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Practical Magic: A Witch’s Guide to Etsy Witches · Never Post

• 0:12
  Mike Rugnetta: Friends, hello, and welcome to Never Post, a
• 0:15
  podcast for and about the Internet. I'm your host, Mike
• 0:17
  Ragnetta. This intro was written on Tuesday, 10/21/2025 at
• 0:21
  09:32AM eastern, and we have a bubbling, swirling show for you
• 0:27
  this week. Georgia, and I mean, could it have been anyone else,
• 0:31
  talks to practitioner of the magical arts, Mahegan St.
• 0:35
  Pierre, about the rise and sudden spotlight on Etsy witches
• 0:40
  and how their approach compares to witchcraft as practiced for
• 0:44
  millennia.
• 0:45
  Georgia speaks as well to PhD candidate in forensic
• 0:48
  psychology, Alex Frampton, about the role witchcraft may play for
• 0:54
  witches as a community. And also video game menu music Halloween
• 1:01
  edition. But right now, we're going to take a quick break,
• 1:04
  you're going to listen to some ads unless you're on the member
• 1:07
  feed, and when we return, we're going to talk about a few of the
• 1:09
  things that have happened since the last time you heard from us.
• 1:16
  From my laboratory in the Castle East to the master bedroom where
• 1:20
  the vampires feast, the ghouls all came from their humble
• 1:24
  abodes to get a jolt from my five stories this week. An
• 1:30
  endless summer for you inside your phone.
• 1:34
  Product designer, Laurent Delray, of Meta's Super
• 1:37
  Intelligence Lab, launched an iPhone app that shares a name
• 1:40
  with the 1966 surfing documentary, which will generate
• 1:44
  pictures of you on the vacations you didn't or couldn't take. The
• 1:49
  app is powered by Google's Gemini Nano Banana image model.
• 1:53
  I love writing sentences twenty twenty five. Here you are
• 1:57
  exploring a beach town, writes TechCrunch, or overlooking a
• 2:01
  European city from your balcony. There you are out shopping,
• 2:04
  having dinner with friends, or at a social gathering, end
• 2:07
  quote.
• 2:08
  Endless Summer will charge you $3.99 for 30 images past the
• 2:12
  trial, $17.99 for a 150, and $34.99 for 300, which is
• 2:18
  significantly cheaper than the all inclusive resort that's been
• 2:20
  advertising to you on Instagram. In a sense, Jean Baudrillard
• 2:24
  writes, the photographic image materially translates the
• 2:28
  absence of reality, which, quoting Borges, is so obvious
• 2:32
  and so easily accepted because we have already the feeling that
• 2:36
  nothing is real. Such a phenomenology of reality's
• 2:40
  absence is usually impossible to achieve. Endless Summer is free
• 2:47
  to download on the Apple App Store. X has reported that it
• 2:54
  will begin redistributing disused and inactive usernames
• 2:57
  via what the company is calling the handles marketplace
• 3:01
  available only to paid X subscribers.
• 3:04
  Longer and alphanumeric handles will be reassigned for no
• 3:08
  additional cost, while shorter and more recognizable handles,
• 3:12
  those with higher demand for redistribution, will be sold
• 3:16
  with prices starting at $2,500 according to Mashable. What the
• 3:21
  x trust and safety team or whatever is left of it at this
• 3:24
  point will do to combat impersonation, fraud, and other
• 3:28
  chicanery as a result of this process is anyone's guess. The
• 3:40
  Cambridge University Library archives are home to countless
• 3:44
  letters, notebooks, photographs, scrolls, and now floppy disks.
• 3:49
  In 2021, the library received the Hawking archive donated by
• 3:54
  the family of the renowned theoretical physicist. In the
• 3:57
  113 boxes of material, there were included a number of
• 4:02
  diskettes of various sizes and formats.
• 4:05
  To preserve these records and others like them, the BBC
• 4:08
  reports that archivists have had to turn to eBay, for example, to
• 4:12
  acquire the appropriate technology. For archivists
• 4:15
  today, the BBC writes, that means dozens of separate
• 4:19
  machines are needed to read discs of various sizes from
• 4:23
  different systems, and it often takes significant searching to
• 4:26
  track down these ancient devices everywhere from house clearance
• 4:30
  auctions to collector marketplaces. This has created
• 4:34
  concerns among archivists, historians, and archaeologists,
• 4:38
  they write, that future generations may face a sort of
• 4:41
  digital dark age when they look back for material from the past
• 4:45
  fifty years or so. Meta removed a Facebook group used by nearly
• 4:53
  80,000 people to track the presence of ICE, US immigration
• 4:57
  and customs enforcement, across Chicago during its now weeks
• 5:02
  long deportation blitz across the city. ICE, citing a
• 5:05
  Chicagoland, was used to, quote, warn neighbors that federal
• 5:09
  agents are near schools, grocery stores, and other community
• 5:12
  locations so they can take steps to protect themselves according
• 5:16
  to the Chicago Sun Times.
• 5:18
  The US Department of Justice requested the page's removal
• 5:21
  days after its existence was noted by dog food connoisseur
• 5:24
  Laura Loomer. A Meta spokesperson said, this group
• 5:28
  was removed for violating our policies against coordinated
• 5:31
  harm. It is unclear what harm is being referenced here. At the
• 5:35
  time of recording, the official Facebook pages for both ICE and
• 5:38
  DHS responsible for at least twenty one deaths in 2025,
• 5:43
  according to notice.org, remain accessible. And finally, in
• 5:50
  further Chicagoland news, the rat hole was likely no rat at
• 5:54
  all.
