I bought a beauty spell from an Etsy witch – and it actually worked!

Beauty, of late, has asked rather a lot of us: twelve-step routines, light-therapy masks, needles, lasers, and a monthly expenditure that defies most reasonable budgets. And so naturally, there is something refreshing about the idea of outsourcing the whole ordeal to an Etsy witch. For about the price of a drugstore serum (an easy £7.50, with a 15 per cent discount on bundles of three or more spells), you can order yourself a “beauty spell”. I imagined my witch would light a candle, chant into the ether and realign my energetic field toward irresistible hotness. 

Celestial Craft Spells, who actually doesn’t operate on Etsy but does use a similar digital-first model on Shopify, came highly recommended. She offers spells for everything from sickness to career success but it was the beauty spell that drew me, partly from curiosity and partly because more conventional avenues – drinking water, getting enough sleep – had begun to feel uninspired. 

I ordered a small-sized Glamour Spell and, alongside my full name and date of birth, I tried to explain my wish: I needed the universe’s help to clear up my skin, stop my hair falling out, and just feel a little bit sexy again. I proceeded to checkout with Apple Pay, and waited.

Some 36 hours later, a confirmation email arrived. My spellcaster explained that the ritual had been carried out to help me reconnect with my beauty, confidence and self-worth, lift accumulated self-doubt and encourage me to see myself “with greater kindness”. Over the coming weeks, she said, I might notice greater confidence and a renewed belief in my abilities – but I should continue taking practical steps alongside the spell.

My witch had translated my fairly corporeal list of complaints into confidence, kindness, warmth and presence. It wasn’t quite the supernatural Roaccutane prescription I’d had in mind. But it was my first clue that beauty magic might be less interested in conjuring a new face than improving the relationship you have with the existing one. Did it work? Not in the way I thought it would. Do I feel hotter having done it? Yes. And that distinction might be the point.

The spell’s delivery system may be modern, but the impulse behind it is not. In the Greek Magical Papyri – spellbooks compiled in Graeco-Roman Egypt – there are rituals to beg the gods for charm, elegance, beauty and social favour. Centuries later, a Coptic Egyptian charm tells of Horus asking his mother Isis to help him win the affection of a ‘dark-eyed beauty’. Long before beauty could be bought, magic was already being called upon to make its subjects more desirable.

“Beauty magic isn’t new,” says Mary Maksoud, who came across my feed an hour or so deep into a 3pm scroll. Calling herself The Steminist Witch, she quite deftly integrates science and witchcraft, which she sees as one and the same. She’s not an Etsy spell-seller, instead working in ancestral, Phoenician-lineage ritual work that finds grounding in academic sources, a perspective that makes it easier for someone less spiritually engaged to understand.

Mary tells of the Ugaritic Baal Cycle (roughly 1370BC), a collection of mythological texts from the ancient city of Ugarit, in what is now coastal Syria. In the story, the goddess Anat performs a glamour ritual, washing, lining her eyes with kohl and anointing herself with murex purple, before walking back into a room of people – which later scholars have interpreted as deliberate, symbolic adornment that went beyond vanity. 

“When someone buys a beauty spell, they’ve bought themselves permission and structure to actually follow through on a ritual most people abandon after day three” – Mary Maksoud

Some three millennia later, SpellsByCarlton, another digital witch I found on my search (I now truly believe one can never have too many witches on their side), explains his methods. “When performing a beauty spell, it will involve setting clear intent, using symbolic items, and focusing on personal energy,” he tells me. “And yes, this process changes completely from person to person.” He recites from his spell vernacular, draws on herbs and crystals, and repeatedly recasts to avoid potential blockages, which, he explains, are common when chakras are misaligned.

This is white magic spellcasting. Like those in fairytales, Carlton is a white witch who doesn’t believe in negative energy being intentionally generated. White magic is reinforced by positive intention, natural elements and ritual practices, all of which, when harnessed, can apparently find a place in the beauty cabinet. To imbue an existing self-care routine with a little magic, he suggests applying a crystal-infused body oil or repeating affirmations while doing your skincare.

Carlton’s philosophy echoed the terms of my witch’s email: “As a spellcaster, my philosophy when performing magic of this kind is to simply highlight their existing unique beauty rather than conforming to rigid societal standards.”

All of which sounded lovely, but I was still curious whether a spell’s efficacy might have something to do with the placebo effect, or whether buying one simply makes you more likely to see the ritual through. Mary suggested it might, in fact, be a little of both. “Placebo isn’t fake,” she tells me, “it’s your nervous system responding to expectation and repetition with a real physiological shift. When someone buys a beauty spell, they’ve bought themselves permission and structure to actually follow through on a ritual most people abandon after day three.” While consistency does the visible work, the spell, in a sense, provides the container for it.

Where Carlton’s version of magic is closer to what was performed on me, Mary shifts away from the abstract in favour of adornment rituals similar to those performed by Anat millennia ago, where each step is tangible. “I trust practices with that structure over ones that promise a result with no participation required,” she says. “The magic isn’t an object someone sells you, even if the right intention is behind it. It’s the same principle as buying a crystal: it only functions in the capacity you nurture it, charge it, actually work with it. The object is not the practice. [The practice] is in doing the sequence yourself, on purpose, and noticing what shifts.” By Mary’s logic, I had commissioned the magic but outsourced the practice.

In the weeks since placing my order, my hopes for the outcome have shifted. Mary, in part, changed my perspective when she told me, “if a beauty spell helps someone feel gorgeous and grounded, that’s real.” Because yes, a few weeks later, I didn’t see any rapid change in my jawline or see my wrinkles softening, but I did feel kind of gorgeous.

Once you’re receptive to this particular piercing of the veil, the logic of manifestation follows: thoughts and words carry energy, and the universe is liable to return whatever you put into it. Under those terms, even naming what you fear can feel dangerously close to asking for it. I couldn’t bring myself to tell my witch that I thought I might be ugly in case the universe heard that and made it true. We often hear fable and horror stories about people being neither careful nor specific with their wishes – like Midas with his gold or Bear in Obsession and his desperation for Nikki’s attention – in a way that is meant to deter us from exactly this vanity or greed.

A few weeks after the spell, none of the tangible things I asked for have noticeably changed and yet I feel more confident anyway. Perhaps that is the closest thing I have to proof that this kind of magic is real. And so, whether the spell itself worked is difficult to say. But while our current beauty economy is increasingly devoted to optimisation and all sorts of maxxing, maybe all I needed was the small, delicious possibility that, somewhere, a woman and her crystals were making me feel hot again. 

A version of this article was originally published 14 August 2026.