Parents, watch out! The video-based social media app TikTok isn’t just entertaining your young daughters with amateur videos featuring dancing and lip-sync and humor that will make anyone older than 25 feel very ancient indeed; it’s also, the Federalist warns, enabling kids to “‘dabble in the occult from their phones.”
In an article on the Federalist earlier this week, concerned citizen Taylor J. Anderson describes the rise of #WitchTok,a popular TikTok hashtag that has had something in the area of 20 billion views, which to be honest does sound like a lot.
Taking his cues from a recent Washington Post article about a “spellcasting … podcasting” teen witch, Anderson reports glumly that
One can find thousands of videos on potions, tea leaf and tarot card readings, pendulum boards, astral projection, magic charms, wands, crystals, automatic writing, channeling, and spellcasting. These occultic practices, which would have been much more fringe and less accessible in previous generations, are now highly accessible and even trending for Gen Z, thanks in part to the rise of postmodernism.
I’m not sure it takes “postmodernism” or TikTok to get teenagers interested in the Occult; the Ouija board, a party game disguised as a portal to the underworld, dates back to the 1890s. But it is clear that witchcraft is having a bit of a moment. As Anderson notes,
Wicca, one of the more organized of the neopagan traditions, has seen its number of adherents multiply by more than 40 times just from 1990 to 2008.
The teen witch craze has created a massive market for witchy accoutrements, among them, Anderson notes, “an abundance of crystals, pendulums, tarot cards, hoodoo oil, and even witch starter kits.” And TikTok, he argues,
is becoming the most effective virtual platform for converting young religiously frustrated individuals into liberated neopagan consumers.
Online witchcraft practitioners and the consumer sector are both paying close attention to this radical development. Parents should too.
Anderson is hardly the first commenter to point out the growing appeal of both witchcraft and #WitchTok; Wired was writing about the trend more than a year ago.
And this isn’t even the first time that The Federalist has noticed #WitchTok either: in a post earlier this month, inspired by the same WaPo teen witch profile that caught Anderson’s eye, Federalist Executive Editor Joy Pullmann tracked what she sees as “the Demonic energy behind the left’s culture war.”
Pullmann — who, you may recall, wrote a recent Federalist post seriously arguing that dying of COVID is good, actually — warns that TikTok-enabled witchcraft propaganda is helping to provide a sort of dark energy to the left’s battles for abortion and trans rights.
The WaPo article also claims that contemporary witches, mediums, and other would-be consorters with false gods and demons strongly support leftist politics. The most prominently mentioned are no surprise to anyone paying attention: child sacrifice, child mutilation, ritual self-mutilation, and sexual abuse. Or, in other words, abortion and LGBT activism. …
It’s not really a surprise that a self-described witch supports child sacrifice, although it is a bit surprising that the Post and the witch are so open about this. Why that is, let’s leave open for speculation.
Could it be … SATAN?
In one of many digressions from her overall argument, Pullmann suggests that
the use of plural pronouns for a single individual is eerie considered in light of one of the Bible’s depictions of Christ casting out demons. When addressed, that possessed man also spoke of himself in the plural: “My name is Legion, for we are many.”
Pullmann’s solution to all these “eerie” problems? We don’t have to speculate, because she says it directly: Jesus Christ.
She doesn’t mean the “meek shall inherit the earth” Jesus, but rather the “I came not to bring peace, but a sword” guy.
The left’s culture war is in fact a religious war. Among other things, that means our politics and culture are only going to get weirder and more clarifying, folks. Best get your armor on and your spiritual swords sharpened.
The debate will certainly get weirder as long as Pullmann keeps writing these unhinged rants.
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If they’re that up on The Bible then they should know about Elohim.
According to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the Federalists are bunch of whiny gits who’ll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes. Due to an accident, an edition of the Guide fell through a wormhole and travled back through time from the far future. The entry on the Federalists reads, “The Federalists were a bunch of whiny gits who the first against the wall when the revolution came.”
