when you hear the word witch what comes
to mind maybe you remember the craft The
Wizard of Oz or even the Salem trials
well have you heard of the term witch
talk it's a mashup of the words witch
and Tick Tock and refers to the growing
subculture of spiritual practitioners on
the platform clearly I've been feeling
really grateful the hashtag witchtalk
itself has over 32 billion views and
Counting
scrolling through you can find videos of
people performing a hex on a cheating
partner talking the spirits and throwing
bones to Divine the future
there's also activism awareness and
political spirituality and it's not just
Tick Tock more and more people have been
exploring magical practices on all
social media platforms from astrology to
tarot cards to even crafting spells the
internet is going through a witchy
Renaissance
but spiritualism has long been
misunderstood and many confuse it for
the magic that they see in movies in
this episode I'm going to meet with the
witches spiritualists and mediums of
tick tock to better understand why
there's a magical Renaissance happening
online
are you looking to connect with anyone
on the other side that passed I think
yes okay I think so okay
um I don't control who comes through and
if they come through they'll just show
up and if not then
it's okay you're watching me speak to
spirits through a psychic medium named
Peter veth he first got on Tick Tock to
share a psychic gift with the world
Peter's family migrated to the US to
escape the Cambodian genocide and
outside of his mediumship he connects to
his ancestors through traditional
Cambodian Classical Ballet just have an
open mind and open heart to receiving
messages and have fun that's like the
most important part about all of this
ready yes okay
before we watch my reading I want to
talk about why witch talk is so popular
in the first place some people say that
wichita's popularity is ineffective the
pandemic and lockdown data journalists
at brandwatch found a four percent
increase week on week and online
mentions of the cult at the start of the
pandemic but in interest in the occult
and astrology had already been rising
before covid-19 began to get more
context surrounding spirituality on
social media I sat down with Dr Maria de
blasi a professor at the University of
New Mexico who teaches about all things
witchy I think we have a few things
happening you know we we owe a lot of
this to the 90s shows like Charmed Buffy
the Vampire
those really
um ushered witchcraft into a mainstream
setting so it was no longer dangerous or
evil or bad it was about empowered women
there's also been a shift in young
people's perspective toward religion and
spirituality a Pew poll from 2020 found
that 30 percent of Americans are
religiously unaffiliated up from five
percent in 1972 and then we see things
like yoga you know you could imagine
astrology so we see this New Age
movement taking on more momentum through
the early 2000s and people getting more
expansive in what spirituality can be
outside of mainstream religion the
popularity might also be connected to
the rise in activism that started in
2020 and you see more witchy and Pagan
communities from historically
marginalized communities kind of rising
up and talking about witchcraft as a
form of social justice so becoming more
visible in that way
this is Lux heavy she practices root
work in African-American spiritual
tradition and she joined Tick Tock in
June of 2022.
Lex says that her research in the
African-American spirituality has helped
her overcome depression and find
guidance but ultimately people want to
have faith in something and they want to
have Community but we're kind of in this
generation where we're finally like
Falling Back In Love With Our Roots and
our ancestry and like finally like
learning and seeing the power and herbal
remedies that our grandmothers had and
stuff like that you know like it's
different but I do think it's popular
because you do see a lot of the
aesthetically pleasing parts of it you
see like the flowers and the herbs and
The Roots
on Lex's page you can find aesthetically
pleasing videos of tarot readings
tending to her ancestor Altar and
conducting rituals there's a soothing
quality to this content that makes it
enjoyable to watch and resembles content
like ASMR so much talk related content
includes the hashtags relaxing or
soothing and this connection might be a
part of its booming popularity
the world of spirituality has a long
history of being misunderstood for
example during the 17th century a witch
craze took over Europe and North America
it's estimated that over 40 000 people
were executed and in most cases there
was no tangible proof of wrongdoing
there's still many today that call
spiritual practices evil but it was just
so hard to tell people that
I can connect with Spirits some people
think it's the devil's work so it was a
lot harder um
than coming out as a gay man sometimes I
still get the idea that like witches
which is evil or terrifying my
spirituality is such a
static for me and I get get very
emotional sometimes and I like
um overthink because I think when people
look at
especially like black spirituality
um it seemed it's seen as evil the
spirituality movement online is very
Broad and it encompasses practices from
a wide variety of cultures and
backgrounds there's paganism Voodoo
bruhariya hoodoo indigenous practices
and many many more
the term witchcraft has also been used
to others the religions and traditions
of cultures outside of European
Christianity in the United States Native
Americans were persecuted for practicing