• 5:55
  Nearly two years after the Chicago rat hole became a viral
• 5:59
  sensation, the Sun Times writes on Instagram, scientists have
• 6:03
  weighed in on the debate over what type of critter made the
• 6:06
  splat. The zoological mystery was solved by researchers at
• 6:10
  University of Tennessee, Knoxville, who wrote there is a
• 6:13
  98.67% likelihood that the Chicago rat hole was a squirrel.
• 6:20
  We'll put a link to the story in the show notes. You gotta go
• 6:22
  look for the diagrams alone. It is pure gold.
• 6:27
  In show news this week, we're gonna do these real quick. We
• 6:30
  won silver in the signal awards technology category. That's
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  nice. That's very fun. When you tell your friends to listen to
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  the show, please be sure to mention that we are multi award
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  winning.
• 6:44
  Congrats also to our pals Close All Tabs, who were also silver
• 6:48
  medalists, and to Killswitch, who got the gold. Nice work.
• 6:55
  Never post T shirts are printed, and they look good as hell.
• 7:01
  Everyone did an amazing job, and they're gonna begin shipping
• 7:04
  early November. We'll have more news once they're out about what
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  shirts we'll have in stock for you to buy if you missed the
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  preorder, but it will be a very few.
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  A limited drop as the kids say. The Radiotopia fundraiser is
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  starting in a week or so. We're gonna make a special upload just
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  to explain what that is, how it works, and how it's different
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  from the never post fundraiser that we just finished, but the
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  long and short is it's a way to support every Radiotopia show
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  all at once. Of it like a public media pledge Drive, but Avery
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  Truffelman is there. Coming soon.
• 7:40
  We have some upcoming livestreams on Monday, October
• 7:43
  27 at 11:30AM eastern. Some of the staff are gonna take to
• 7:47
  Twitch to carve pumpkins. How festive. Grab a gourd to carve
• 7:53
  along if you are so inclined, or simply sit back and marvel at
• 7:57
  Georgia's claimed remarkable skill at this very specific
• 8:01
  task. Is anyone surprised?
• 8:03
  Not at all. And then on Monday, November 10 at 11:30AM eastern,
• 8:07
  we're gonna be streaming an editorial meeting and carving up
• 8:10
  ideas. I want you to know that Hans added that line to the
• 8:14
  script. Come to hear pitches and help shape upcoming segments
• 8:18
  that you're gonna hear on Never Post. It's gonna be a lark.
• 8:21
  Both will happen at twitch.tv forward /theneverpost. Follow us
• 8:25
  to get notified when we go live. And finally, hells bells
• 8:29
  pitches. We got so many. If you submitted a pitch for a segment,
• 8:35
  we got it.
• 8:35
  We promise. We're working on getting back to everybody that
• 8:38
  we're interested in working with. If we don't get back to
• 8:41
  you, sorry, but please do not be discouraged. Please please
• 8:45
  please please please pitch us again the next time you come
• 8:49
  across a story and you think, oh, sounds like Neverpost. Okay.
• 8:56
  That's the news I have for you this week. In this episode,
• 8:59
  Georgia talks with Mahegan Saint Pierre and Alex Frampton about
• 9:02
  witches online, offline, and the nature of the gulf between the
• 9:06
  two. But first, in our interstitials this week, dredged
• 9:09
  from the depths of archive.org, spooky video game menu music.
• 9:16
  Selections include Elvira, Castlevania, of course, Shaken,
• 9:21
  and Gauntlet. You can find a full list in the show notes.
• 11:29
  Georgia Hampton: What do you think people who are going to
• 11:31
  Etsy for curses are looking for?
• 11:33
  Mahigan St. Pierre: God knows. God knows. Petty resolution
• 11:38
  maybe or desperation. I doubt it's desperation because usually
• 11:43
  desperation drives you to, like, dark alleys, not etsy.com.
• 11:48
  Georgia Hampton: That's Mehegan St. Pierre, a practicing witch
• 11:50
  who offers services online through their business Kitchen
• 11:54
  Toad. Not on Etsy, mind you. Astandardissue.com and a Patreon
• 12:00
  and a podcast.
• 12:02
  Mahigan St. Pierre: For me specifically, the witch is
• 12:04
  someone who situates themselves within the world, within the
• 12:08
  cosmos as a person of agency who, you know, traffics with the
• 12:13
  living, the dead, and nature spirits all around us in any
• 12:18
  way, shape, form that might show up. The witch is someone who is
• 12:22
  an intercessor between the world of the living as well as the
• 12:25
  world of spirit. Right? The witch often takes on a role that
• 12:30
  is part priest, part community therapist, part healer, you
• 12:37
  know, part sorcerer.
• 12:41
  Georgia Hampton: What does that mean? Well, in simplified terms,
• 12:45
  the witch community exists to replace the social hierarchy
• 12:49
  that would otherwise reject them. A witch defines themselves
• 12:53
  for themselves. They have a spiritual practice that is
• 12:56
  grounded in the physical natural world. But what that practice
• 13:00
  looks like is also determined by each individual witch.
