Critical Review of a Website: The Hoodwitch

"The Hoodwitch" is a site created by Bri Luna (The Hoodwitch herself) and provides "Everyday Magic for the modern mystic."© Her Instagram account (linked on the "Contact Us" page, along with her Twitter and Facebook accounts) further describes it as a "Web-store + Visual Storytelling," indicating the site not only as an online store but also as a place for personal storytelling with a visually-oriented focus. The site opens with a bold greeting page that you must click through to "enter" the rest of the site. This page features a tattooed hand with red gel nails holding a large purple and white raw crystal, holding the object almost as an enticement into the site. The hand reaches up from the bottom of the page and is centered against a black background with a cosmic purple circle and the scripted words "The Hoodwitch" floating above the crystal-clutching hand.

Fig. 1. Main opening site page. www.thehoodwitch.com.

Once you’ve entered the main site (instead of "Home," this page is called "Featured"), the uniform white background, black typeface, and pops of colorful images create a simple yet eye-catching aesthetic, one that reflects popular styles found on blogs and Instagram accounts from millennial influencers and artists. The navigation bar at the top contains four icons that look hand-drawn, and the placement veers from the typical website aesthetic (cold, impersonal, cookie-cutter), signaling a personal space designed by someone with a particular vision. These four icons lead to the main pages of the site: "About," "Store," "Blog," and "ABRACADABRA" (or, "A-B-R-A-C-A-D-A-B-R-A"). The side navigation is a list of 43 words or phrases ("Auras," "Healing," "Beauty," "Goddess of the Week," "Horoscopes," "Rituals," "Moon Phases," etc.) that link to blog posts tagged with those words. Once clicking past the main page, you enter a slightly different visual structure, with the four top navigation choices (sans icons) intermixed with three new ones: "Featured," "Tarot," and "Bruja Bookshop." This dissonance and repetition signals that this space, though carefully curated on an aesthetic level, may not be The Hoodwitch’s primary online space (her Instagram or ABRACADABRA community may be more frequented, perhaps).

Fig. 2. "Featured" page. www.thehoodwitch.com/featured.

Alternatively, this could serve to boost the personal (rather than corporate) touch. The Hoodwitch sells products and services, but there is an indication that the slight sloppiness stems from the self-run nature of the business and community. The Hoodwitch is a brand, but Bri Luna is a self-made business woman (of color) and modern (millennial) bruja. The site is created by Luna, but, as she says on “About” page: “this project and this information is not about ME, it is about the greater good for ALL.” This speaks to an audience looking for both professional and personal touches. This portion from the “About” page reinforces this ethos as well:

I believe we are all interconnected in this great web, and that even the tiniest accomplishments matter. I sincerely hope that with the launch of this site we may grow together, by honoring timeless knowledge that we have either forgotten or learned to ignore.

The Hoodwitch’s view of the internet as a place of interconnectivity assumes an understanding that this website is nestled in a larger digital ecosystem, one that can be navigated to "[honor] timeless knowledge" as well as navigate new mystical horizons. The site espouses rituals, advises astrological readings, provides music playlists, and sells material goods, acknowledging and promoting the material world – sights, sounds, bodies, smells, desires – through a virtual space.

The material world is also evoked by the imagery on the "Store" page. Each item for sale is carefully photographed, radiating realism through sharp focus and shadows. Some crystals are even photographed in The Hoodwitch’s palm, evoking the image from the opening page of the site. All of this continues to build on a clear message: there are real people behind this virtual site, and we are reaching out to you, a real person looking through your own screen. This seems to be speaking directly to those in the millennial generation, particularly womxn who are seeking alternative spiritualities and prioritize self-care spending habits.

Fig. 3. Excerpt from "Store." www.thehoodwitch.com/store.

A quick word on millennials, astrology and witchcraft: millennial Americans spend much of their time tethered to smartphones and devices, frequenting these liminal spaces for material and immaterial engagements, community formation, and self-expression. Millennials typically resist traditional religious categorization, but the surrounding post-9/11 and post-2016 election society has unearthed a generational desire for meaning and distraction, and the recent (western) revival of witchcraft and astrology provides a fun, inclusive invitation for self-exploration. Recent prominence of millennial engagement with astrology and witchcraft in virtual spaces reveals the slippage between secularity, religious authority, and pluralistic spiritualities, as well as the material elements of an ostensibly "immaterial" digital space. In short, the demarcating lines between religious/secular, digital/material, and authority/plurality are complex and permeable, and it is in the blurred, grey areas that provide fruitful spaces for religious and spiritual exploration for younger generations of digitally-inclined Americans.

