The Rise of Workplace Witchcraft

A medium predicted my last job. Specifically, she told me I’d get one I hadn’t even interviewed for yet, which would require a lot of travel to one place. When I was hired by a British organization that sent me to London several times, her reading rang in my ears—especially the warnings that would become eerily right-on. Before that, my relationship to woo consisted of identifying strongly as a Gemini and believing that I once hung out with a ghost. 

I’d been gifted the reading in early 2023 by Rebecca Szymczak, a celebrity tarot reader and intuitive advisor based in NYC who practices under the name Cardsy B. Recently laid off, I was struggling to trust which incoming opportunity would be a magic carpet and which was a rug waiting to be pulled out from under me. Thanks to her predictions, I knew the London job would be both. Now, I know that using intuitive practices and other witchy mediums in your work life is hardly as strange as it felt to me at first. 

“Successful women are increasingly questioning the idea that every decision has to be made through productivity, data, or conventional career logic alone,” says astrologer The Zine Witch. “Intuition has historically been treated as unserious, particularly when women use it, and I think there is a real hunger to reclaim it without abandoning intelligence or practical judgment,” she says. 

Cardsy B also says she’s seen a massive shift in her business toward a crowd she calls executive witches. “I have fashion executives, executives in Hollywood, actors, directors, creators who are coming more to talk about how they can evolve their purpose, their work, and career.” 

“

Intuition has historically been treated as unserious, particularly when women use it, and I think there is a real hunger to reclaim it without abandoning intelligence or practical judgment. —The Zine Witch

”

A Pew Research Center survey released last spring found that a full 43 percent of women 18 to 49 say they consult astrology, tarot cards, or a fortune teller at least once a year, according to the report, and 10 percent of US adults say they “believe the practices give them helpful insights.” Vogue reported on a general rise in interest in oracle decks last year, citing a prediction that the global tarot card market will reach $93.8 million by 2027. 

Both The Zine Witch and Cardsy B say their businesses have grown among high-powered people who share recommendations with like-minded achievers just as they would share recs for an interior designer, a facialist, or an accountant. “I get referred from one finance executive to another, from one actor to another,” Cardsy B says. A published author, podcast host, and New York fashion fixture, she’s not new to the bold-named crowd, but still: “Before, it was more under wraps.” 

The practices themselves are nothing new, of course. People across cultures have turned to astrology and divination for millennia, and goop has been covering it for 18 years. What's new is how openly the powerful now admit to it.

The Zine Witch traces the shift to 2020. “The pandemic created an enormous amount of uncertainty, and people were suddenly questioning work, purpose, stability, and what they actually wanted their lives to look like,” she says. Interest in astrology skyrocketed, and that curiosity has only grown since, she adds. “Over the last couple of years, I’ve noticed people becoming much more comfortable using astrology as one tool among many for thinking about timing, creativity, career decisions, and major transitions.” 

Cardsy B knows how popular astrology has become, especially on social media, where she shares daily energy updates with her 133,000 followers. But she sees where the wind is blowing and has developed new offerings for the growing clientele looking for a leg up at work, including a $1,000-a-month, application-only Executive Witch advisory program. 

“People in this work always say, People always come for love or money,” she says. “But I’m seeing a lot of clients that have positions in leadership starting to tap more into intuition.” These are women, she says, who would see a solution quickly on their own but doubt it because they didn’t have the data. So they’d go do the research and come to the same answer. Some might call that being good at their job. She says it’s intuition, and that it’s a skill you can sharpen. 

“People in private equity and finance, they already have very high pattern recognition, but they are coming to me to home in on the intuitive piece of it,” Cardsy B says. In her practice, she says, an intuition neophyte will look for something or someone to back up their hunch. “They need me to be the mirror. So what I try to do for people is say: You can be that for yourself; you can strengthen that mirror of what is coming up intuitively.” Some of the practices she leads them to include tarot as a divination tool and trying rituals before big pitches or launches.

“As more and more powerful executive witches are seeing how they can embrace their intuitiveness, it has really paid off,” she says. It’s helped with her own time budgeting, for example, so when she thinks a project will take longer than anticipated, she plans accordingly.  

There’s logic in these tools being useful the more stretched, busy, and powerful a woman gets. The Zine Witch points out, “Success doesn’t eliminate uncertainty. Sometimes it actually raises the stakes. The questions become less about ‘Can I have a huge career?’ and more about ‘Is this still the career path I want? What am I making next? When do I walk away? What deserves my energy now?’” These are all questions one can ponder with the help of an intuitive guide or a tarot deck hidden in your desk. 

How to Sharpen Your Intuition

1Journaling

Cardsy B says journaling is the fastest and easiest way to tap into your own intuition. Even if that means taking notes on your phone, she says, if you have an inkling, follow that thought. For example, thinking “I keep feeling like I should reach out to this person, even though I’m not entirely sure why,” or “Something about this opportunity looks right on paper, but I feel hesitant every time I think about saying yes.”