• 13:04
  It can mean reading tarot or doing someone's birth chart. It
• 13:08
  can also mean calling upon spirits to protect yourself or
• 13:11
  others. And even if a witch's practice just focuses on
• 13:15
  themself, witches are an extremely community focused
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  group. Historically, to be a witch is to be an other. To be
• 13:24
  othered.
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  The term implies ostracization, isolation from the broader
• 13:29
  community, and the promise of violence by that broader
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  community. But like many terms meant to do harm, the label
• 13:36
  witch and the practice of witchcraft have also been co
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  opted to be signals of empowerment. These terms have
• 13:44
  been redefined to suit a multitude of individual
• 13:47
  interests. This process has played out in witchcraft online
• 13:52
  over the last decade or so. I wanted to talk to McKeegan about
• 14:03
  witches generally, online witches specifically, and Etsy
• 14:08
  witches even more specifically after the whole Charlie Kirk
• 14:13
  thing.
• 14:16
  Three days before Charlie Kirk was assassinated, Jezebel posted
• 14:20
  an article with the headline, quote, we paid some Etsy witches
• 14:24
  to curse Charlie Kirk. The article has since been removed,
• 14:28
  but in it, the author described how easy it was to pick out a
• 14:32
  curse. She compared it to being as difficult as buying a phone
• 14:35
  charger. The curse was supposed to be a low level inconvenience,
• 14:40
  like getting a bad haircut. But, obviously, things turned out
• 14:46
  differently.
• 14:49
  The witch responsible for the curse, named Priestess Lillian,
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  denied her workings had anything to do with Charlie Kirk's death.
• 14:57
  Then she kind of took it back and said how her workings are
• 15:02
  effective and that curses can have unintended consequences.
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  But it doesn't really matter what she said. People wanted to
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  congratulate her and to hire her to go after more politicians. It
• 15:14
  also inspired, I mean, quite literally a witch hunt.
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  Priestess Leland received a barrage of death threats. Etsy
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  banned her. In the denouement of all of this, I wanted to know
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  what is it like being a witch? What is it like being a witch
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  online? And maybe most intensely, I needed to know how
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  does Internet witchcraft work in comparison to the non Internet
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  kind?
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  If you read the newsletter or listened to our Halloween
• 15:52
  special last year, it should come as no surprise that I,
• 15:56
  producer Georgia, have a personal connection to this
• 15:59
  topic. I've practiced some kind of occult spirituality my whole
• 16:03
  life. I started reading my birth chart and collecting crystals in
• 16:07
  elementary school. I read my cards regularly and will do
• 16:11
  anyone's tarot if they ask me. If someone I know had a baby,
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  I'll make the baby's birth chart for the parents.
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  I don't really do any kind of spell work apart from cleansing
• 16:22
  my apartment when it's called for, or maybe doing some full
• 16:25
  moon rituals. My practice is pretty private. But there's an
• 16:30
  entire world of witchcraft that is very much a business. If
• 16:34
  you're down on your luck and looking for a metaphysical
• 16:36
  solution to your woes, there are witches ready and able to help.
• 16:41
  Historically, the purchasing of sorceress services is something
• 16:45
  you had to go seek out.
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  By virtue of witchcraft being the work of the other, anyone
• 16:51
  who might be interested in purchasing spell work had to
• 16:54
  leave the comfort of more quote unquote polite society and go
• 16:58
  find it. Centuries ago, that might have meant going into the
• 17:04
  woods or walking down a dark alley that leads to another dark
• 17:07
  alley that leads to an unmarked door behind a brothel. Witches
• 17:11
  were harder to find, and that was often by design. But now,
• 17:15
  finding a witch is as easy as knowing the right search terms.
• 17:19
  If you go to etsy.com and look up the word curse, you get
• 17:23
  exactly 1,280 results.
• 17:27
  Search the word spell, and you get the same number. I don't
• 17:31
  think this is some cosmic coincidence either. I think it's
• 17:34
  just the maximum number of searchable products that Etsy
• 17:36
  allows. There's hexes to financially ruin someone.
• 17:40
  There's love spells and spells to block love spells.
• 17:44
  Etsy witches get around the intangibility of their services
• 17:47
  by listing spell work under the category of entertainment.
• 17:51
  Product names are outrageously long. Things like bring back
• 17:56
  stubborn x, return to me, come back casting, love obsession
• 18:00
  spell, love ritual for your stubborn target, bring him back
• 18:04
  love spell. Or 5 k to 10 k fast money spell casting, instant
• 18:10
  cash spell for quick results, powerful wealth ritual,
• 18:13
  immediate financial success, same hour or day. Etsy is the
• 18:17
  Timu of sorcery.
• 18:20
  The prices are also pretty comparable to Timu. That
• 18:23
  stubborn ex spell would put you back $35. At Mahegan's shop, a
• 18:29
  sweetening ritual costs twice that amount. Where does Etsy
• 18:34
  exist as a platform for magic in the community? Is it reputable?
• 18:39
  I don't
• 18:40
  Mahigan St. Pierre: think so. I don't know that it is. I don't
• 18:43
  know anyone in my circles and who I consider peers, who I
• 18:49
  consider to be like leading voices in this community, you
• 18:53
  know, this broader community that does Etsy. To me, I've
• 18:58
  always conceptualized Etsy as this place where you buy like
• 19:02
  packed with the 49 legions of hell.
• 19:05
  Georgia Hampton: Basically, something that sounds scary, but
• 19:07
  doesn't necessarily mean anything.
