[wgerard]

This was a constant complaint about Etsy 10 years ago when I worked there. This was a complaint that predated my time working there, even. At one point we even had to ban people selling spells (yes, as in the seller would offer to do a magical incantation on your behalf).

The exact details might've changed, but the symptoms look the exact same. I remember we had to deal with a lot of people trying to skirt OFAC regulations, for example, by doing all sorts of things to hide the country of origin for something.

Optimistically I will say this is a very hard problem to solve. Pessimistically of course the company benefits from it, so I'm sure it's not a problem anyone besides maybe a few diehard advocates look too deeply into.

[curiousllama]

Low key, I would buy a spell for my friend, as long as I got a video or certificate or something proving the spell was actually "cast"

Sounds like a great sibling gift tbh

[wgerard]

I mean sure, I think that's why it flew under the radar for so long. The dark underbelly of it was people buying love spells and the like, which starts to feel a lot like preying on peoples' desperation.

[Loughla]

I find that genuinely fascinating from an ethical standpoint.

What if the people really believe spells work? Does it matter that they don't? Is it just the ephemeral nature of spells? What if I were to ship a complete spell in a bottle to the person?

(not to be too much of an edgelord) What about religious iconography or religious paraphernalia? I would argue that anything related to that is just a more accepted version of magic spells. Would prayer be banned?

[wgerard]

> Does it matter that they don't?

For an e-commerce platform that allows returns: Yeah that's kind of an important sticking point and was a big part of the problem.

The other problem was that spells were effectively a service and you can imagine that we didn't want to get involved in determining the validity or accuracy of services being performed virtually that had zero tangible artifacts.

> What if I were to ship a complete spell in a bottle to the person?

This is probably what people actually do now to get around it, since there's an actual item being sold now.

[tarotuser]

Given that I am an occultist and a divinatory reader (tarot, etc), I see no issue with selling spellkits as goods to use. I also see no issue in selling spellcasting or divinatory services either. But I also acknowledge significant problems with companies allowing these to be sold and impossibility of validation or "returns".

Comparatively, selling spells can be quite easily compared with a Christian baptism, communion, the Catholic sacraments, prayer. The alms (baskets to collect money) is the cost for accessing these sorts of spells. Some Christian churches demand 10% of your earnings, which is way more than what some spells would cost.

Christians dont have normalized divinatory methods, so I'm unable to compare those. Their deity, YHVH, expressed a ban on that for most anybody - there exists a type of divination usable only by his high priest in Judaism while wearing the appropriate vestments, and only in yes/no questions.

From the occult community, what we see with "spell-selling" and the like is that it does attract frauds who are in it just for the money. Naturally, some here will consider any sort of esotericism to be a "fraud" - to those, nothing I say will be of any use. But the issue here is "How do you know if you're getting what's claimed?"

In order to know that you're buying a legitimate spell, the only way to know its true is if you can see and work with those energies initially... Thus meaning you would be able to do it regardless. Or you don't have those abilities developed and thus must trust who sold you the spells.

Of course, from a company's viewpoint, there's no way to validate spellcasting at all. Anybody could claim "fraud" and there's no defense against that. So it's easier to not allow these types of sales to happen. Effectively they're more problems then they're worth. (And doing a simple cursory search shows no christian prayer services being sold either... but that's easy to do with the abundance of churches in the USA.)

Edit: I'm really tired of having a discussion here, sharing my personal experiences, and having it drowned out with -1's. You may disagree with the occult. But it definitely is an area that Etsy had to deal with.

I guess the -1's are "I disagree with your lifestyle". Quite closed-minded, honestly.

[reaperducer]

Perhaps it has nothing at all to do with people disagreeing with your religious choices, and more that you posted one sentence in response, followed by a long off-topic screed that includes simplistic criticism of a stereotype of other people's religions?

I recommend you take some of your own advice.

[greenie_beans]

there are a ton of rationalists on this site, quite an intolerant bunch.

[JTbane]

My edgy take is that it's the same as donating to any church.

[greenie_beans]

can you sell bibles on etsy?

[yamtaddle]

Do a video of it and it's basically just Cameo, really. And people pay for that.

[greenie_beans]

yeah i don't see the problem with selling spells, that seems like something i should be able to pay money for if i want to.

[xwdv]

What’s wrong with selling spells? Is it because Etsy believes they are fake or because they are real and too powerful?

And where would you even go to buy spells in real life?

[Nursie]

Etsy generally doesn’t go into selling services IIRC, and a lot people selling this stuff on Etsy sell “I will do a spell/psychic healing/remote reiki/whatever”, which is a service.

Also, even in the case of having the parts of a spell shipped to you, how do you do a payment dispute when the spell doesn’t work?

[reaperducer]

And where would you even go to buy spells in real life

There's places in pretty much every major city, and even in some surprisingly rural places. Even in ritzy neighborhoods, there are private and public palm readers and tarot card shops catering to the upper crust who will sell anything they can get away with.

In places like New Orleans there's an entire tourism sector for it.