the traditional religions until 1978. in
the Caribbean the Taino people were
murdered by Spanish colonizers for not
converting to Catholicism their
spirituality was seen as satanic by the
Europeans Pluto is a religious tradition
created by enslaved African Americans it
was a crime at the time to practice
Traditions from Africa and many enslaved
people were forced to adopt Christianity
hoodoo mainly Incorporated elements from
African Traditions but also indigenous
traditions and Christianity words like
magic and Witchcraft have been used to
demonize these religions and practices
and because of that there are those that
don't identify with the word which
just generally how do you feel about the
word witch I know that you'd
self-describe as bruja but I feel like
that word which can be kind of charged
what's your take on that oh absolutely
um so I love it so originally the term
historically was very stigmatizing
however many of us are reclaiming that
title and saying we're embracing the
things that mainstream culture has been
afraid of I but I also think it also
depends on who's using it and how it's
applied um so a lot of people use the
term which on people who would not
consider themselves to be witches for
example or sometimes it's used in a
derogatory way because there are a lot
of sacred cultures represented online
there's a complicated issue with
cultural appropriation on witch talk in
my research of this community I have not
heard this word before but I see it come
up all the time close practice
what does that mean so a closed practice
is when people within certain
communities the legacy of those
spiritual practices are only passed on
within the community and people outside
of them
don't get access to that it's also when
people do appropriate they're messing
with
histories and cultures and spirits that
they don't really understand or know
which can be kind of dangerous Lux gave
me a good rule of thumb if you didn't
learn it from your ancestors it probably
came from someone else's
certain tools or whatever
um are sacred to us generationally and
spirit lives forever
while many people use spirituality for
self-discovery and growth there are also
those that disingenuously profit off the
community this includes scammers many of
whom impersonate others to steal money
from unsuspecting victims while working
on this episode I received four messages
from impersonation accounts pretending
to be the Wichita creators that followed
the fraudsters asked me for money in
exchange for a reading only you know
when it's right to get a reading not me
you know I don't force myself onto
anyone and that's how you pay attention
if someone is a scammer and if they
slide into your DM saying that you need
a psychic reading from me and then it's
not me it's it's a scammer which brings
me back to my reading with Peter though
I usually lean towards being a skeptic I
was excited to try to reach out to the
other side
if I'm getting like a motherly energy it
could be grandmother but that's what it
is does that make sense
yes
[Music]
did she pass when you were younger like
a lot younger yeah yeah
um yeah I'm not always right with names
but if an m means anything to you yeah
it does because she keeps saying M I
don't know if it's Mary I don't know is
Marty or something like that but she
keeps saying that who's that that's my
grandmother it's uh Maria very sweet so
I don't know if she passed here in the
U.S but she showed me like a distant
there was a there was a distance being
involved does that make sense so my
grandmother is from the Philippines and
she never moved to the United States the
fact that my grandmother's name kind of
came to you is
it's almost spooky to me in a way
because so she died when I was very very
young I was the last of the
grandchildren that she met before she
passed
um and after she died my parents would
tell me the story about
that they saw her like in the doorway of
our house that they had just bought and
so to to this day I always think you
know like I always feel because of that
story like I always feel like she's
watching but
I'm also very afraid I get scared too
I'm a chicken head
our loved ones are not here to scare us
and the reason why your parents saw that
image
um of your grandmother
um it's because your grandmother's
making it known like I will always be
here with you so if you need me talk to
me like pray to me you know
I've learned a lot from the creators of
witch talk I've even tried putting a
crystal on my phone to cleanse it from
bad energy and I'm definitely more open
to exploring spirituality in my own life
but there was still one question I felt
like I didn't have answers to as I was
scrolling through witch talk I noticed
that there were so many different types
of spirituality kind of represented I
guess I was curious what do you think is
it even fair to put these groups under
one umbrella term should I even be
making an episode about witch talk when
all of this is really a lot of separate
cultures kind of coming together under
one term that is such a lovely question
what can we legitimately and ethically
call Witchcraft and I think it's a
complex issue I haven't completely found
the answer myself
um so I think it's messy and I think as
long as people understand that
witchcraft means a lot of different
things to different people tick tock is
great as with all things though just
know how to and engage with it
responsibly so that way you're not
perpetuating harmful stereotypes or
getting yourself
into tricky situations with spiritual
practices you might not be familiar with
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