• 19:09
  Mahigan St. Pierre: That kind of thing rather than actually
• 19:11
  working with a practitioner directly. I think that the model
• 19:14
  of purchasing something through Etsy, getting like an automated
• 19:18
  email, and then like maybe a reading, maybe a picture. Who
• 19:23
  knows if it's the same if it's the same picture sent to
• 19:24
  everyone, you know what I mean? But it's extremely impersonal.
• 19:27
  And I think that by removing the person from the actual process
• 19:31
  of, you know, working services, you're no longer doing client
• 19:34
  work, you are churning out some bullshit.
• 19:37
  Georgia Hampton: Their shop, Kitchen Toad, offers a wide
• 19:41
  range of services. Things like cleansing rituals, handmade
• 19:45
  charms, and the option to book a reading or a consultation. All
• 19:49
  available online for any client who crosses the digital
• 19:53
  threshold. And this isn't just an add to cart hit purchase
• 19:57
  situation. It's very involved.
• 20:01
  Mahigan St. Pierre: There's an intake form. You know, you give
• 20:03
  me your full name, your date of birth, a picture of yourself,
• 20:06
  what you need out of this. And then once I have that money's
• 20:09
  transferred, everything like that, then, you know, I usually
• 20:12
  get in touch with people, let them know when it's gonna be
• 20:15
  performed. And then depending on if they want divination
• 20:17
  performed afterwards or they wanted a recap, which is
• 20:20
  essentially a candle burning reading. Then at that point,
• 20:23
  once the working is performed, there's pictures sent to you
• 20:26
  and, you know, a description of what happened, what I did, any
• 20:30
  omens that came through, any sort of visions, anything like
• 20:32
  that, as well as the results of divination.
• 20:35
  Georgia Hampton: The relationship between Mahegan and
• 20:37
  their client is extremely intimate, and it's completely
• 20:41
  unique depending on the person. If the situation is more
• 20:45
  complicated, say, if you want a curse to be lifted off of you
• 20:48
  and there are lots of energies at play, then this process is
• 20:52
  also more nuanced. Maheegan caters to each person's needs.
• 20:57
  One client might need a talisman to help protect them. Others
• 21:01
  might not.
• 21:02
  Sometimes during these consultations, Maheegan decides
• 21:05
  that spell work isn't even what a person needs at all.
• 21:09
  Mahigan St. Pierre: After the holidays, there's usually an
• 21:10
  uptick in, like, cleansing work and then removal work and those
• 21:13
  kinds of things because people come away from the holidays
• 21:16
  feeling icky and feeling, like, spiritually drained and such.
• 21:19
  And so a lot of people will come and inquire whether or not they
• 21:22
  were cursed. And most of the time, it's just like, no, your
• 21:25
  relatives just suck. I'm gonna be so real with you. Mima Mima
• 21:30
  is not a great influence on you.
• 21:33
  Georgia Hampton: Through their online business, Mohegan is able
• 21:36
  to foster a community of clients, many of whom have been
• 21:39
  coming to them for years. And Mohegan's work is very
• 21:43
  emotionally taxing. In order to know what any given person
• 21:47
  needs, they need to know a lot about that person. Fears,
• 21:53
  traumas, resentments, insecurities. On Etsy, that
• 21:59
  client practitioner relationship is replaced with the promise of,
• 22:03
  as Mihigan said I
• 22:04
  Mike Rugnetta: fought my legions in hell.
• 22:07
  Georgia Hampton: Galloping to take vengeance on your behalf.
• 22:11
  All fluff. Demonic fluff, sure, but no substance. But that kind
• 22:18
  of fluff sells online. It's outrageously popular, and it's
• 22:24
  the most common flavor of witchcraft that shows up on my
• 22:27
  feeds unsummoned.
• 22:29
  I regularly see people posting videos about how they quote
• 22:31
  unquote hired an Etsy witch to, I don't know, make their ex
• 22:36
  boyfriend go bald. This mainstreamification of
• 22:41
  witchcraft is mostly about what kind of post you can make about
• 22:45
  it. The term Etsy witch has become kind of a meme, like the
• 22:50
  Charlie Kirk thing, like a lot of things.
• 22:53
  TikTokker: I paid three Etsy witches to draw my soul mate,
• 22:55
  tonight, we're gonna find out if they actually drew the same
• 22:57
  person.
• 22:58
  TikTokker: I paid, well, technically speaking, two Etsy
• 23:00
  witches. One for good luck, and then one for another thing that
• 23:03
  we're keeping off the Internet, and that's fine.
• 23:05
  TikTokker: Yesterday morning at 8AM, I paid an Etsy witch. She
• 23:08
  casted four spells for me. Shout out to my Etsy witch. I wanna
• 23:12
  tell you guys about this until I thought it actually worked, but,
• 23:15
  bitch, it worked.
• 23:17
  Georgia Hampton: It's not entirely clear if the people who
• 23:20
  book workings from Etsy witches actually believe that curses and
• 23:24
  spells are real. Frankly, it might not really matter. The
• 23:29
  point is the post. The sharing of the fact that you did it. A
• 23:34
  kind of wink and a nod.
• 23:35
  Like, we all know this is a joke. And as Maheegan explained
• 23:40
  to me, sharing this work is usually a pretty big no no.