The Hoodwitch is competing for attention alongside other online mystics, witches, brujas, and astrologers, so the site’s incorporation of materiality as well as the links to multiple online spaces (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, ABRACADABRA) reveal an awareness of this larger virtual landscape. The Hoodwitch has an online store, to be sure, but the site is promoting an individual encounter with a community, a safe space, more than an overt promotion of items for purchase. In other words, this safe and individualized community is what attracts audiences to join the community and/or purchase items they feel they can trust. Unfortunately, this community feels secretive and disjointed. The ABRACADABRA page is mysterious and requires private access; alluring, but also unclear as to who can join (and what the process is).

Fig. 4. "ABRACADABRA." www.thehoodwitch.com/a-b-r-a-c-a-d-a-b-r-a.

Fans of the site may also be followers of The Hoodwitch on other platforms, but the multi-platform navigation does not add up to a coherent, communal experience for viewers. In a 2019 Beauty Profile on The Hoodwitch in Dazed Digital, Luna "credits both her maternal and paternal grandmothers’ rich spiritual traditions – the former being from the south, and the latter from Mexico – for her interest in the occult," and in her early days, she desired to carve out a space that moved beyond “Eurocentric Pagan practices” and resonated with her own "cultural identification."[1] Her site "has since grown it into a company that operates both URL and IRL,"[2] as she has expanded into collaborations with Essie nail polish, Refinery29, the forthcoming Freeform TV show Motherland: Fort Salem, and her own line of makeup with Smashbox Cosmetics to "mak[e] occultism, witchcraft and magick accessible for a new era of witches."[3]

Luna’s personal narrative is compelling, but the version found on The Hoodwitch "About" page feels somewhat muted. Aspects of Luna’s personal life comes out more clearly and colorfully on her linked platforms (Instagram, Twitter, etc.), rather than on The Hoodwich site directly. Much like her assumed followers and site visitors, Luna expands her virtual reach across multiple platforms, curating personal and professional touches as a way to appeal to demographics that may be less inclined to trust a polished corporation, but still want to buy trusted material items that will enhance their virtual and spiritual lives. Luna’s identity as a bruja and a woman of color signals inclusion to those who may feel dismissed from other (primarily white) millennial occultist/wiccan spaces, but the narrative is muted enough to welcome any interested mystic who comes across the site.

In a 2018 profile with City Arts, ABRACADABRA is described as "an online forum…that hosts some 20,000 members who discuss everything from the personal practice of witchcraft to UFOs and psychedelics."[4] If the ABRACADABRA community page had more clarity, the site might feel more comprehensive, in terms of the underlying vision as a store/blog/community space. As it stands currently, the slight dissonances across the site, cryptic ABRACADABRA page, and lack of available items for purchase (most are "sold out") keep The Hoodwitch from achieving a truly inviting space that is clear and easy to navigate. The overall aesthetics are branded with continuity, but these final touches keep the site from fully flourishing (if that is, indeed Luna’s goal).

Fig. 5. Instagram post from Bri Luna (@thehoodwitch) on September 23, 2019. www.instagram.com/p/B2xbMxhgimz/.

Fig. 6. Instagram post from Bri Luna (@thehoodwitch) on September 13, 2019. www.instagram.com/p/B2W-QfGATcs/.

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[1] Gabriela Herstik, "How The Hoodwitch is Making Witchcraft More Inclusive," Dazed Digital, October 4, 2019. https://www.dazeddigital.com/beauty/soul/article/43969/1/how-the-hoodwitch-is-making-witchcraft-more-inclusive. [2] Ibid. [3] Ibid. [4] Amanda Manitach, "Modern Sorcery: The Hoodwitch draws on many traditions to conjure empowerment and healing," City Arts, January 29, 2018, https://www.cityartsmagazine.com/bri-luna-hoodwitch-modern-sorcery/.