The treatment for such an ailment varies. For the simplest of cases, a debrief with your closest friends, maybe several times over many months — usually with ice cream or frozen margaritas, depending on age — does the trick. For those who veer toward being vindictive and have too little fear of legal repercussions, sugar in the gas tank and slashed tires are payback enough. But a growing number of the heartbroken are putting their faith in methods that have been believed to work for women for thousands of years: witchcraft.
The commissioning of an Etsy witch is a growing trend on social media. Planning a wedding day and praying for no rain on the big day? An Etsy witch can help you out. Nervous about an impending interview for your dream job? Find a good luck potion and pay extra for overnight shipping. Or maybe you’re wishing a lifetime of loneliness on a man who ghosted you after a great first two dates? An Etsy witch will handle it.
But can a love spell from Etsy really make the cute barista “coincidentally” pouring hearts onto the top of your daily cappuccino at your favorite coffee shop fall madly in love with you overnight? We asked a preeminent North Texas witch, and you won’t like the answer.
whoever hacked my costco account and bought an ipad pro just know i have etsy witches coming for you in a way so sinister that you’ll have to find an underground bunker to get rid of the voices in your head from the guilt
— dommy boy (@dommyboy666) June 26, 2025
Making Love Is Magical
On the shelves of Hearth Wisdom Store, a metaphysical shop owned by high priestess and witchcraft practitioner Mamba MiRah, cruelty-free python ribs and half-ounce baggies of mugwort for potion-making purposes are ready for pestle crushing.MiRah is not in the business of casting spells on behalf of others, but she will certainly help shoppers find the right ingredients for their own work. The witch says magical assistance with love is among her patrons' top requests, and with good reason — love magic, as she calls it, is real, just probably not in the way you’re hoping.
“On the surface, [love spells] give the appearance of manipulation,” MiRah said. “But real love work, in terms of witchcraft, is actually grounded in really strong ethics around consent and harnessing the power of magnetism, not corrosion.”
In fact, true love magic is all about the self, she says.
“We have a really strong store philosophy around ensuring that people understand that love magic isn't really about controlling other people and that it has to start with self-love first,” she said.
It may not be what you want to hear, but the trick to a good love spell is self-work. Oof, we know.
“When you're looking for love spells, the best love spells are the ones that focus on [self-help],” she said. “They focus on empowering you to attract what it is that you're seeking and making sure that what you're seeking is in your highest good.”
We’re clearing our Etsy carts now.
Although a quick fix via a click on the first Etsy witch to pop up is surely enticing, even if it does work, there’s still more work to be done internally.
“Magic supports us, magic does not fix us,” MiRah said. “There is no candle or crystal or spell bottle or herb that is going to fix you. That does not exist. It's you. You have to be ready to put that intention and the work.”
Curse Words as a Cure
Love magic isn’t all light; curses do exist, MiRah said. In her 20 years of practice, she’s even cast some herself. But she says when customers come in with nefarious intentions, she starts by recommending therapy. She even has referrals for Wicca-friendly counselors. If professional counseling and trauma healing aren’t the chosen path, MiRah still doesn’t recommend toying with dark magic.“Sometimes your ex needs a good shut-the-fuck-up spell, right?,” she joked. “But if somebody's coming in from a place of wounded energy, it's really more of a cry for healing. You really need to have some healing done.”
She warns against the casual use of curses, explaining a universal tradeoff similar to the concept of karma. Simply put, one bad curse will immediately wipe out the energy of every good deed.
“Nothing in this universe is free,” she said. “You can't spiritually bypass responsibility for your intentions. No curse is going to heal the root cause of [your] feelings.”
Not to mention witches, according to MiRah, reap an equal amount of bad juju for each curse sold, which is part of the reason she does not personally deal in them.
“I know that as a practitioner, you have to actually know how to curse in order to defend yourself against them,” she said. “I've used [painful magic] with full knowledge and understanding of what I'm asking the universe for, and the price that it comes with.”
Which Witch Is the Right Witch? Not the Etsy One.
A quick Etsy search for a curse or spell will produce thousands of results in seconds. You can find a spell for just about anything the heart desires, but MiRah said a listing for a spell promising a 5-carat boulder on your fourth finger by the end of the lunar cycle is probably not trustworthy.“The stuff that you see sometimes in media, even maybe sometimes on Etsy, is maybe not at the core of what real witchcraft around love is about. It can be sometimes really gimmicky,” she said.
In fact, MiRah has personally dealt with people who have been scammed by grifters posing as witches, commercializing on the craft and preying on people who feel helpless.
“There is a lot of abuse,” she said. “I have seen it. I've seen people who come into my store and have told me they gave somebody $500 to lift a curse off of them. What you find out is that this person is just grieving, and they just need some support, and maybe some therapy.”
But Etsy makes witchcraft highly accessible, which MiRah invites. Allowing safe spaces for witchcraft and all its iterations is integral to the witch who pays the greatest respect to the historical persecution and murder of witches. She notes that in many countries, practitioners of traditional folk magic are still targeted, and often killed, and that witchcraft is not a joke, but an ancestral practice, closely tied to Central Africa with rich traditions.this etsy witch scammed and snitched me! i was buying a love spell and i sent her his name and birthday and she dmed him all of our messages omg pic.twitter.com/ksp6HGd9Xk
— JOAN OF ART 🏇🏿 (@umcornell) May 26, 2025
“Etsy has allowed for more people to engage in the expression of magical crafting, which I think is fantastic because 20 years ago, when I got started, none of that existed,” she said. “You had to go beating some bushes in order to find the crafters and the witches.”
Still, it’s probably not in your best interest to order curses over the internet. Instead, consider shopping local or placing an order for those python ribs we mentioned.
But if this was not enough convincing for you, or you’ve already tried therapy to no avail and simply must curse your former situationship, there are options, but prepare for a sticker shock.
MiRah said low-cost curses are more than likely scams. Several zeroes are actually a green flag. Dark magic, with all its downsides for both the caster and the commissioner, should elicit a gasp, she said.
So here it is: For your cheating ex, who followed one too many scantily clad models for comfort, a lifetime of impotency clocks in at $500. For the worst of the worst, eternal despair will run you $3,400. Move fast, they're low-stock.
Do with that what you will. The Observer and this particular staff writer do not wish to be in the crossfire of bad juju, so while we don't recommend that route, our devotion to ethical journalism requires that we mention it.
