WitchTok: how the occult became big online

How to perform a hex on a cheating ex, using a candle, a wax seal and a burnt lemon; divination with coins and pendulums to discern your future; a medium’s blow-by-blow account of a seance with a client: welcome to the world of the online witch.

On Instagram, 10 of the most popular witch accounts have more than three million followers between them, with half of those added in the past year. On TikTok, videos with the hashtag #witchtok have racked up more than 11 billion views — two billion more than #Biden.

With their glittery creations and dramatic spells, they offer a hint of the “sensual and aesthetic stimulation” that we have been deprived of under lockdown, says Sabina Magliocco, a professor of sociocultural anthropology at the University of British Columbia, Canada.

It might seem incongruous that the esoteric and the occult are flourishing in the digital age, when the constant overexposure of social media threatens to destroy all mystery. But a search for ritual and order in the pandemic has proven a fertile moment for the magical, and it is finding a home on some of the internet’s biggest platforms.

Turbulent times often produce spiritual movements, says Sarah Harvey, a research associate in King’s College London’s department of theology and religious studies. “The golden age of spiritualism was between the first and second world wars,” she says.

‘On TikTok, videos with the hashtag #witchtok have racked up more than 11 billion views — two billion more than #Biden’

This is something Anna, a friend from London, agrees with. “I’ve become more drawn to rituals,” she says, such as marking the passage of the moon and reading tarot cards with the help of YouTube videos and a book.

Anna says that she had dabbled in these practices before but became more interested under lockdown, having time on her hands but also “craving structure”. She uses a secondary Twitter account to follow related content online (“When you’re using your Twitter for work, it could look a bit weird,” she says).

Twitter, TikTok and Instagram are just part of a long tradition of the esoteric online, says Magliocco. The Witches’ Voice website, which ran from 1997 to 2019, offered essays, music and networking on Pagan and Wiccan topics long before social media’s arrival.

Magliocco emphasises that WitchTok content is often more focused on aesthetics than deep ritual immersion or belief: “People study for decades to become adept at this stuff. [WitchTok] is almost a whiff of that.”

But magical content on social media is not all about spectacle. Georgina Rose, an occultist who runs TikTok and YouTube channels focused on the history and practice of magic, says that she appreciates the effort put into WitchTok videos but wants to offer something different with hers, which are often more didactic than dramatic.

“A lot of people don’t know about the history or the philosophy beyond the popular ones on social media,” she says. “I went on to social media to make a fun, appealing, attention-grabbing way to introduce these deeper, heavier concepts.”

Amanda Yachechak, a New York-based actress and witch, points to another digital trend: more of her peers are using teleconferencing services for esoteric rituals. It is a mixed blessing, she says: while it has allowed different groups to expand their networks across the country, reaching new and existing followers or experimenting with workshops, she emphasises that in-person rituals are far preferable.

Although the internet has helped to make the occult and esoteric more accessible to a wider audience, it has also provided a larger platform for critics, such as evangelical fundamentalists and alt-right personalities. These include adherents of the QAnon super-conspiracy theory, who believe that the groups pose an imminent threat to the spiritual and even physical health of children.

Magliocco says that QAnon, with its lurid claims of Satanic ritual abuse and sacrifice, is a rebirth of moral panics about witchcraft that stretch back to Roman times and which reached a fever pitch in the 1980s and 1990s. “There’s a lot less misinformation than there once was, but there’s definitely some nervousness at times about this stuff,” adds Rose. “It’s something that’s always in the back of my mind.”

The popularity of digital witchcraft is as much testament to the value of ritual and ceremony in grounding our lives as to the hectic, disordered times we live in. The mysteries of the metaphysical and the arcana of algorithms make for a powerful mix.

Siddharth Venkataramakrishnan is the FT’s acting European technology correspondent

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