• 23:43
  Mahigan St. Pierre: There's this sort of like, this is hush-hush,
• 23:46
  you know? Yes, we are online doing things. It's a very
• 23:49
  strange thing to kind of compute. Because it's like
• 23:52
  you're public and you're saying, yes, hire me for these things.
• 23:55
  But at the same time, there's a level of respect that needs to
• 23:57
  be understood that it's like, but this isn't for other people
• 24:01
  to see necessarily.
• 24:03
  Georgia Hampton: Through Etsy, spell work isn't treated as a
• 24:06
  communal interpersonal exchange of energy that is best handled
• 24:10
  privately. You're buying a spell from the same place that you buy
• 24:14
  a cheap red sash that says, Huzzah, 'tis my birthday in old
• 24:19
  English typeface. Which like, that's fine. It's just something
• 24:24
  different.
• 24:25
  Mahigan St. Pierre: They're going through something or
• 24:26
  they're hanging out with their friends or what have you. And
• 24:28
  like, you know, they're having fun and they're like, oh my god,
• 24:30
  what if we book a spell?
• 24:31
  Georgia Hampton: And that's exciting. Right? A little white
• 24:34
  wine, a little hex, just another night with the girls. On Etsy,
• 24:40
  witchcraft is presented in the way a sideshow at a carnival
• 24:43
  might present it. With skulls and big capital letters and the
• 24:47
  promise that this curse will drive someone to the brink of
• 24:51
  madness.
• 24:56
  The product images are often AI imagery of the kind of stuff
• 25:01
  you'd expect. Women with glowing eyes and jet black hair staring
• 25:05
  intensely from behind a cauldron. If the listing
• 25:10
  mentions anything about demons, you'll be treated to the AI
• 25:14
  generated image of a dozen Snarling, frogging nast of
• 25:18
  terror. As if these very same creatures are waiting at the
• 25:22
  ready to torment your cheating ex. That is thrilling, but
• 25:32
  impersonal.
• 25:34
  It's the contentification of witchcraft, making it a product
• 25:38
  you can pay for in four interest free installments with Klarna.
• 25:42
  Not something which encourages deeper spiritual inquiry, which,
• 25:47
  you know, if you're out here wishing baldness upon your ex,
• 25:51
  maybe that would be good for you.
• 25:52
  Mahigan St. Pierre: The fact that it's impersonal also means
• 25:55
  that it's easy. And the fact that it's usually cheaper is
• 25:57
  also easy. Right? The fact that you don't have to actually
• 26:01
  confront your desire for why you're booking this work by
• 26:05
  talking to a professional about it, means that you can book it,
• 26:09
  set it, forget it, hope for the best, or even set it out of your
• 26:12
  mind.
• 26:12
  Because it was $15. Who the fuck cares?
• 26:14
  Georgia Hampton: From this perspective, Etsy witches serve
• 26:17
  the same purpose as a Zoltar machine. One of those
• 26:20
  animatronic fortune tellers you see at arcades. Sure, you know
• 26:24
  that the fortune you're getting is one of a finite number of
• 26:27
  options randomly handed to you. But you still pay for it
• 26:31
  because, well, it's fun. And people love fun, which for
• 26:36
  witches is sort of a blessing and a curse.
• 26:44
  Mahegan explained to me that being a witch online means
• 26:47
  maintaining a kind of public performance.
• 26:50
  Mahigan St. Pierre: There's always a component when you're
• 26:51
  doing public spiritual and magical work of performance, of
• 26:54
  pageantry, of, selling a story, selling an experience, selling a
• 26:59
  feeling. In the same way that there's branding for, you know,
• 27:01
  skincare and perfume companies, it's the same thing. The
• 27:04
  pageantry is a necessary aspect of this to a certain extent
• 27:08
  because that is what draws people in. And the showing off
• 27:14
  is also a way to communicate competence.
• 27:18
  Georgia Hampton: Witchcraft has a long history of showmanship,
• 27:21
  and showing off your skills is a way to attract would be clients.
• 27:25
  And the Internet lends itself beautifully to pageantry. When
• 27:29
  your posts are shared more readily by an algorithm that
• 27:31
  favors bright colors, human faces, and striking visuals,
• 27:36
  then social media could be the perfect place to perform your
• 27:39
  spell work in front of a potentially endless crowd of
• 27:42
  would be clients. But as Mihigan told me, the kind of things that
• 27:48
  tend to attract the most people to a witch's online storefront
• 27:52
  aren't things like spell work or public displays of spiritual
• 27:55
  ability. It has nothing to do with skill at all.
• 28:00
  It's whether or not you, quote, unquote, look or act like a
• 28:05
  witch. After the break, we learn more about what that means. When
• 29:54
  it comes to doing witchcraft online, being a skilled sorcerer
• 29:58
  matters less than looking like a witch. And Maheegan told me that
• 30:03
  this game of aesthetic telephone is a common thing for the more
• 30:07
  popular witchy influencers.
• 30:08
  Mahigan St. Pierre: They remodeled their kitchen to look
• 30:09
  like practical magic. And, you know, they talked about folklore
• 30:14
  that they read in a book twenty years ago once or twice. And
• 30:18
  then they just created this aesthetic around themselves, and
• 30:21
  that's what that's what it is. Right? And they have hundreds of
• 30:24
  thousands of followers.
• 30:25
  Georgia Hampton: Hundreds of thousands of followers is
• 30:28
  achieved by mirroring the aesthetic of the expected, the
• 30:32
  inoffensive, the friendly, the ooky spooky, but not scary.
