On Millennial Witches & The Grossly Under-qualified: A Takedown

Dreadful, is right.

I don’t identify with these sorts of generational things so much. Though I am Gen Z, so not the problem here for once, I do think people on the cusp or around it have a sort of generational mix going on. I think it depends on your family too, if you have older siblings that you want to emulate as a child or early teen, you’ll likely exhibit more Millennial energy even if you’re Gen Z. I’m sure it’s the same with unregulated internet access, seeing as Tumblr raised a great many of us across the generations because the hold it had lasted so long. I wanted to be the coolest girl in the world, Alexa Chung, Queen of Millenials and so in doing so, I became a little bit that way. 

But there is an insidious type of Millennial baked into the fabric of their make up that could never have merely come from exposure to groupies and their bands alike. It’s the kind of Millennial who obsesses over being so messy yet relatable and so not like other girls even in this day and age that it alienates those of us who are mentally past 2018. It’s the girlboss Millennials who think they can do it all because that’s what Bustle or Vice once told them. These girls write like they think Buzzfeed is about to call and ask them to be in Ladylike now that Safiya is gone. It’s a time capsule, one from a planet that died. 

I recently read an article from what appeared to be a refugee of that dead planet. No doubt she was put in a little pod like Superman as a twenty something and the long journey to this planet cryogenically froze her because the way she was expressing herself felt dated immediately. I know that Millennials love to be cringe and we can pry their snarky little ukuleles out of their cold, dead hands, but there comes a time and a place where we collectively need to move on.

Let me just say, I hate trends. I once heard the phrase “trends are for the anxious” from a now semi-disgraced Youtuber (in somewhat Millennial fashion myself, I must admit). As an anxious person, this was a revelation. I didn’t want to be anxious by constantly living up to whatever new thing all the cool people want us to buy and, thank God for that because microtrends are the most boring faux subcultures in the world. We should be happy to live our lives not based on what’s trendy to various hoi polloi, of course. I don’t dress for anyone but me, I don’t write for anyone but myself, really, but also, using outdated trends in an effort to seem ironically trendy must be exhausting for that writer I read. 

The Writer™ wrote about trending topics so she’s at least aware of what trends are on the internet. Yet, the way in which she phrased it all was as though she was above it yet she wanted to be part of it all at once. I know that Millennial girlbosses of a certain age group do tend to have this Hannah Hogarth misplaced importance thing because that’s what the world told them as they enter third level education, but this Writer™ admitted to buying a single deck of tarot cards and starting a tarot readings and “witchy wellness” business one year later. Millennials do not have much, due to the economy, but they sure do have the audacity. 

That felt like this particular Writer™  was coming for my business. I run a tarot and astrology business too and I have been practicing for seven years. After one year, I could not fathom the idea of having people pay me for readings because there’s so much to know about tarot and the way to interpret the cards that after one year (unless it was absolutely excessive study) I wouldn’t feel comfortable reading others for payment. I would feel as though I didn’t have the experience yet in the same way that I wouldn’t trust a 23 year old therapist. They don’t know anything yet, tarot is a practice for a reason. 

I don’t think that people should spend seven years learning, of course. I was at about year five when I started getting paid, after all. But anything under three, I would be suspicious of because it screams get rich quick and scammer to me. I am not, for the record, calling this Writer™ I scammer, but I know her. I know her because I see her everywhere and she is always trying to be at the events I’m booked for. She’s been following me online since before her business ever existed on her personal account. She never misses an opportunity to get her Instagram handle out there and I only know this because not only is this Writer™  attempting to be at my neck in business, she also managed to have articles published in two literary magazines that I have also had my work in. 

All of that would be strange yet alright, I suppose. I could rationalise it, of course, that there are only so many magazines for small time writers, only so many in-person events that may require a tarot reader. I understand, really, I do. But then I actually read her piece and that’s what has caused this essay because the way she writes is so condescending to the reader and the other people in her essay, that it made something fire up inside me and I felt so compelled to write.

In her essay, this master of the prophetic arts gets basic astrological terms wrong. She claims that we have an actual “star” sign in our birth charts when literally anyone with even an ounce of knowledge about witchy things knows that a star sign is the slang term for your sun sign. I’m a Sagittarius and I would, in casual conversation, say that my “star sign” is such. However, it’s officially my sun sign in my entire birth chart. But the Writer™ tries to make a joke about being so “you do you” to the witchy girls in a way that condescends them by saying that they are so free to pick their partners based on their “sun, star or rising sign”, but that she wouldn’t.

It’s the facts that she gets wrong, for one thing, yes. But it’s really this attitude where she claims to be all for witchtok and the sisterhood of witches, yet is so condescending in nearly every example of an interaction she gives. Yes, we have the idea that women picking partners based on a “star sign” is quirky, but she seems to be so concerned with telling us that she likes science as well as magic because she’s smart too and probably smarter than the ones in the coven who don’t like science, that she just comes across as a pick me. This is unfortunately the fate of the Millennial woman, the ones who were raised thinking that Zooey Deschanel characters are girls you should be. There’s always going to be a smirking energy of “see, aren’t I smarter than this dumb blonde?” that, try as they all might deny, absolutely is a result of fanning themselves to look pretty for the patriarchy. 

The Writer™ goes on to discuss how witchtok an witchiness in general are women’s safe spaces and that when a bunch of strong women get together it’s such a powerful thing and various other Hilary-esque campaign slogans. She decries the patriarchy and rightfully so since loser men will always make fun of a woman first. I get that and I know it myself as a longtime practicing witch because I have been in this life for seven years while she has only been here for one. But the thing is, for all her discussion on how men hate witches and trivialise our witchy rituals, she does it herself literally one paragraph before she goes down that path.

In the interest of seeming affable and amusing to the audience, she does what any Millennial would do and cracks a snarky little joke at her friend’s expense. I get it, good comedy is often mean and often not polite and very often not correct in terms of what would be productive to say. I like Joan Rivers too, okay? But this Writer ™, really ought to have thought for one second, I fear. She makes a joke about how her friend shouldn’t blame all her life problems on Mercury Retrograde and it's done with such a worn out tired level of sarcasm, I thought I was listening to a boomer at a barbeque joking with his friends about his wife. She says that her friend can’t blame her life decisions on the stars which is fine and true and I’ve seen that joke a million times everywhere. But then, a couple of paragraphs down when she’s into the anti-patriarchy stuff, she starts talking about how men make these kinds of jokes and how that isn’t okay. I genuinely think she just has a problem with astrology and that’s fine, I guess, it’s her opinion and she’s entitled to it. But if you’re the defender of witches in this particular essay, you have to know how many of us practice astrology as well. 

Sometimes people who are so loudly against the patriarchy are actually agents of it themselves. It’s like when the far right hires people to go to left wing protests and start drama, it’s just that these girlypops don’t know they’re doing it because unfortunately being not like other girls in the fashion of Amy Dunne was baked into the Millennial psyche from a very young age. I’m not going to sit around and act like I’m perfect or much better than this Writer™ . Every woman does things for the male gaze in some way because that’s just how society is set up for us. But to have it be so blatant and yet for the Writer™ , the editors and the people running this lit mag not to notice is wild to me. I suppose Millennial Pink has its blind spots. 

I’ve never had a reading off this Writer™ , but it doesn’t really matter. I know who she is and I know what the vibes are. Let me just say, dreadful is right.