Spirituality has become a growing trend, especially on social media. Terms like “WitchTok,” “Reiki,” or “tarot reading” are widely searched and have collectively reached tens of billions of views. On platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, spiritual content is more popular than ever. The hashtag #witchtok alone has surpassed over 30 billion views on TikTok, while #reiki and #tarot have each accumulated several billion more.
This development gained significant momentum during the COVID-19 pandemic, when social contact was restricted and people were confined to their homes due to lockdowns and distancing measures. One noticeable result was the surge of Reiki videos online.
Reiki is a form of energy healing with roots in Eastern traditions. Practitioners—often referred to as Reiki masters—work with the idea of energy centers, or chakras, within the body. The underlying belief is that when energy flows freely again, emotional or physical blockages can be released.
In many online formats, Reiki is presented as something that can work across distance and time. In other words, its effects are believed to remain intact even through a screen.
For many people during isolation, this became a form of substitute connection. A Reiki session via video often includes direct, personal communication, calming music, affirmations, and slow, deliberate hand movements. It creates an atmosphere of care and attention—sometimes combined with explicit promises of healing: Reiki for migraines, for instant happiness, for financial abundance, or even for breaking curses.
In essence, it becomes a replacement for positive social interaction—paired with the suggestion of a solution for almost any problem. The underlying message is simple: someone is taking care of you.
This is not a critique of spirituality itself, but of the way it is increasingly packaged, marketed, and sold.
Over time, the promises attached to these practices have expanded. Content that draws on mystical, magical, or occult elements is no longer niche—it has become mainstream. Practices such as tarot reading, manifestation rituals, deity work, or “cord cutting” are widely consumed, with certain themes like removing “money blocks” gaining particular popularity.
What this reveals is not just a trend—but a growing need. People are engaging more than ever with fundamental questions of meaning—and they are searching for answers.
The question of life’s purpose has not disappeared. It has become more complex. Traditional markers of stability—career, income, property, family—no longer provide the same sense of certainty. People are confronted with a fragile global reality, personal crises, and very real existential fears. Simple answers no longer seem sufficient.
As social, cultural, familial, and political structures shift, many people lose their sense of orientation. The external frameworks that once provided stability are no longer reliable.
And where orientation is lost, quick solutions will always emerge—often promising much, and costing more.
Individual sessions for tarot, energy healing, or Reiki frequently range between $50 and $300 or more per hour. At the same time, it is easily overlooked that real-life financial struggles cannot be resolved through a remote session or rituals aimed at “breaking generational curses.”
The concerns people bring into these spaces are real—but their causes are often rooted in material conditions: socioeconomic position, environment, mental and physical health, and overall life circumstances. These are not issues that can be resolved in five minutes, or even within a paid session.
And yet, these services are still sought out—because they offer something that has become increasingly rare in everyday life: the feeling that someone genuinely cares.
They create a sense of comfort, of being understood, of arriving—if only for a moment—in an otherwise overwhelming world.
What is being sold is not solutions, but emotions: closeness, hope, control.
And above all, they address one of the most pressing experiences of our time: loneliness.
In the United States, around one in two adults report feeling lonely on a regular basis. This reveals that the issue goes far beyond a search for meaning.
What is being offered is a gesture—a hand reaching out, a promise. Simple, comforting, and easy to accept.
The real product is not spirituality itself, but the regulation of inner pain: a way to soothe loneliness, to cope with constant overwhelm, and to regain a sense of control in an increasingly chaotic world.
Because when spirituality becomes a commodity—something to be consumed—it ultimately promises one thing:
that everything will somehow be okay.
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