Katie Begley needed “some good juju” this summer.
Begley, a New York-based content creator and fitness instructor, was waiting to hear back about several big work opportunities, including a potential Little Caesars commercial with Philadelphia Eagles running back Saquon Barkley.
So she turned to a figure praised online for offering low-stakes help for the price of a latte: an Etsy witch.
“It can’t hurt. I love witches. I love magic. I love all of that,” Begley, 25, recalled thinking at the end of August when she went on the online marketplace known for personalized party swag and vintage clothing. “What’s the downside?”
She ultimately bought four spells from a TikTok-approved witch — a soulmate attraction spell, a powerful obsession spell, glamor magic and a wealth and prosperity casting — for $60.76. The next day, Begley got a call that she had booked the commercial starring Barkley.
“Of course, my head was like, ‘Oh — it was my witch,’” she said, laughing.
Begley shared the story in two TikTok videos, racking up millions of views as the latest success story in the cultural phenomenon around Etsy witches. In the last year alone, these spiritual workers have been hailed online for saving weddings, selling houses, securing jobs, influencing basketball games, drawing soulmates and even sparking outrage after Charlie Kirk’s death.
For Emily D. Crews, the executive director of the Martin Marty Center for the Public Understanding of Religion at the University of Chicago Divinity School, the rise of Etsy witches mirrors a broader shift in American religious life.
Institutional religion is in steady decline, with the religiously unaffiliated now making up roughly 28% of the U.S. population. In its place, she said, many Americans — especially millennials and Gen Z — are pivoting toward belief systems that borrow from multiple traditions.
“This is the context in which people are buying blessings and curses from witches on Etsy,” she said. “It makes sense, in this kind of religious landscape, that someone might just as easily seek help from a witch than from a priest or a rabbi or a sacred text, even if they were raised Christian or Jewish or some other more conventionally recognizable religion.”
Amid rising economic uncertainty, burnout and increasing political division, the popularity of the Etsy witch seems like an easy escape that doesn’t require a massive financial leap of faith — just a spiritual one. One that even this reporter dabbled in, in the name of journalism.
Viral weddings and political controversy
While witchcraft is an ancient practice and Etsy witches have existed online for years, interest in buying quick spells online surged in 2025 after several influencers praised their results.
The blessings and rituals are often priced between $7 and $50, and sometimes even cheaper with a discount code or in a flash sale, and they are frequently listed as an “entertainment” service. It’s a workaround after Etsy banned the sale of metaphysical services, including spellcasting, in 2015.
Etsy didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Jaz Smith, a New York City-based content creator, took the internet by storm in May when she posted a video about hiring an Etsy witch to cast a spell for good weather for her influencer-studded wedding. The event was met with blue skies, spurring her followers, like Begley, to rush to her witch’s storefront to buy their own spells.
Four months later, influencer Becca Bloom — who has amassed 4.9 million followers on TikTok as the queen of “RichTok” — posted a video saying “Etsy witches worked” as she announced her picture-perfect wedding.
Emily Hanan, the U.K.-based witch and tarot reader known online as NaturalisticBlessingStore, whom Smith hired, told NBC News by email that although she has been offering her services for almost two decades, she didn’t open her Etsy storefront until early 2020 during the pandemic.
Business was slow at first, she said, but customer reviews on Instagram and TikTok helped her gain international traction for a variety of services, from obsession spells to energy cleanses. Following Smith’s TikTok video, which she said took her shop “to the stratosphere,” her custom ritual for good weather has become her most requested offering.
“2025 has been by far my most in-demand year. I don’t know if that makes 2025 the year of the Etsy Witch, but since going viral with Jaz in the summer, I’ve seen multiple TikTok’s and short-form content about Etsy witches, mainly about my store but about some others too,” Hanan said.
Since Smith’s post, Hanan has closed down her Etsy shop and now takes requests on her Instagram page — though she said she is closed for the rest of the year to work through her massive backlog.
“I was made aware of a video from September of a crowd of people at a girl’s wedding chanting ‘Etsy Witch, Etsy Witch,’” Hanan said. “It was really quite a surreal experience seeing a huge group of people, chanting my name in an after-party following a wedding that I had done a successful spell casting for.”
The growing popularity of Etsy witches is what caught the attention of Rohit Thawani, 44, who works at an advertising agency in Los Angeles. Thawani said that after he learned about spellworkers from a co-worker before a meeting, he quickly paid an Etsy witch $8.48 for a New York Knicks win ahead of Game 5 in the Eastern Conference finals in May — and even got a discount “with the code BLESSINGS2025.”
