By Cris Nippard
Edited by Ellena Lu, Alloe Mak and Liam Mason

Growing up, my mother would tell me we came from a long lineage of witches. She would show me her gorgeous collection of geodes and books of spells. If I had a bad dream, I knew the next morning she would be hovering over my bed, warding off negative energy.

Others dismissed her ‘witchery’ as a strange quirk. When I mentioned it on the playground, I was met with nothing but confused stares. It wasn’t until the COVID-19 pandemic that I started to see the spirituality I knew so well start to be mimicked on social media.

It seemed like overnight, my mother was no longer a strange woman obsessed with the fantastical idea of witches, but just another person now enamoured with the ‘crystal girl aesthetic.’ The confusion over my mystical lineage had disappeared. Every other one of these TikToks was a young, rich white woman in front of her living room’s bay windows explaining the power of moldavite, meditation, and magic. #Witchtok now has over 6.5 million views on the app. The lifestyle passed down to my mother was now being compressed into thirty second clips for the world to watch.

Quickly, I watched prices of witch related items grow exponentially past what they were in my childhood. Books I could find on the side of the road were steadily climbing into the Indigo Top Ten. 

My mother hasn’t been so fortunate in her lifetime. She dropped out of high school, worked in a factory 6 days a week, and quickly developed several physical ailments. Still, she continued to uphold her positive, magical demeanour. She held onto her idea of luck. That was until she could no longer afford it.

So my question is, is luck real? Or does good fortune only apply to white, affluent Westerners? I see my mom, who had her only outlet of luck taken away from her. As I see my siblings suffering in the Congo, Palestine and Sudan, I wonder, how much do you have to have in your wallet to have luck on your side?  

“Israel” uses the money of Western taxpayers to drop bombs on the people they oppress in Palestine. The United States has sent more government aid there than any other place in the world. If the tables were turned, would the bloodshed in Palestine end? While we sit back and buy the newest iPhones, the people mining our cobalt face food insecurity. People outside our doors face food insecurity.

How do you hold on to your idea of luck when you see others get it handed to them? Where is hope found after it’s been taken from you? While the oppressed inherit the pain of their ancestors, the oppressors inherit a sense of luck. People have their magic taken away from them everyday. I ask again, is luck real? Or do people in positions of power choose who’s lucky, who’s rich, who’s magical and who survives?