Will an Etsy witch find you true love? The internet panders to the neuroses of modern dating

To conduct a fair experiment, I order these spells in secret. Having told my closest friends that I had cursed one of them, I check in once the spell has been cast: “Anyone feel like they’ve been hexed?” One pipes up — she’s just woken up ill for the first time this year, the day she starts a new job. Wrong! The target of my sorcery appears entirely unscathed. That’s £4.35 down the drain. But looking at the reviews of this particular revenge spell, you’d never doubt its effectiveness: all 29 give five stars, with ominous comments such as “I have faith that the spell is starting to work”. A customer’s “faith” seems to be a big part of the jig: as with other smoke-and-mirrors services (hypnotism, seances, etc) the best conductors have a habit of blaming your disbelief when things go wrong. One Etsy witch, in an email exchange, warns me that my “commitment to [my] desires is a powerful driving force that will influence the results”.

The remaining spells have mixed results. The Ultimate Beauty Spell conjures nothing but a mottled forehead rash and, as my sister informs me loudly on a packed Victoria line train, “peeling skin on my chin”. “Hex Your Ex” would probably require me to unblock them to see that they have had an untimely death (to be clear, I did not specify this; just a mild case of facial boils would suit), which I am unwilling to do. The image attachment in that particular email, of black pillar candles, wilting flowers and a Tarot deck arranged on a trestle table, was encouraging. The Mind Control Spell on my beloved parents seemed to have done the trick of getting me in their good books — but I did also take them out for dinner. Finally, and most excitingly of all, I receive the image of my soulmate:

My caster, Psychic Zen, has used a technique called “astrograms” to produce the image, created with the aid of a “neurohelmet”, which allows her to see a “reading of brain activity”. This technique produces, I am assured, “an average racial appearance”; in practice, this means “white”. “Racial discrimination is excluded in the neurohelmet software,” the pamphlet notes. Thank Beelzebub for that.

Along with the image, I get a blow-by-blow account of my reading. The card my psychic artist draws is, encouragingly, the hanged man. I take it as a good omen; at least something’s gonna be hung. The “powerful and prominent” letter T appears somewhere in his name, and he was “born during the refreshing and rejuvenating months of March or April, when the flowers begin to bloom and the world awakens”. This man is said to share my interest in “nature, art and intellectual pursuits”, I read with one eye on Below Deck, puffing on my lithium vape. Sure, Zen.

I am assured that our meeting will consist of “a chance encounter at a concert or a gallery opening” between May and August. But a word of warning: “The planets suggest that past relationship trauma and patterns can affect your ability to attract healthy love.” Has she foretold my Hex Your Ex purchase? “Negative beliefs about love and self-limiting beliefs about your worthiness can also be a major obstacle,” she continues. “Release your past and limiting beliefs and trust that the universe will bring you the love you deserve.”

That is, ultimately, what this is all about: vague woo-woo wellbeing-core fashioned into tame little spiritual packages. It’s a comforting dose of TikTok girl-speak, with some therapy language thrown in. What’s the harm? And because of the tactical get-outs peppered throughout the accompanying literature (of the drawing, she cheekily asks: “Please overlook any inaccuracies”), this inoffensive, generic, undoubtedly AI-generated image can be tweaked in whichever way I like, becoming nothing more and nothing less than an emblem of hope. I respect the hustle here — far more than for those Etsy witches who, if social media is to be believed, stalk buyers on Facebook and find a sketchable picture of their ex. Less appreciative, I suspect, might be my actual boyfriend who was not born in March or April, I did not meet at a concert or gallery opening and looks absolutely nothing like the picture. Guess the writing’s on the wall.

Generally harmless, perhaps — but there are things about digital witchcraft which warrant concern. All but one seller tries to hawk an additional package, marketed as a “booster” spell. While I am assured that “the energies have already started aligning to bring about the results you desire”, I am encouraged to add the “Protection Shield Spell to ensure nothing interferes with your results”. These booster spells typically cost another few quid, and boast perks such as “20X faster results!” and “ongoing monitoring”. How much cash can the average lovelorn, credulous Tarot girlie spare?

Aside from these cynical money-grabbing exercises — white witches have heating bills too, you know! — the Etsy witch has one more truly disturbing weapon. While most of these “spells” are notionally benign, a little bit of inexpensive fun or hope for the gullible, some pander to dark desires. Of these, the worst is the Powerful Death Spell, a cinch starting at just £5. I do not buy one of these, even though I’m one of the faithless. What would happen if it worked? Would I have technically ordered a hit? This must be a legal grey area, for even if in the eyes of the law these services are bogus, the buyer may sincerely believe that they have visited the Reaper on their target. The reviews for death spells are frighteningly chirpy, with casual references to “Rachel’s customer service”. Under a £55 spell advertised with the image of an overturned car, a buyer threatens: “I’m excited to see the results.” Under another (which ominously invites: “Seek justice which can only be found in the beyond realm”) a reviewer notes: “Fast delivery.”

Do Etsy witches matter? On a grand scale, probably not. I can’t see “Rachel” the spiritual sniper taking out Donald Trump, or otherwise changing the course of history. But the intersection of blind faith, cash and marketing at which these sellers sit suggests that Gen Z’s urge to shape reality knows no bounds — apart from normal in-person interaction. Living half their lives in their bedrooms, manifesting their way through their twenties, this is a generation who would rather pay a stranger for an AI-generated text than take on the emotional and reputational risk of managing your own relationships by telling people to their faces that you like them, or to piss off. I suspect that in reality, the Etsy witch trades in reassurance, not results — providing spiritual certainty and protection for the conflict-avoidant. Rather than swilling each other in nightclubs, we’re hunched over our laptops ordering Instant Revenge Spells. Isn’t that the scariest thing of all?

The fictions of the internet — a world in which we conjure, project and pretend without limits — pander to the neuroses of modern love, where anxious and inept suitors have swapped necking in pubs for sneaky perusals of dating apps, scheduling aggressively nonchalant texts and editing vanishing hairlines. To an ever-greater extent, “dating” simply means swapping customised avatars, hopes of connection waxing and waning with the presence or not of a lover’s Snapchat Bitmoji. This state of affairs is so unprecedentedly bleak that it’s no surprise women are resorting to chucking a few quid at a fantastical venture like the Etsy witch — often herself, ironically, a bot. Girls throughout time have been sentimental, quixotic, even pious, about the prospect of romantic love — throwing coins into fountains, plucking petals from daisies, tossing an apple peel over one’s shoulder to see what initial unfurls. The pining idealism of girlhood is a special thing, and grasping any sense of control over today’s cold and impersonal romantic world must be a greater temptation than ever. So we must not scorn the weird ways this desire shows itself. Besides, if you thought a £5 spell would guarantee you true love, what would stop you?

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Poppy Sowerby is an UnHerd columnist

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