Witches are casting a spell again in time for Halloween

On a crisp late October day, as leaves drift from trees like offerings in front of a metaphysical shop tucked away on Commercial Drive, a steady stream of people cross the threshold and step into the mystic.

Nowhere has a room painted black seemed so bright. Sun pours through the windows. The air is scented with something delicious. Cinnamon, maybe. Or magic. At the counter of Raven’s Veil, Michéal Reilly has been hand-rolling beeswax spell candles for hours.

“I can’t keep up,” he said.

The shop Reilly co-owns with his partner, Kara Gilbertson, is bustling.

“Some people just come in, walk around and leave,” said Reilly.

They aren’t here to buy, they come to absorb the energy, explains Reilly.

“We wanted to create a warm space, where everything we do says, ‘You are beautiful.’ ”

Raven’s Veil, a community collective and curio shop, features a bone bar, candles, teas, potions, botanicals and elements, even bees in tiny bell jars, all “tools,” Reilly explains, for ritual and connection with the natural and spirit worlds.

Bees, in folklore, were sacred links between the physical and spiritual world, messengers and symbols of transformation. There are tiny crow ribs and pelvises, bones for renewal, Tarot cards for divination and a reader, offering wisdom at a lace-covered table behind a curtain. There are also candles, botanicals and tinctures for ritual, prayer, protection, purification and cleansing.

On a Thursday afternoon where every nearby shop is empty, Raven’s Veil is alive with a spirit of conviviality. Magic is having a moment.

And it’s not just in Vancouver.

Modern witchcraft is surging in popularity. WitchTok posts, with hashtags like #babywitch, have more than 30 billion views on TikTok.

Etsy witches, selling custom spells and curses, became so popular that in early 2026 Etsy launched an actual witch hunt to flush out practitioners.

Although Etsy witches had been banned from selling hexes and spells since 2015, the company mostly looked the other way, until TikTok-user Riley Wenckus paid $7.99 to curse Elon Musk during the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

The rise of interest in witches, and pushback against them, is no surprise to Sabina Magliocco, a University of B.C. professor, folklorist and anthropologist, and author of Witching Culture: Folklore and Neo-Paganism in America.

Magliocco likens witchcraft to tofu for its ability to soak up the flavours — or culture — around it.

Witches are often seen as rebels, said Magliocco. Historically, those who break social conventions are convenient people to scapegoat when things go wrong.

“The witch is a perfect figure to project hopes and dreams and cultural anxieties on to,” said Magliocco. “They are greatly feared and often blamed for things like epidemics, mysterious illnesses and bad things that would happen.”

Witchcraft is more about social conflict than supernatural conflict.

“The bad witch is a form of social projection, a scapegoat onto which societies can project all of their bad thoughts,” she said.

On Oct. 17, Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz blamed tight midterm polling on “transgender witches.” It’s unknown if he was targeting Frankie Castanea, also known as Chaotic Witch Aunt, a gender fluid Italian-American folk witch who has over a million followers for his tutorials.

Since 2016 in the U.S., witchcraft has emerged as a form of social resistance, and a response to increasing feelings of anxiety and helplessness, said Magliocco.

Although historically women accused of witchcraft were often among the more vulnerable members of society, the witch of today is a figure of an empowered woman or priestess, said Magliocco, especially in America, where right-wing politics backed by powerful evangelical movements are “threatening women’s rights, bodily autonomy and self-determination.”

“It becomes a form of resistance against that form of oppression,” said Magliocco.

Ritual can also give practitioners a sense of control, said Magliocco.

“When you are in a situation where you are helpless, and don’t have power to change it, doing ritual, doing magic gives you a sense of control. It can help you deal with your emotions, or like meditation, it can alter consciousness, even for brief periods during the day. A person can go to their altar and speak to their deity and get on with their day.”

As attitudes toward witches have changed over the centuries, more recently the individualization of spirituality and religion has given it a boost, as has social media. Magliocco said there is a “tremendous creativity and positivity in the movement,” but cautions that practitioners may need guidance to steer away from the temptation to hex or curse one’s enemies.

“For people who practise witchcraft for religion or spirituality, the goal is self-realization,” said Magliocco. “Cursing others doesn’t make your life better.”

For Reilly, the practice is simply about connection — whether you light a birthday candle from the dollar store or one of his hand-rolled beeswax spell candles.

When he noticed a few years ago that stores like Urban Outfitters were selling Tarot cards and smudge bundles, he was concerned about mainstreaming the sacred, but those worries disappeared like so much fairy dust.

“People are finding ways to be more intentional with how they hold space for their inner life, their ancestors and nature. That connectivity benefits everyone. We are just here to open the door,” Reilly said.