• 30:37
  Frankly, the caricature.
• 30:41
  Alex Frampton: So we're talking about the pointed hat. We're
• 30:44
  talking about potentially the green face, depending on kind of
• 30:46
  how far back into Disney we're going. You know, the the grown
• 30:50
  laugh, the black hats, the frogs, the broomsticks, the big
• 30:53
  cauldron.
• 30:54
  Georgia Hampton: That's Alex Frampton, a PhD candidate of
• 30:57
  forensic psychology who co wrote a study in 2022 called In the
• 31:02
  Broom Closet, exploring the role of online communities in shaping
• 31:06
  the identities of contemporary witchcraft practitioners. In her
• 31:10
  study, she spoke to a group of 16 witches who found community
• 31:14
  through online groups. And as she explained to me, these
• 31:17
  groups can each have their own relationship to stereotypes of
• 31:21
  what witches are and what they look like.
• 31:23
  Alex Frampton: So, you know, all of these things are very
• 31:26
  cartoonish. It's very cartoonish depictions.
• 31:30
  Georgia Hampton: Some of the witches that Alex spoke to did
• 31:32
  find community sometimes through these stereotypes. By either
• 31:36
  subverting them, joking about them, or even reflecting them in
• 31:40
  their own way. And to her point, the stereotypes are really for
• 31:45
  the witch to use or reject as they see fit. If you want to
• 31:49
  turn your kitchen into the practical magic house, there's
• 31:52
  nothing inherently wrong with that. If anything, it might do
• 31:57
  work to invite more witch curious people into the fold.
• 32:01
  As the concept of the occult becomes more cartoonish, unless
• 32:06
  actually frightening, it becomes safe. And by being safe, for
• 32:11
  some, it can serve as an easier way into that world.
• 32:15
  Alex Frampton: Sometimes it can be a gateway. You might be into
• 32:17
  the aesthetic and actually gain some real insights into your
• 32:20
  values and actually do develop a practice.
• 32:23
  Georgia Hampton: And one of the most potent examples of this is,
• 32:26
  well, practical magic. The green faced crone is transmogrified
• 32:31
  into Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman, who are young and hot
• 32:35
  and cool and make it seem like we too could be a little witchy
• 32:39
  if we wanted to be. It's a deliciously inviting world of
• 32:44
  witchcraft to operate within. I wanna live in that world. And if
• 32:48
  I saw a witch online who was offering her services surrounded
• 32:52
  by the aesthetic signifiers of practical magic, I mean, it
• 32:56
  might work on me.
• 32:59
  And again, that isn't necessarily bad. But there is
• 33:04
  tension here.
• 33:06
  Alex Frampton: And that's because just looking the part
• 33:09
  isn't always the same as embodying it. What you do lose
• 33:13
  kind of if you kind of only went as far as the aesthetic is you
• 33:16
  do lose that connection to history and you do lose that
• 33:19
  connection to, okay, why do people practice witchcraft in
• 33:22
  the first place?
• 33:25
  Georgia Hampton: Witchcraft looks different for everyone who
• 33:27
  practices it. There's no bible, no unified spiritual leader. You
• 33:32
  get to define how your practice looks and who you choose to
• 33:36
  invite into it, if anyone at all. There's huge variations
• 33:40
  between practitioners of witchcraft. But Alex explained
• 33:43
  to me that from the people she spoke to in her study, there was
• 33:47
  one big overlapping factor.
• 33:49
  Alex Frampton: They'd experienced some sort of
• 33:51
  exclusion in some capacity, some kind of social exclusion. So
• 33:55
  whether it was, you know, the the more kind of wider female
• 33:59
  experience of misogyny or it could be something like to do
• 34:03
  with their health, whether it was their mental health or their
• 34:06
  physical health. But in some way, they felt that society had
• 34:09
  been quite exclusionary. Any any kind of social exclusion, kind
• 34:13
  of finding witchcraft, it provided, you know, a place for
• 34:17
  them to to find their tribe, so to speak, or to be able to
• 34:21
  express parts of their identities that maybe would not
• 34:24
  be so accepted in mainstream society.
• 34:27
  Georgia Hampton: And for the intrepid witch who wants to find
• 34:30
  a community of like minded people who share in the same
• 34:32
  experiences, the Internet is great for that. But it's also
• 34:37
  great for, like I said, showmanship. And that's where
• 34:41
  the tension lies. Performance is part of the craft, especially if
• 34:47
  you're offering services online. But there does seem to be a
• 34:51
  limit to how much one should rely on that performance at the
• 34:56
  sake of ignoring that shared experience of marginalization.
• 35:00
  Mahigan St. Pierre: Throughout history and traditionally
• 35:02
  speaking, where you're gonna find your conjurers, your
• 35:04
  witches, etcetera, is gonna be within the context of community.
• 35:08
  The act of sorcery, the act of enacting change through magic or
• 35:12
  through traffic with spirits is something that is really
• 35:16
  difficult to do outside of the context of community simply for
• 35:20
  the fact that if, you know, you're not engaging with
• 35:24
  community, engaging with people around you and you're not, you
• 35:26
  know, taking on other people's problems, there's only so much
• 35:30
  that you can really do for yourself. Right? And so you then
• 35:33
  steer away from sorcery to then just spirituality. Right?
• 35:37
  And that's where the line kind of draws itself between devotion
• 35:42
  or worship versus actually working spirits.
