to go on Etsy, and whoever's really winning the SEO ranks here is going to get my five bucks." I think I clicked probably the first one, and I was like, "Okay, he's got good reviews." It was specifically a career spell, because he had different offerings at the time, and I was like, "All right, let's give it a go."
Jessica Mendoza: Here's what Tatiana's five bucks got her. First, a message from the witch saying he had cast an initial career and job success spell for her, and that he'd recast it every night for 30 days. He also gave her some homework. He told her to write down on a piece of paper some symbols, which he called a sigil, and to keep it with her at all times. Tatiana did that, and slipped the paper into her cell phone case. The witch also told her to get into a meditative state before she fell asleep that first night, which she did while thinking positive things about her job search.
Tatiana Fernandez: "Okay, I can do this. Okay, I'm going to have a job, and I'm inviting this opportunity in," and that's exactly what I did that night.
Jessica Mendoza: Reciting affirmations, meditating, positive thinking. These are pretty standard practices in the spellwork marketplace these days. Here's my colleague Chavie again.
Chavie Lieber: A lot of the people that I interviewed for my story were equating witchcraft with this concept of manifesting. You envision a positive outcome or something that you want to happen, and then you just march to it. You are reciting these affirmations and you're doing things that get you to your goal.
Jessica Mendoza: The rise of modern witchcraft coincides with a broader cultural interest in tarot, crystals, astrology, or what skeptics might call woo-woo. Chavie says today's witchcraft is not all about positivity, though. You can also buy curses or hexes, though they're often more expensive, and some witches say they won't dabble in the dark arts for a client for ethical reasons, but it isn't necessarily the practice of black magic that can get a witch in double, double, toil and trouble. It's website user policies. Etsy, where a lot of witches set up shop, technically doesn't allow the selling of spells.
Chavie Lieber: Etsy has a page of house rules where they say that they don't allow metaphysical services, so they don't allow spellcasting or something that will advertise a metaphysical outcome, and they specifically list attracting wealth, love, luck, more business, employment, relationship situations. Etsy says outright that this stuff is not allowed.
Jessica Mendoza: How do all these thousands of witches, how do they get away with that?
Chavie Lieber: Yeah, so important to note, Etsy declined to comment for my story, but the witches that I spoke to did tell me that they all tell their customers that they can never promise an outcome. Just because you're buying a love spell does not mean you're actually going to get love.
Jessica Mendoza: Chavie also says that some witches will include a photo or a physical gift when customers buy a spell.
Chavie Lieber: They'll get a picture of candles and crystals and sometimes a little poem, even though they're not really paying for the item, they're paying for the spell, right?
Jessica Mendoza: If you're not happy with the outcome of your spell, can you get a refund?
Chavie Lieber: No refunds, no exchanges.
Jessica Mendoza: Hah, interesting. However, some witches will offer to recast a spell if the buyer feels like it hasn't worked after a period of time. How big has this industry gotten?
Chavie Lieber: Honestly, it's impossible to tell. Like I said, Etsy doesn't really condone this market, and so they aren't really aggregating data about it, so getting an exact figure on this would be a little bit of magic.
Jessica Mendoza: There's certainly a lot of paying customers out there who want to believe in magic. Many of them are Gen Z or millennial women, like the spell buyer we talked to, Tatiana Fernandez. Tatiana says things started to change in her job search after she bought the spell from her witch. Did it work?
Tatiana Fernandez: Oh, yeah. It was wild. It was day and night. He told me. He was like, "Be patient. It takes about two weeks to kick in." Literally, two weeks after, I started getting requests to interview, and I was like, "I have good jobs that I would like to take. Any of these would be a blessing," and I landed one of them. I actually had to reject the other two in the middle of the process.
Jessica Mendoza: Wow.
Tatiana Fernandez: Yeah.
Jessica Mendoza: What made you feel like it was the spell and not something that you did, or even coincidence?
Tatiana Fernandez: I honestly think it was the timing, and the fact that to the T of when he told me things would start working, they did. I have nothing but great things to say about it.
Jessica Mendoza: After the break ...
Carissa Perez: Hi, my name is Carissa, and I'm 23. I am a witch. Welcome to my home.
Jessica Mendoza: ... we go to meet a witch.
Music: (Music)
Jessica Mendoza: Carissa Perez doesn't live in a gingerbread house in the woods. She lives in an apartment in Fremont, California, and she doesn't own a black cat or a magic wand, but she does have a business card. It says she's a witch.
Carissa Perez: It says Bay Area Witch, spellwork, products, readings, and it has my Instagram name so that people can find me.
Jessica Mendoza: Carissa says she got into witchcraft because she was close to a pagan family growing up, but she's mostly a self-made witch. She's been reading spell books since high school, and she started her witch business four years ago.
Carissa Perez: It's like basil is really good for luck. Stinging nettle, you can use that for cleansing, banishing. Roses, good for love, self-love, things like that. Everything has its purposes.
Jessica Mendoza: Carissa has another job. She also works at a pizza restaurant, but she says she can make up to $3,000 a month on witchcraft, and that's helped her afford to live by herself for the first time. Her new apartment is where she practices her spellwork. She gave one of our producers a tour of it.
