TikTok Tarot Readers, Spiritual Psychosis and How Magic Lost Its Spark

Words: Faustine Moulin

Make it stand out

Whenever a tarot deck pops up on my Discover page, I know what it means - I’m about to be  hooked on someone who doesn’t care if I live or die. Meta has been reading the desperate  messages I sent to my friends and thought “Yep, bring the witches.” 

The first times, it felt good. After all, what harm could it be? The tarot readers were mostly  sharing psychoanalytic advice in a more poetic way than my therapist, and I would go to bed with a lighter heart convinced that the Universe had a plan for me. Now, because a stranger on  my screen said so, I was convinced that my path was written and what was meant for me would come to me.

I would always seek out the next step in my path - the newest video, the newest podcast, the newest book, truly believing that each and every one of these pieces of media would bring me closer to the Truth. Days pass and then weeks and with the same symptoms as a manic episode, I’d rely on the stars and on some divine unknown for absolutely everything.
___STEADY_PAYWALL___

Eventually, the frenzy finally came to an end and fear entered the equation, I started thinking that maybe I was the problem. This self-deprecating phase was quite different from the ones I knew before; it tasted different. I was hating myself for not being ‘aligned enough’, like the girls in the videos. According to my new mentors, I was the one attracting my own issues, my chakras were  unbalanced and I surely wasn’t manifesting hard enough. I would cry myself to sleep, hating my brain for feeling this miserable when the life I was dreaming of was supposed to be one happy thought away. 

Unsurprisingly the reality was that I had chronic anxiety, traumas I needed to face, way too high a screen time and I was now on the verge of a spiritual psychosis. 

As the internet helped connect tangible psychology and otherworldliness, spirituality became more and more porous. If the access to free psychological advice through 1-minute long videos on TikTok have benefited people over the past few years, the vastness of topics tackled led to some slippery paths. I remember sitting in a bar with a fervent online-spiritualist, enduring a conversation about how I needed to meditate harder to cure my endometriosis. The rant went on: The death of my mother and my inescapable feeling of half emptiness happened to teach me a lesson. I just wasn’t enlightened enough to understand that, of course.  

“We are desperately lacking a sense of belonging, scrolling endlessly, hoping for the  answer that will cure all pains and since we’ve been brought up to find all our answers online, the Internet eventually provides.”

How can we, without a blink, tell people that the worst things they endure is the fruit of some  bad connection to the unknown? “i do think if you believe in manifestation you should be legally required to explain it to a homeless person and make eye contact the whole time” reads one meme. Online spirituality and modern-day witchcraft are supposed to be fun, to give people a sense of horizontal community, distract us from our nine to five and give meaning to the nonsense and fear currently shaping our lives. Instead, community is eschewed and our phone screens take to blaming individuals for things that are far from under their control.  

We are desperately lacking a sense of belonging, scrolling endlessly, hoping for the  answer that will cure all pains and since we’ve been brought up to find all our answers online, the Internet eventually provides. Some online spirituality may be helpful, reminding us to recentre our feelings, but others are laconic, empty and even harmful. 

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Astrologist Vanessa DL had to remind people that rituals wouldn’t do anything against the virus and that, no, the vaccines wouldn’t lower your vibratory rate. We witness people using unverified facts to disregard science and medicine under the guise of spiritual awareness. White privileged influencers make you buy crystals mined by children in Madagascar to attract luck in your life under the cover of a holistic philosophy. Videos teach you to think positively to attract the money you hopelessly need to pay your rent. Don’t you dare doubt these, doubt kills the vibrations. But don’t dream too hard because the Universe definitely doesn’t want to give you something you are expecting. Suddenly, you’re not chronically depressed, you just don’t connect enough with your energies. 

Late-stage capitalism is the perfect space for the revival of cults. Although now, the leaders wear Lululemon outfits and hair ribbons. They look cute and harmless and it benefits them to do so. But how can we preach the power of the mind as a response to economic recession and wars? Are we, once again, following the disconnected advice of the privileged to cure centuries of social,  economical and political abuse? Magic lost its spark, not because we realised it can’t save us, but because we never stop hoping it will.