“The more we record [intuitive thoughts] and see what happens, the more we can trust them in the future,” she says. She suggests noting when and where these thoughts occurred, even details that may feel unrelated, as “these can be intuition-opening in the future.” You can do this retroactively, too, like when something you had a bad feeling about goes off the rails. Or any other time you find yourself saying “I knew it.”

2Meditation

Specifically, walking meditation, Cardsy B says, is a great way to let the mind wander into productive places while benefiting from a connection to nature.

3Chart Readings

“For career and creative work, astrology can help someone understand their natural working style, creative instincts, strengths, and recurring patterns,” The Zine Witch says. “Progressions and transits can show how those priorities evolve over time and help contextualize periods of expansion, contraction, reinvention, visibility, or rest.”

4Tarot Readings

As her name would suggest, Cardsy B is a fan of the cards, and when reading them, she talks like a podcast sped up, flitting from bird's-eye insight to ground-level details. Like lunch with a very honest friend and hard-won face time with a CEO. But everyone’s different. Readings can feel religious, therapeutic, like a sit-down with HR or a strategy session. The Zine Witch adds, “Sometimes, a person already knows something intuitively but hasn’t been able to articulate it. A reading can give them a framework for something they have been feeling for years.”

5Consider Timing

There’s a specific practice for selecting an auspicious date, the Zine Witch explains. “Electional astrology is particularly useful when someone is deciding when to launch a company, release an album, announce a project, sign an agreement, or begin something important,” she says, recommending this for anything date-based, from planning when to start a workout routine you will stick to or when to make key hiring decisions. While respecting her clients’ anonymity, she reveals she’s working with a formerly successful musician to plot her return and schedule a tour and an upcoming album release. “I’m not there to tell an artist what to make. I’m much more interested in helping them recognize the conditions around the work they already feel compelled to make,” she says.

To do that, she consults their chart. In the broadest terms, the Zine Witch says a new moon is a good time to launch a project. Mercury retrograde can be a bad time, but she explains knowing your unique natal profile can reveal how to navigate—or even capitalize on—the transit. And while anyone can buy a beginners’ tarot deck and read up on the meanings and practice, this would be a more senior-level skill that may require outside help.

6Understand Your Energy

If people have a finite amount of physical, cognitive, or emotional energy in a day, astrology can become an interesting tool for thinking about those limits, the Zine Witch says. “We talk constantly about productivity and maximizing our potential, but rarely about the cost of forcing ourselves into ways of working that are fundamentally unsustainable. Instead of asking, ‘How can I force myself to produce more?’ the question can become, ‘How do I understand my rhythms well enough to know when to push, when to create, when to be visible, and when I genuinely need to recover?’” The answer, she says, lies in your chart, as understanding your placements can help you plan for mishaps and avoid burnout. She helps clients plan rest during slower astrological seasons while using their more potent times for demanding work. If you suffer from decision fatigue, she says astrology can even be used to answer yes-or-no questions via a system called horary astrology, which is basically reading a mini astrological chart for the decision itself. And if you’re about to break down and ask Claude, why not try it?

Some Things to Keep in Mind

Even among practitioners, there’s deep disagreement about what witchcraft even is, whether it’s energy work, spellmaking, something supernatural, or a science. It can be a religion and an accusation. It may feel like a fun party trick or even an aesthetic, but there are many for whom witchcraft is much more. 

But also, it’s a highly merchandised pastime rife with impersonators eager to sell a kit or promise the moon—for a fee.

“An ethical and savvy reader can help me interpret what I’m going through. An unethical reader could manipulate me into buying a lot of swag—and I’ve experienced both,” says Sara Benincasa, a Chicago-based author and comedian who has seen The Zine Witch and other readers over many years. “If I’m working with [a reader], it’s to get inspired. To say, ‘I’m stuck, how do I get unstuck?’ I try to combine a willingness to believe with a willingness to disbelieve and to have fun with it.” 

Still, for all her enthusiasm, Benincasa is wary of big promises and predictions that come with big price tags. “There’s no one on this planet who has an all-seeing power that can only be unlocked with a low monthly payment of $300.” She cites The Zine Witch as someone with an honest approach (and a range of rates that include single-question readings for $40).  

“I don’t believe astrology should replace therapy, medicine, financial advice, or practical decision-making,” The Zine Witch says. “I see it as another language for self-knowledge and timing. At its best, it can help people become more observant about their own lives. Being given permission to trust your own rhythm is extraordinarily powerful.”

For a demographic used to looking for the ROI, Cardsy B points to a clear return on intuition work: “The rewards are truly self-confidence and self-love.”