Whenever righties get their dander up about something, you can tell immediately that they have no idea what they’re talking about. It’s a hallmark of the Right in general to be constantly at war with things that don’t exist.
I remember the occult was a thing when I was in high school in the ’60s, and it’s been a thing for certain people (high school kids, mostly) forever. Though this is the first I have heard that witches and such belong to the political Left. Wasn’t Hitler fascinated by the occult?
Alan – I suppose you mean elohe/elohim.
I think the rise of Wicca is a lot of people feeling the need to sate their spiritual hunger to be connected to nature and spirituality along with people realizing how fucked up Christianity actually is.
Ironically, in 2001 one small Wiccan organization in Finland sought recognition as a religious community, and was denied on the basis of not being sufficiently organized. That is to say, Finnish law expects religious communities to operate like Christian churches.
A Finnish study from 2008 estimated the number of practicing Wiccans to be about 1000, in a country of 5 million. IDK how this relates to other types of neopaganism, but none of it is very mainstream here.
Genesis 1:26, King James Version
Ninjaed by Alan, don’t care, won’t care, can’t make me care.
If your kid kills you because of something they saw on Tik-Tok, you probably weren’t a great parent in the first place.
@Elaine the witch
I read a recent article by Charlotte Wood (writer) who spent many, many hours in church as a child. This paragraph jumped out for me:
“The Bible itself offered other contradictory gifts to the unformed creative mind – especially if you were a girl. From where I sat half-listening, half daydreaming, the Bible was filled with angry fathers and their favoured or exiled sons. Sons and brothers were endlessly loved, sacrificed, envied, murdered, welcomed home, cast out; they were slavish or indolent, saviours or sinners. Family dramas were constant, violent, entirely male. There were no stories of sisters fighting or being saved. No baby girls were laid in baskets in the rushes. No daughters grew up to interpret pharaohs’ dreams. Girl children appeared not to exist in ancient times. Women sometimes did, but only when they were wrong, and the cause of catastrophe. There was Eve, obviously. Lot’s wife disobediently “looked behind her” and turned into a pillar of salt (I could never get over this: just for looking? And what was a pillar of salt?). Other names became midday movie emblems of sexy evil-doing: Delilah, Salome. Other, nameless women were always being stoned to death for adultery, or somehow punished for not having the right number of children (well: sons). The only women with any clear identity at all seemed to be the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene, but they were both infatuated with Jesus, and spent their lives doing exactly as he told them.“
As a child and then as an adult I personally never felt that the bible and any subsequent exposure I had to any religious teaching had anything to offer to me as a woman, or that it included or valued women in any authentic way.
It is not surprising to me that witchy beliefs that recognise the existence of women, and respect their value and humanity, should become more and more popular now that it is so much easier, thanks to the inter webs, to communicate directly with other like-minded people.
Here’s the article in case anyone wants to read more: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/oct/23/confessions-of-an-atheist-writer-charlotte-wood-on-catholicism-and-the-art-instinct
While this may be true, this is much like Dothraki or Klingon being the fastest growing language: there were only 8000 practicing Wiccans in answering polls in the US in 1990, so 40 times that is still not many people at all.
The Federalist is the exact point where stupidity and evil are indistinguishable. They – and anyone who regularly exposes themselves to it – are humans who will never in their one lifetime be other than mildly toxic. Unless in mass.
@Lizzie
Plus crystals are way prettier then crosses, Just saying.
Yeah I remember the occult craze back in secondary school in the early 2000s. Its barely new for tweens and teens to love this stuff.
My partner grew up often visiting Boscastle (home of the witch’s museum) where there is an extremely high concentration of occultish witchy shops. One day he overheard one of the owners putting in a phone order for bulk buys of crystal balls, scrying mirrors, rune stones and that, which he said broke the illusion a bit!
Damn, they’re recycling a classic with this one. The satanic panic just goes on forever, I guess.
@ lollypop
There’s a new museum of witchcraft and magic in Falmouth now too. It’s quite small; but they have some good stuff.