Carissa Perez: To start, this is one of my altars, first altars. I like to have it out here in front of the house. I do have a bunch of my products here. A lot of where I do ...
Jessica Mendoza: Carissa has three of what she calls altars in her home, small tables filled with candles, shells, crystals and herbs.
Carissa Perez: These ones I make.
Jessica Mendoza: Carissa offers spells for things like seduction and glamour, reconciliation and new opportunities, and she charges between $35 and $120 for her spellwork.
Carissa Perez: For this one, I am using, as an example, with the candle, I always like to have the person's name on there.
Jessica Mendoza: Carissa sits at one of her altars where she starts to cast her most in-demand enchantment, which she calls Under My Spell. It's basically a love spell, meant to make her client more alluring to those around them.
Carissa Perez: We're opening that one up, just spreading it right on the candle. Perfect.
Jessica Mendoza: Carissa lights a homemade candle in the shape of a woman's figure, which she douses in oils and herbs.
Carissa Perez: What I like to say is now we are in session.
Jessica Mendoza: Carissa reads off the words of the spell.
Carissa Perez: "Their energy flows like water, clear, calm and irresistible. They are a mirror of beauty and enchantment."
Jessica Mendoza: Then she concentrates on the candle's flame.
Carissa Perez: It's just having truly that patience with it, and just genuinely being present with it the whole time.
Jessica Mendoza: When the candle has burned all the way through, the ritual is over.
Carissa Perez: To end it, I just, like I say, cleanse again and allow the wax to dry up, and then it's complete.
Jessica Mendoza: Carissa updates her clients to let them know that the spell has been cast. She does not offer refunds, but she says her clients keep coming back. She says she's heard criticisms of witchcraft before, and she's aware that some people call what she does a scam or even devil's work.
Carissa Perez: Everyone has their own opinions, own religions, and I respect that and I am open to all of that, but I am a witch and this is just what I practice, and I've financially blossomed. It's funny enough, because that's not the most important thing to me here, it's what I do for my clients, but it definitely has brought me to where I am now, and that's what I'm very grateful of.
Jessica Mendoza: Still, lots of folks don't think anyone should pay for so-called magic, people who see the rise of online witches as more of a trick than a treat.
Speaker 9: I hired a witch and she was supposed to help with our infertility, and, spoiler alert, it didn't work, okay?
Speaker 10: If you can order a spell through a website, there's an issue going on.
Speaker 11: Because I'm, abracadabra, not impressed.
Jessica Mendoza: My colleague Chavie, like any good reporter, is a bit of a skeptic herself. Do you believe in magic, Chavie?
Chavie Lieber: Ooh. I'm a religious person, so I don't believe in witchcraft. At the same time, if somebody wants to put their belief in another being, I shouldn't judge.
Jessica Mendoza: What sticks out to you about this industry and how all of that relates to the economy?
Chavie Lieber: Yeah. I think my answer is a little bleak, but I feel like it points to desperation. I think it indicates the moment that we're in in terms of our economy and all of the current factors that young people are facing. It seems like, for a lot of the sources that I talked to, they are trying all of the regular avenues and that doesn't work, so if the job market or the dating apps or the rising rents are not working in their favor, then maybe why not swing the other way and try something just completely abstract?
Jessica Mendoza: Chavie says that a lot of the people buying spells aren't the type to go into a psychic or palm reading store, but the anonymity and convenience of online shopping lowers the barrier to entry, and the magic of technology doesn't hurt either.
Chavie Lieber: I think the algorithms are totally responsible for fueling a lot of this. When your favorite influencer is posting on TikTok that they are hiring a witch, and then you have all these people commenting like, "Hey, I tried it," or, "Why not," then it fuels the fire and becomes trendy.
Jessica Mendoza: You've covered a lot of trends in the reporting that you've done over the years. Is this trend going away?
Chavie Lieber: I feel like it's not going to go away, because right now it's Etsy and in a couple years who knows what it will be, but witchcraft is centuries old. It's always been here, and I feel like it will probably never disappear.
Jessica Mendoza: That's all for today, Friday, October 31st. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. The show is made by Catherine Brewer, Pia Gadkari, Rachel Humphreys, Isabella Jopal, Sophie Coddner, Ryan Knutson, Matt Kwong, Colin McMelty, Annie Minoff, Laura Morris, Enrique Perez de La Rosa, Sarah Platt, Alan Rodriguez-Espinosa, Heather Rogers, Piers Singie, Jeeva Kavirma, Lisa Wang, Catherine Whalen, Tatiana Zamis, and me, Jessica Mendoza. Our engineers are Griffin Tanner, Nathan Singapok, and Peter Leonard. Our theme music is by So Wiley, remixed for today's episode by Peter Leonard. Additional music this week from Katherine Anderson, Peter Leonard, Billy Libby, Bobby Lord, Emma Munger, Nathan Singapok, Griffin Tanner, So Wiley, and Blue Dot Sessions. Fact-checking this week by Mary Mathis. Thanks for listening, and happy Halloween. See you on Monday.
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HOSTED BY
Ryan Knutson
Co-Host and Senior News Editor, The Journal podcast, The Wall Street Journal
Jessica Mendoza
Co-Host, The Journal Podcast, The Wall Street Journal
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