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Witches have not escaped the pressure to join the digital age.
Like potters and jewelers and people who refinish midcentury modern nightstands, with the help of Etsy, many witches have moved their broom closets online. And no doubt Portland’s most tech-savvy witches have joined the thousands selling spells, rituals and magical materials on the e-marketplace. Whether you need a spell jar to ace an upcoming job interview or a candle ritual to locate your lost pet, rest assured, there’s a witch on Etsy who’s got your back.
While online witchcraft is certainly a dubious product, questions about its efficacy haven’t prevented some real head-scratchers from going viral. After a four-game losing streak in September 2025, a Seattle Mariners fan paid an Etsy witch $15.99 to turn the tide. “Shoutout to the Etsy witch,” the team posted on its official Instagram at the outset of what became a 10-game hot streak. Outlets from People to Bloomberg report that Etsy spells manifesting blue skies and warm weather are now wedding-planning musts. And there was that doozy of a Jezebel article, “We Paid Some Etsy Witches to Curse Charlie Kirk,” which published two days before the far-right influencer’s assassination.
This catch-all of hopes, dreams and ill wills is what the work of the Etsy witch has come to represent. You hire an Etsy witch to magically gain autonomy over something in your life that is otherwise beyond your control. Or at least to feel like it.
Selling manifested outcomes rather than tangible products is inherently scammy. But local witches are quick to point out that the popular conception of Etsy witchcraft hardly aligns with the true nature of sorcery.
“I don’t know that there’s any perfect system,” local witch Ariel Kusby says about Etsy. “But I think this is the best option we have.” Accessibility is a priority of Kusby’s witchcraft. Her Little Witchery Shop on Etsy serves as a storefront for her two children’s books, The Little Witch’s Book of Spells and The Little Witch’s Oracle Deck (The Little Witch’s Book of Potions is due out in July 2027 from Chronicle Books). But she also stocks handmade witchcraft kits and magical supplies. Kusby sent orders to witches in 34 different states last year, though she says the largest portions of her customer base are in Oregon and California.
Many of the Little Witchery Shop’s supplementary products provide others—especially “little witches” reading her spell books—with the magical materials they’d need to access their own inner magic. Kusby’s $20 autumn equinox spell kit, for example, includes dried apple slices, acorns and other autumnal ingredients—fixings to be mixed in a sachet that powers an incantation conjuring gratitude, happiness and abundance.
Kusby gives her customers the tools, the raw materials, but they have to carry forth the actual magic. “I want them to feel empowered. I want them to feel connected to themselves and to others and to the natural world,” she says. “And I want them to know that they have a lot more power and say in their reality than they might know.”
Julia Gates, the Portland witch behind the Etsy shop Pleiadian Altar, extends a similar sentiment to a different clientele. “There’s a lot of misunderstanding about how manifesting works,” she says. “You have to still put in work, and you have to go out there and put in effort. Having a spell kind of gets that kick-started for you.”
Gates’ offerings include a “Break Bad Habits” spell jar, “Bitch Be Gone” protective herb powder and “Burnout Relief” essential oil spray. Her products are witty, but also hyperspecific. Each magical good directs customers’ energy toward its identified purpose. In this way, Gates sees the Etsy witch’s role as something like an “accountability buddy.” Your Etsy witch knows your desires and directs their own energy into helping you manifest them.
Portland artist and bruja (Spanish for witch or sorceress) Ree Artemisa employs both of her trades to help clients manifest their wishes. As a “painter of spells,” Artemisa infuses her colorful, geometric and whimsical paintings with magical intent—and spells, of course. Her paintings, which she has sold on Etsy for the past 14 years, are influenced by her Chicana and Indigenous heritage, but they’re also influenced by her clients’ emotions, be they pain, beauty, love or an injustice in the world.
“I can meet them there with that same emotional energy,” Artemisa says of her customers. “But I can also help channel and bring maybe a sense of peace, or a sense of closure, or a sense of beginning that would be harder for an individual on their own to see for themselves.”
Artemisa also lists some other witchy goods on her Etsy shop, like a Refuse Boarders spell candle, which is styled like a devotional candle. It came to be after a trip to visit family in Rio Rico, Ariz., where she was disturbed by the normalized security checkpoints and searches in the southern border town. The votives are dedicated to “those who wish to abolish what holds one (or the world) back from joy and positive change.”
Inspired by an organized spell jar at a protest on the Salt Lake City Capitol steps in March 2025, she developed her most notorious product, the hexing fascists spell jar. Their contents include graveyard dirt, chile flakes and “liquid of your choice,” among other things.
“Being able to utilize baneful and nonbaneful magic is, I feel, a very important part of a witch’s repertoire,” Gates says. “If someone really deserves it, and the justice system isn’t doing what it needs to do to get justice for this person, I feel like you can absolutely put your energy into doing a little bit of energetic justice on that person.”
Gates also delivers cosmic justice on social media. Her videos, casting everything from “FAFO” spells for conservative influencers and “hastening” hexes for Mitch McConnell, have racked up hundreds of thousands of views. For $5, you can even have Gates put a name of your choosing into her “hex all the fascists” jar.
Though these hexes may not make the fascists in your life lose their primaries or Cabinet positions, they feed into the psychological nature of Etsy witchcraft: collectively channeling energy toward a shared intention.
Portland’s witchy community, Gates says, has embraced witchcraft as a political tool for protest, protection, and empowerment. “Witchcraft is political. It’s always been a political thing,” Gates says. “Even using the word witch is a pretty political move, because it invokes feelings. It’s got quite a history.”
