Despite a near decade-long ban on the sale of “metaphysical services,” the $6 billion arts and crafts e-commerce platform hosts thousands of spells promising everything from untold wealth to cures for chronic depression — modern day snake oil sold as “entertainment.”started selling magical spells on Etsy.
But alongside the custom pet portraiture and six foot plush giant squids are listings for something the platform has banned for nearly a decade: magical spells. Sellers like Nick the Alchemist offer thousands of them: “Extreme Millionaire Lotto Spell,” , “Best Death Spell” , “14th Dimensional Master Energy” , “Wonderful Holiday With Family Spell” and “Child Athlete Spell” . There are also “Social Media Fame Spells” and, predictably, too many penis enhancement spells to bother counting.
“These are scams,” Biddle said. “They’re taking money from people and they’re going to keep consumers from looking at science-based medicine, which is harming them.”To say that Etsy, a company with a market capitalization of over $6 billion, has historically struggled to moderate its website is an understatement. It has been caught hostingthe sale of “metaphysical services,” which includes prayers and also “spellcasting,” or “Items with a metaphysical outcome .
“What’s interesting to me is that this has always been a market niche for a long time, it makes sense that there would be an online version of this,” McCrary, the religious studies professor, toldFor spells promising health benefits — to cure depression and disease, to immediately enhance fertility, to “ensure successful surgeries” — this seems particularly problematic, given the government agencies that typically regulate products making such claims.
Still, some spellcasters have built thriving small businesses. Rowan Morgana, a 74-year-old Canadian woman who describes herself as a “practitioner of Wicca” has sold occult items on Etsy for over a decade.