The Knicks won the game, and Thawani’s spell quickly earned the attention of basketball analyst Stephen A. Smith and Desus Nice. He bought a second spell for Game 6, but the Knicks lost.
“We have no control over anything around us, and so in many ways, witchcraft feels like a lottery ticket,” Thawani said. “There is a chance you might win, and if you don’t, you’re not missing out on anything.”
The trend, however, hasn’t always been met with levity.
Two days before Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist, was assassinated at a Utah college campus in September, Jezebel published a story about the author’s hiring three Etsy witches to place a hex on Kirk — including one to “make everyone hate him.” Jezebel quickly removed the satirical article and issued a statement condemning Kirk’s death and any political violence. But the piece sparked a larger political and social debate.
While such bought-and-sold rituals might be met with skepticism or controversy, “selling religion is nothing new,” said Crews, of the University of Chicago Divinity School.
“People have been paying religious specialists to cast spells or do rituals or hold funerals for pretty much as long as humans have existed,” she said. “And if you can find a boyfriend or an apartment or a nail salon online, why not a witch?”
Thawani agreed, saying his viral decision to buy two spells was a moment of fun support for his favorite team, no different from wearing a specific jersey during the game.
“Even the phrase ‘Make a wish.’ That’s been in our lexicon forever. Is this any different?” he added.
Trying it for myself
After weeks of reporting on Etsy witches and scrolling through dozens of TikTok success stories, I did what any good journalist would do: fact-checked the theory myself.
On a Wednesday afternoon this month, I bought two spells from two different Etsy witches at my desk at 30 Rock for a total of $37.61. NBC News is choosing not to name the witches for privacy reasons.
The first was a weather spell for $13.90, in which I was asked to send in my name, my birthday and my request for snow on Christmas Day in the tri-state area. The second — an abundance, wealth and success ritual candle for $23.71 — requested the same information, as well as my astrological sign.
Three days later, I received messages on Etsy from both witches that my rituals had been completed. Neither seller promised results, but both emphasized an open mindset. One asked for a review after the transaction was complete.
Remain positive, open, and ready to receive your blessings. Trust that what is meant for you is already on its way
-one etsy witch's message to this reporter
The witch who performed the weather spell reported back with technical details — the candle caught quickly, the flame held steady without sputtering, and the smoke lifted clean. According to her, that is the pattern she looks for when the energy is opening “nicely for clear, cooperative skies.”
I was also given instructions to crack a window for a few minutes, step outside and take three slow breaths while picturing the weather I wanted. At the end, I was to thank the sky.
Swallowing the immediate embarrassment, I completed the ritual in my pajamas on my busy Brooklyn street and hoped for the best. The next day, New York City was blessed with its first snowfall.
On Tuesday, snow picked up again in New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. On Christmas Eve, it had snowed again. But on Christmas itself, snow was only in the forecast for Friday and into the weekend.
The results of the abundance ritual, however, remain to be seen. The lengthy response from that witch was accompanied by two affirmations to recite and photos of the spell: a piece of paper with my name and birthday on it being burned in a candle. I was told to take in each image and feel the magic pulsing through them and that my spells were very positive and beautiful.
“Remain positive, open and ready to receive your blessings. Trust that what is meant for you is already on its way,” she later told me. “You can also light a white candle as you speak the words, inviting clarity and divine guidance into your space.”
I’ll admit I quickly bought into the experience, which felt less like purchasing magic and more like setting an intention for myself. It was a ritualized pause, a moment to dream a little bigger and have some semblance of control during a time that feels increasingly uncontrollable.
Whether or not the spells “work” isn’t the point, because, unlike gambling or risky investing, spells don’t pretend to be rational. Their power lies in their transparency, that you’re buying into a belief.
It’s a power that Begley continues to subscribe to. Months after her initial purchase, Begley said, her career momentum has continued, even if she hasn’t yet found her soulmate and the spell of obsession didn’t deliver as hoped.
But she didn’t sound disappointed. To her, the experience is now just as normal as any other viral TikTok-approval wellness practice, like journaling or “Lucky Girl Syndrome.”
“I actually got coffee with a friend this morning, who told me she was on the wait list for a SoulCycle class, so she paid $7 for an Etsy witch to get her in the class,” Begley said this month. “And she got in.”
