Witches Are the Original Life Coaches

Photography by Siri Kaur

Jennifer Bramen is a Los Angeles-based neuroscientist. She’s 47, married, loves Austrian pop, museums, cooking from scratch, Shiba Inus, facials, and makeup. An accomplished, yet standard issue normie, you’d think. You’d be wrong. Several times a year, Bramen consults a witch for spellwork, tarot readings, visualization exercises, solstice ceremonies, breathwork, guided meditations, and cleansing rituals.

Bramen first met Amanda Yates Garcia, the witch in question (and seen in the image above), popularly known as the Oracle of L.A., in 2016. Bramen had recently been disabled in a car accident and had tried everything from surgery and physical therapy to mindfulness training, coaching and functional medicine, but was searching for answers and a remedy.

She remained steadfast in her pursuit, inspired by the way Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius turned obstacles into opportunities. One day, five years after her injury, Bramen happened to read a spam email from Meetup, an app she had signed up for to connect with people that had similar hobbies. “It said a witch in my area was doing a workshop on turning obstacles into opportunities. And my intuition said, ‘I'm gonna go meet that witch.’”

Through a series of thought exercises at the workshop followed by some take-home tasks, Bramen says she started to develop a very different kind of relationship with her body: “I really learned to cooperate with my body and see it differently, as an ally. It was a transformative experience.” Despite being in an unstable financial situation because of her disability, she started one-on-one sessions with Yates Garcia (back then a 90-minute session was $150; it’s $280 today). Bramen has been working with her ever since.

Bramen, who had been told by her neurologist that she would never work again, has had her full-time research career back for several years. She credits the development of her spiritual practice for helping her find a path to wellness, using many of the skills which were taught to her by Yates Garcia. “She teaches tools that really help you transform yourself and influence the world around you,” Bramen says.

Bramen is a staunch woman of science and yet doesn’t believe that witchcraft lives in opposition to scientific thought.​ It’s an extension of it, in fact. “The power of belief is really important. We are hardwired for it, we thrive [when we have] things to believe in. And harnessing your beliefs in ways that can help you is great. You know how big the placebo effect is? Big. Your brain is powerful.”

She draws parallels to religion—which she says has incredible benefits for people's cognition and mental wellness—because it gives a greater sense of purpose and connectivity. One study, for instance, suggests that religious people are more satisfied with their lives because they regularly attend religious services and build social networks in their congregations; another study showed that a deeper sense of religion is associated with better cognitive functioning among Black women.

Organized religion, however, wasn’t an option for Bramen. “I can't personally join a religion. I'm an independent thinker, I'm very skeptical. I understand the power of belief but I cannot believe anything unconditionally,” she says. That was until she found witchcraft. “Witchcraft is a way of having spiritual practice without having to subscribe to a religion. It's more of a choose-your-own-adventure belief system.”

Bramen isn’t alone. As faith in organized religion decreases (according to a Pew Study, in 2023, 28 percent of adults identified as religiously unaffiliated as compared to 16 percent in 2007), for some, witchcraft seems like an appealing, non-conformist narrative to grasp onto. The idea of witches has so much perceived appeal: They’re cultural sensations and feminist icons, a 180 degree image change from a few centuries ago. Their history of resistance makes them anti-establishment enough to have street cred, but thanks to their popularity in pop culture over the past decades, they’re not too far from mainstream acceptance. It’s catnip for people who don’t see their values mirrored in contemporary culture.

Others see witchcraft as a form of wellness, just like yoga or meditation. In 2024, an aspiring witch can make her own healing spells by just buying one of many pre-packaged kits of mystical essentials from Walmart or Amazon, or pick from a variety of subscription box services offering crystals or Sabbat essentials. On TikTok, the hashtag WitchTok has nearly seven million posts of established and budding witches attempting to distill centuries worth of deeply held knowledge into a summary lasting a few seconds. They post basic spells, read tarot, and educate their audience on the properties of crystals.