• 35:47
  Georgia Hampton: It feels like online, the process breaks down
• 35:50
  like this. Showmanship gets attention. That attention might,
• 35:54
  at first, form a kind of community. But after a while, if
• 35:58
  you're not careful, that desire for showmanship can easily eat
• 36:03
  away at any real creation of interpersonal relationships. The
• 36:07
  old razzle dazzle does work at getting more people through the
• 36:11
  door.
• 36:12
  But if that's the only thing you offer, then whatever community
• 36:15
  that once existed kind of falls away. And to a degree, I think
• 36:22
  that's kind of the tried and true story of the Internet as a
• 36:25
  marketplace for business. In a visually dominant digital world,
• 36:30
  attention is an undeniable currency. And if you're willing
• 36:34
  to sacrifice community for the sake of getting more attention
• 36:38
  and therefore more money in the bank, then the Internet is a
• 36:42
  flawless place for business. Witchcraft is not the only group
• 36:49
  that has had this kind of flattening happen to them
• 36:51
  online.
• 36:52
  But it's a very good example of this perfect formula. The
• 36:56
  overvaluing of the aesthetic of a niche group, plus the use of
• 37:00
  that aesthetic to make money. But it's not really money that's
• 37:06
  the problem here. Witchcraft has always been a business. The
• 37:10
  trouble here is commercialization.
• 37:13
  It's taking a centuries old practice of empowerment through
• 37:17
  agency and turning it into an AI image of a black haired witch
• 37:22
  glowering in front of The Internet should be a great place
• 37:31
  for witchcraft as an industry. And for Mehegan, it is. But it's
• 37:36
  also just a piece of the puzzle.
• 37:39
  Mahigan St. Pierre: In terms of offering services, it's not for
• 37:41
  everyone. Right? Offering the services part is kind of a thing
• 37:45
  you might be drawn to or that you might not be drawn to
• 37:47
  depending on your own practice. But for me, there always needs
• 37:51
  to be a component whether or not you're charging for services of
• 37:54
  acting on behalf of the living towards the world of spirits and
• 37:58
  then on behalf of spirits towards the world of the living.
• 38:01
  So you're really like an agent of change and agent of
• 38:03
  relationship.
• 38:05
  Georgia Hampton: They're able to work with people who live all
• 38:07
  over the world towards these goals. And that's powerful. The
• 38:12
  Internet also gets their name out there to more people more
• 38:15
  quickly. But taking your business online and having it be
• 38:19
  successful is a multi headed beast. Building a community
• 38:23
  online is one of the heads of the Hydra.
• 38:27
  But there's a second more troublesome one too. You said
• 38:32
  that doing this work online is kind of a pain in the ass.
• 38:36
  Mike Rugnetta: Mhmm.
• 38:37
  Georgia Hampton: How?
• 38:38
  Mahigan St. Pierre: I signed up to be a witch, not a social
• 38:40
  media manager. You know, spiritual people and witchcraft
• 38:44
  people and people with active magical practices often do not
• 38:49
  have the interest to delve into what it means to be an online
• 38:54
  personality. Right? That's not that's not what people signed up
• 38:58
  for. But unfortunately, it's the reality of things nowadays.
• 39:01
  Georgia Hampton: For someone like Maheegan, that might mean
• 39:03
  posting on Instagram on a schedule or fielding DMs. The
• 39:08
  net they're casting is ostensibly broad. Their website
• 39:11
  or podcast could, in theory, reach anyone. But they are not
• 39:16
  sacrificing their relationship to community for the sake of
• 39:19
  attracting the most amount of attention. But the internet
• 39:23
  makes it extremely easy to overvalue performance at the
• 39:27
  cost of building a real community.
• 39:30
  Sacrificing that interpersonal connection at the altar of SEO.
• 39:35
  There's a fine line between marketing yourself and
• 39:38
  sanitizing the subculture you represent, of turning witchcraft
• 39:42
  into a carnival game. Something flashy, fun, and forgettable.
• 39:49
  And if you really wanted to lean into the Zoltar machine method
• 39:52
  of things, there is no better platform to do it than Etsy.
• 39:58
  You're not going to Etsy in search of curses to find a
• 40:01
  semblance of community.
• 40:03
  You're going there to spend $12.74 on a hex removal spell.
• 40:08
  There's a reason that so many of the thumbnails I saw on that
• 40:11
  site were using AI imagery. It makes sense. It's honestly a
• 40:15
  perfect choice for what's being sold there. AI imagery has no
• 40:20
  soul, no human touch, no personality.
• 40:24
  And while I am sure that there are some witches on the platform
• 40:27
  who use it very sincerely, Etsy lends itself to a kind of
• 40:32
  anonymous impersonal exchange. Etsy is, in many ways, the
• 40:38
  perfect example of how any niche community can be sanitized
• 40:43
  online through commercialization. There's no
• 40:45
  community. There's no interpersonal relations beyond
• 40:49
  clicking purchase. It trivializes witchcraft into its
• 40:53
  most mimetic form.
• 40:55
  But the truth is no one is safe from the way that witchcraft has
• 40:59
  been defined historically. It makes me think of what Alex said
• 41:03
  earlier, how it can be dangerous to only think of the aesthetics
• 41:07
  of witchcraft and ignore the reasons why people turn to it in
• 41:11
  the first place. I think Etsy shows the consequences of that
• 41:16
  exact kind of thinking. Regardless of the intentions of
• 41:19
  any given practitioner on the site, the meme of the Etsy witch
• 41:24
  does turn the craft into something cheap and easy.