As for magic supplies, a local hedgewitch here was the first to register with HMRC, so she could get the VAT back on cauldrons and the like. As the Revenue were quite fine with that a lot of people have done it now.
@ jsrtheta
He was more into the folk history and mythology of the ‘Teutonic’ people rather than the occult stuff. That was more Himmler and his acolytes.
During the War MI6 and SOE tried to take advantage of that. They had astrologers who would advise on what the more mystically minded senior Nazis might be minded to do based on their known beliefs. They also produced a fake old pamphlet called “Nostradamus predicts the course of the war”. That ‘predicted’ all the early German victories, but then warned of doom later on. They then arranged for that to be planted in certain esoteric bookshops they knew the Nazis frequented.
The Ahnenerbe also dabbled in that sort of thing. Although it was the Thule-Gesellschaft that were really into it.
Same! Also, what’s a “witch starter kit”? (Does it have a magic wand? I want a magic wand.)
@alan
Ooo interesting! I’ll have to get down their to have a look.
I know the Boscastle one changed ownership fairly recently. Their new owners seen very social media savvy, absolutely smashing it on Instagram (mind you, it appears from this article they got into it at the right time!)
@ lollypop
I should get up there some time. Just Boscastle is a bit “up country” for me. I’m further west. That’s nice though as there’s some amazing old stuff this way; specially in West Penwith with all the cool stone circles. I made it a mission to check out every standing stone west of Truro. That included all the known and suspected ones; so I’ve probably also seen a lot of cow scratching posts.
I have a soft spot for this one, Dry Tree Menhir, because it’s next to all the satellite dishes at Goonhilly. I love how that area is just 4,500 years of people communicating with the heavens.
@epitome
I can’t tell to what extent you’re joking, but I can tell you that yes, some starter witch kits do include a wand (read: small stick). You don’t wave it and make things float or catch fire, though. It’s a tool for focusing and directing “energy” (read: whatever it is that makes magic happen).
More commonly, starter witch kits include a few tealights or other small candles, a tiny bottle of scented oil, some incense sticks (sandalwood is popular) and a holder, a sampling of crystals/tumbled stones, a flimsy folded cloth to spread out and put stuff on, and maybe a pamphlet of instructions for a few basic spells. Always emphasizing, of course, that the magic is in you, not the tools.
Ah, the old blood libel. Now with added misogyny and homophobia!
Remind me again, which group of people is eating horse paste and promoting antivaxx/5G woo? Which group is currently holding vigil at Dealey Plaza, waiting for JFK Jr. to pop his head out, signalling six more weeks of democracy (or whatever he’s supposed to do, I can’t keep up with QAnon’s goalposts)?
Watch who you’re calling weird, pal.
Blood libel and witch hunts, what century are we in again?
Also, tell me you hate the idea of girls and women thinking for themselves without saying you hate the idea of girls and women thinking for themselves.
The Duggars and their ilk exist, but it’s the pagans that are the weirdoes?
Wasn’t it way better back in the olden days when anyone frustrated with religion had to just suck it up because there were no alternatives? It’s not like there are any legit reasons to be frustrated with religions, right, so anyone who’s frustrated is just immature and hasn’t seen the light or some such.
@Lumipuna
I don’t really know much about this (since it’s one of those famous “I read a book about this once” things), but as far as I have understood, the law* is worded to guarantee a community’s right to private, communal and public activities, and one of the points that caused the rejection was that they’d judged that Wiccans didn’t have the communal or public side, just the private, in which case they supposedly wouldn’t need an official status.
I may have misunderstood this and don’t mean to endorse the current situation in any case, but I do feel like it’s less about having to operate like Christian churches and more about traditions of organised religion in general (we have had Jewish and Muslim folks in Finland for a long time).
*Worth to note that the current law on religious freedom is from 2003, but I think I’ve heard Wiccans have sough recognition more than once.
A lot of schools in Cornwall teach about paganism in RE lessons; and there is one pagan state school here.
That caught the ire of the Daily Mail; but when they asked the local bishopric for comment they were pretty cool about it.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-17804422