California-based Yates Garcia, the author of Initiated: Memoir of a Witch, acknowledges that a lot of people are initially attracted to the #WitchTok idea of witchcraft, which is a basic version with simplistic ideas about what a spell is, or even why witches are doing any of this work. The aesthetic is also a large part of what draws people in: a noir-ish, moody, sexy-spooky Wednesday Addams vibe.

While most “serious” witches—or at least the ones who have been practicing for years—frown upon the distillation and commercialization of their craft, it’s true that witchcraft is a broad term encompassing many different kinds of practices, and beliefs vary widely. Bri Luna, the author of Blood Sex Magic and founder of The Hoodwitch, a web platform for mysticism and self-healing, isn’t surprised with its current virality, since people have been captivated by the magic and mystery of the unknown from the beginning of time. For many of us, however, it’s been a more recent realization that a lot of self-care practices we think of as wellness (manifestation, tarot, cleansing, and crystals) actually have mystical—and often witchy—roots.

In America, people have been intrigued by the unknown since the spiritualist movement of the late 18th century, and the advent of the ouija board and seances in the 19th century, says Luna, who believes the interest comes in waves. “We saw its popularity in the ’60s and ’70s with the psychedelic and astrology-crazed era as the Baby Boomers began their fierce rejection of their parents and government by exploring ‘alternative’ healing practices,” she says. “The 80’s ushered in new age spirituality; the 90s were very much wiccan, all about The Craft. In the 2000s and beyond, we see a more inclusive, and modern take on things with people exploring and reconnecting back to their true ancestral roots and cultures.”

Luna is the descendant of two very dynamic spiritual cultures. One of her grandmothers was a Black woman from the American South, and the other was Mexican. “Hoodoo and traditional forms of Mexican brujeria were practices handed down to me,” she says. She embraced that heritage, and as a child and teen began reading countless esoteric books on subjects like witchcraft, mythology, tarot, and spiritualism, and met elders within spiritual traditions from all over the world. “A witch is not something you can ‘become,’” she says. “You are either a witch or you aren’t. I’ve always been a witch because that is how I was born.”

Yates Garcia believes differently. “To be a witch, basically, all you have to do is practice witchcraft. And every witch gets to define what that is for themselves.” She, too, was brought up practicing witchcraft by a female relative: her mother. Yates Garcia’s practice is derived from a Northern European form of witchcraft which she says grew out of an ancient ancestral cult that—after Roman colonization and conversion to Christianity—decayed into fairy or folk tales before undergoing a rebirth at the beginning of the 19th century. “Ever since people have been practicing what we would now call witchcraft, they've basically been developing their own relationship to spirit, the animal and natural worlds, the elements, and also with other people in their area,” she says.

Helen A. Berger, PhD, a contemporary pagan expert who has written four books on the subject and is a resident scholar at the Women's Studies Research Center at Brandeis University, says witchcraft can be a religion, a practice, or a way of life. “They refer to their religion as their practice, because in witchcraft, the emphasis is on ritual and direct experience of the divine, not in belief. So people ‘practice’ Wicca or witchcraft, not believe it.”

Whatever the terminology, it gives Bramen real, measurable benefits. “When I'm practicing it, I thrive. I feel more connected, empowered and resourceful. I have a better relationship with myself and I'm more present in my day-to-day life.” When she’s not actively practicing, she backslides. “My health gets poor, I'm in pain, and I feel less connected. I'll start feeling like I have less control over my life.”

She’s quick to point out that Yates Garcia is not a therapist. “But what I get out of my practice is what I always had hoped to get out of therapy,” says Bramen. “At this point in my life, I get more change out of it than I do talk therapy.”

In 2017, Bramen gifted her best friend Libby (who declined to share her full name for privacy reasons) a session with Yates Garcia as a wedding present. Libby, a fintech executive in Los Angeles, did the first session with her new husband. “[Yates Garcia] did a tarot reading, performed a binding ceremony and gave us each a rock to kind of seal our intention,” says Libby. ”We both still have them.” Libby started one-on-one sessions with Yates Garcia soon after. “You learn to clarify your voice and your intentions for what you're doing. And that might not sound like a lot, but it's really powerful.”

