How ignorance is being manifested across the web's new obsession- witchtok.
If we take a trudge down memory lane to the eon ago that was august 2020, I’m sure we all remember that twitter moment where a group of witches tried to hex the moon.
Four months later, TikTok has gained more users than ever before with 18-24 year olds making up the majority of users. This definitely hasn’t come without its challenges and Witchtok has been no exception. Witchtok is a specific subsection of Tiktok in which users share spells, tips and spiritual experiences with one and other.
This part of the video-sharing app holds a strong sense of community, especially with those whose specific spiritual practice holds strong cultural significance. One of these practitioners is user @pythianpriestess.
The priestess has been practicing Hoodoo, a set of spiritual traditions created by enslaved African Americans, since she was 14. She was initiated into the practice by her then boyfriend while living in the deep south of America before gaining a BA in Philosophy and Theology, moving to LA and securing her title of priestess. The 28 year old now lives in LA and has been active on TikTok since 2019, with a current following of 319K.
She describes magic as being like the album cover of Pink Floyd’s ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’. “It’s all white light, humans are the prism and we refract out that light into paths such as voodoo and Egyptian crafts” she says, surrounded by a plethora of crystals and incense. “Younger people don’t see this.”
Many experienced witches believe that TikTok’s young viewership has led to spirituality being viewed in a naïve and simplistic way. This is a rising concern among Witchtokers, with the new trend of ‘manifestation’ leading the charge. Here, numerous complicated spiritual structures are abandoned and boiled down to the concept of speaking things into existence.
With manifestation, the practicality of real life in tandem with religion is often ignored in favour of the image of an idealised future, if you believe in it hard enough of course. Even with her dedication to her craft, the priestess acknowledges that “witchcraft will not solve all of your problems” and that “people think ‘oh, I’m in this bad situation because my chakras are out of line’ when really, they’ve been fucked over by an unjust system.”
Another Witchtok user trying to bring logic to magic is Seph, more commonly known as @littlebigfoot, an English generational witch. He claims that “some people need a reality check, and that’s coming from a practicing witch”. Even though he has found a strong sense of community within the app, he says that the people of Witchtok are both “the best and also the worst” part of the app with “mob mentalities” being to blame.
In the lead up to the 2020 election, the tone across TikTok turned noticeably political. While many were spreading information about how to properly register to vote, witchtok began sharing spell work on how to sway the election in their favour. Most prevalent in this was attempts to hex Donald Trump. For Seph, “It just doesn’t bode well”. Not only does behaviour like this limit freedom of expression on the app and bring about many questions of morality, but spiritually this kind of magic is considered foolish and dangerous.
It is believed that magic surrounding powerful figures such as this will return to the sender with worse consequences. For now, there is fear and apprehension from the practitioners of Witchtok. The priestess leaves me with a warning, one her followers might do well to heed: “I will tell you what Lord Lucifer himself told me – look at what happened to JFK.”
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