Emoji Spells

About

Emoji Spells are a series of posts featuring emojis arranged by self-identifying witches on social media with the intention of magically bringing about a desired outcome, such as getting over an ex-boyfriend or calming anxiety.

Precursor

A subsection of emoticons known as dongers^[1] featured pictorial representations of people using magic. On April 29th, 2015, Japanese.me^[2] compiled a list of dongers that appeared to be performing magic for users to copy.

A Tumblr devoted to Emoji Tarot Cards appeared on September 5th, 2015.^[4]

Origin

The first known appearance of the "emoji spell" concept appeared on October 29th, 2015, when Vice's women's interest sub-site Broadly^[3] published an article called "How to Cast Spells Using Emoji" as a part of "Witch Week." The article featured directions for crafting, casting, and preparing for casting a spell, along with several example spells one can cast.

Spread

Following Broadly's article, witches on social media, primarily on Tumblr, began casting emoji spells. On Tumblr, spell posts instruct users that Likes "charge" the spell and reblogs "cast" it. Some popular spells include one to take down Donald Trump (over 18,000 notes as of September 30th, 2016, shown below),^[5] to protect your pets (over 99,000 notes),^[9] and save the bees (over 40,000 notes).^[10]

On April 10th, 2016, Bustle^[6] published an article detailing one writers attempt to use emoji magic to improve her love life. Mic^[7] covered the trend on August 17th 2016, which led to other teen-marketed sites like Teen Vogue^[8] and others to cover the spread. At least two Tumblr accounts are devoted solely to creating and sharing Emoji Spells.^[11][12] They have received backlash within the witchcraft community, as some believe the practice of liking to "charge" spells to be disingenuous.^[13]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References