Over the years, Yates Garcia has shepherded the two friends through several momentous milestones in their lives, both tragic ones and joyous, using her witchy skills combined with pragmatic tools. She not only officiated Bramen’s wedding ceremony, she guided her through the premarital process, which, for her, was bittersweet: her father was dying, and she was having complicated thoughts around some complex family dynamics. “She helped me see how I could talk to everybody differently, and in a way where I can make it clear what I wanted and needed, and have them feel good about giving it to me. And it was a really nice wedding,” says Bramen. Yates Garcia helped Libby navigate a fraught friendship breakup, celebrated the purchase of her and her husband’s first home with cleansing and gratitude rituals, and conducted a touching farewell ceremony when their dog had to be euthanized. “That was a really terrible experience, but she made it have a feeling of sacredness, respect, and intention, in a way that I don't think I would have been able to give it had I not put some sort of container [around it],” says Libby.

One of the more practical roles Yates Garcia performs is that of a life coach; she helped Libby negotiate a substantial salary jump. As a published author with an MFA in writing from California Institute of the Arts, she also had the chops to help Libby through a book-writing process and is currently doing the same for Bramen. Apart from the one-on-one sessions, she assigns them thought exercises, visualization and meditation techniques, and helps them hone a host of other skills that have helped in their personal and professional development.

The friends both have a spiritual practice that includes witchcraft, but still consider their sessions with Yates Garcia invaluable. “Amanda is not really hemmed in, she's not one thing. She can be a coach, a healer, she can do shaman work, numerology, astrology. And at no time have I had to believe in any of it to get a benefit out of it,” says Bramen. “What I get out of it is I get to understand my life and my situation, release negative things, retell stories that are not serving me well and maybe aren't even true. And to take the next quarter of my life in a little bit more stride and with a little more deliberateness.”

Working with witchcraft can have such a powerful effect on one’s life, in fact, that a section of the one percent have discovered the benefits of having a personal witch on standby. Corbin Chamberlin, who has been described by Women's Wear Daily as “fashion and finance’s go-to witch,” is summoned from coast to coast to sage the jet planes, homes, and offices of C-suite executives. He incorporates manifestation rituals, prescribes crystals, pulls tarot, and helps his clients practice manifesting and meditation. He told WWD his clients are mostly male and work in finance or head big businesses in areas like real estate and oil.

Kate Tomas, a British witch who’s been in the media recently for her relationship with actor Andrew Garfield, offers “Business Reading” sessions to corporations for £5,000 (about $6,300). The service includes a single 45-minute session followed by two days of support via WhatsApp. In an interview with The Sunday Times, she explained that her price tags were “a political act–to choose how to charge for your time, specifically as a woman. I could charge £1 million a session and that would be completely ethical because I’m not exploiting anybody.” This strategy, it turns out, might well be the direct result of her prior experience working with corporations, including television networks and hedge funds. Taking a leaf out of capitalism’s playbook and turning it back on itself is a wily move for sure. An act of resistance, almost, if you’re inclined to see it that way.

Which might be a good time to bring up corporate money and the inevitable entry of capitalist interests. Witches have existed for millennia, but it’s only at this moment that we might be at the precipice of a paranormal phenomenon: witchcraft being subsumed by Big Wellness. Witch-adjacent programming has already begun creeping into wellness establishments. I’ve seen Witching Hour classes on the schedule at SoulCycle in Williamsburg, Brooklyn; CrossFit gyms in Indianapolis offer mystical activities such as tarot, astrology, and intention-setting. It’s only a matter of time before we have a witchy version of The Well or Remedy Place–wellness clubs with impeccable esthetics and immaculate vibes where members could request a resident witch to pull tarot, do some spellwork, or practice divination.