• 41:28
  Offering services like spell work becomes a funny way to
• 41:31
  spend $12.74.
• 41:34
  Until it's not funny anymore. For the people buying these
• 41:39
  services, something like the Charlie Kirk debacle could be
• 41:42
  just another joke, another meme. Hell, it could drive more
• 41:46
  traffic to Etsy. But for the practitioners selling these
• 41:50
  services, it's very real. If you hex the wrong person in the
• 41:55
  wrong way, like Charlie Kirk, for example, you could get the
• 41:59
  wrong kind of attention from the wrong kind of people.
• 42:04
  Community is what acts as a protector for witches. And Etsy
• 42:09
  just doesn't enable the kind of personal, intimate exchange of
• 42:13
  energy that is so foundational to witchcraft. It will not
• 42:17
  encourage the community that has uplifted witchcraft as a
• 42:21
  practice for centuries. That's just not the business model. On
• 42:25
  Etsy, if you come back from the holidays thinking that Meemaw
• 42:29
  cast a curse on you and you wanna buy a hex removal spell,
• 42:33
  it takes two seconds.
• 42:35
  Nobody's going to tell you no. But the craft is a little more
• 42:39
  complicated than just clicking add to cart, and that's sort of
• 42:43
  the point.
• 42:46
  Mahigan St. Pierre: There's something to be said about, you
• 42:47
  know, this work very much being part of the demi monde.
• 42:51
  Georgia Hampton: What do you mean by that?
• 42:52
  Mahigan St. Pierre: Without without getting too too rated
• 42:55
  rated 18, you know, sex workers and pimps and drug dealers and
• 43:00
  those kinds of things. All of the like sketchy business that
• 43:03
  goes on at night, magical work is kind of a part of. Right?
• 43:07
  Just because of the nature of the work that we do. I mean,
• 43:10
  you're breaking into cemeteries in the middle of the night,
• 43:13
  burying shit, you know, etcetera etcetera.
• 43:15
  You might be hired to, you know, curse people or to, you know, do
• 43:19
  a bunch of different things like that. And so the moral compass
• 43:21
  needs to be developed and finely attuned for sure. Who do you go
• 43:27
  to when, you know, you need to get an edge on the competition
• 43:31
  even though you're in a high ranking position? You go to the
• 43:33
  people who are a little sketchy and who will do whatever needs
• 43:36
  to get done. And, you know, who do you go to when you're really
• 43:39
  down on your luck and you're at the bottom of the barrel?
• 43:42
  Same story. You know?
• 43:59
  Georgia Hampton: A huge thank you to Alex Frampton and Mehegan
• 44:03
  St. Pierre who both offered such interesting and insightful
• 44:08
  perspectives on this topic. I'll include links to Alex's study
• 44:11
  and Mahegan's website in the show notes. If you're a witch or
• 44:14
  someone who is spiritually connected to witchy things, I'm
• 44:18
  curious how you've interacted with the craft as it exists
• 44:20
  online. And if you bought a curse or a spell on Etsy, I
• 44:25
  wanna hear from you too.
• 44:26
  Why did you do it? What did you expect? The links for how to
• 44:31
  contact us in the show notes.
• 47:11
  Mike Rugnetta: That is the show we have for you this week. We
• 47:14
  are gonna be back here in the main feed on Wednesday, November
• 47:16
  5. Each episode of Never Post represents a couple 100 person
• 47:22
  hours of work by a team of six people, hand researched,
• 47:27
  handwritten, hand scored, hand sound design, hand spoken into a
• 47:32
  microphone, and then hand edited with a mouse on a computer. At
• 47:36
  two episodes a month, that means that our $4 a month membership
• 47:39
  gets you bespoke, ad free, human made, agonized over podcast
• 47:45
  episodes for $2 a pop. Was this episode that you just listened
• 47:52
  to $2 worth of entertainment to you?
• 47:57
  If it was, please head on over to neverpo.st and become a
• 48:02
  member today. Support your favorite local indie internet
• 48:06
  pod so that we can keep telling you about which witch is a
• 48:09
  witch's witch. Never Post's producers are Audrey Evans,
• 48:14
  Georgia Hampton, and the mysterious doctor first name,
• 48:16
  last name. Our senior producer is Hans Buto. Our executive
• 48:20
  producer is Jason Oberholzer.
• 48:21
  The show's host, that's me, is Mike Krugnetta. We asked, what
• 48:27
  is this? It rustled. We dug a hole. What is this?
• 48:32
  We asked. Anocturama? No. We agreed. The thing was not
• 48:36
  anocturama.
• 48:37
  Anocturama is when you cannot catch their breath. We nodded.
• 48:42
  We dug a hole. Our white hair warmed around the thing. We
• 48:46
  asked, is this a genesis?
• 48:49
  No. We agreed. The thing was not a genesis. A genesis is when he
• 48:53
  sweeps across the water. We nodded.
• 48:56
  It rustled. We stood closer to each other. We asked, what is
• 49:00
  this? A stillness? Excerpt of the experiments lasted through
• 49:08
  the winter by Sabrina Ora Mark.
• 49:12
  Never Post is a production of Charts and Leisure and
• 49:15
  distributed by Radiotopia.