It might be tempting to dismiss this as alarmist, or see it as a moral panic about appropriation before it’s gone fully mainstream. But there is sufficient precedence to draw inferences from. Yoga and meditation, both practices with deep cultural and religious significance have become wellness modalities in the Western world, disconnected from the roots that imbued them with meaning, significance and healing power. “Meditation is a perfect entry point into looking at how something becomes taken, diluted, and then decontextualized and sold back to rich white people at a steep price,” writes author Fariha Róisín in Who Is Wellness For?, a book that unpacks appropriation within wellness culture.

It’s deeply ironic that witchcraft, arguably the most enduring anti-establishment and anti-patriarchal movement of all time, could be in danger of being consumed and monetized by the same forces it’s been resisting all along. “Capitalism has the power to turn everything that is an act of resistance against it into a commodity and then sell it back to the people,” says Yates Garcia.

Starting out by buying your way into the lifestyle via kits from mega-commercial interests like Walmart or Amazon might not be the best way to begin an initiation into a practice with heavily anti-capitalistic roots. It’s much preferable to purchase from smaller, witch-run businesses instead. Berger also suggests that buying all the supplies—like herbs, salts, crystals, and plant matter—en masse in a conveniently pre-packaged state instead of collecting them over time also says something about the buyer's commitment to the practice. “You have to ask yourself, ‘What does it mean that I'm not being bothered, that I'm not putting in the effort to do this on my own and getting some of these things by just going out in nature?’”

“This is one of the things that keeps me up at night,” says Deborah Hanekamp, a.k.a. Mama Medicine, a healer and shaman based in New York City, when we talk about the widespread but surface-level interest in witchcraft, making it performance rather than a practice. “There’s a lot of witching today in our social media culture where people get stuck wanting to present the image of a healer or a witch, or [thinking] that holding a crystal makes them spiritual and they want everybody to know it,” Hanekamp says.

Neither she, Luna, or Yates Garcia are against social media being the portal that brings fledgling witches into the fold, as they all believe that more witchcraft is good for the world. “It makes us more oriented towards the land, our relationships, communities, our own inner world, and imagination. Therefore, however people come to it is good, in my opinion,” says Yates Garcia.

Hanekamp says witchcraft is decidedly not about the tools or the outward appearance: “It’s about us becoming more kind, compassionate people. If we're not understanding that the healing work we do on ourselves is about how we show up in the world, then what are we really doing it for? It can become that self-care crosses the line to selfishness.”

It’s a selfishness that Luna is familiar with. Even as psychedelics continue to become lucrative, with microdosing at peak popularity, there’s no reverence to the communities they originated from or sacredness of these practices, she notes. “The ‘wellness’ market is insidious in exploitation of not only tradition, but also of resources, like the overharvesting of white sage,” she says.

That’s enough to make any witch mad, because if there’s one thing they all consider sacred, it’s the natural world. Berger, who has been researching witches for close to four decades, says, “I have not met a witch yet who doesn’t include some form of spiritual connection to nature, as the magic itself is connected to nature, divinities and non-mundane (or occult) sources of power.”

While the mechanics of witchcraft are being squeezed into 30-second TikTok videos, budding witches will have to go questing to discover the true heart of the practice. “It's really important to take to heart the essence of witchcraft which is not commodifiable; things like community, our relationships with the land, one another and the elements. You can't really be a witch without fighting for the health and vitality of the natural world, or for the oppressed, and standing up for those who are more vulnerable. Those are the basic tenets of what it means to be a witch,” says Yates Garcia.

However, if we take history as a guide, witches have endured far worse than capitalism, and have survived–and thrived–through enough persecution for this to be just a blip. “Witches are really wily, and really savvy, and I think we'll figure out a way," Yates Garcia says. "Most witches don't care what critics think, we don't care if they like us, we are very used to being disliked.”

Read more about wellness:

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• Does Manifestation Work, or Are We Just Doing It Wrong?

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Originally Appeared on Allure