The fragrance company Pinrose recently provoked the ire of Wiccans and Indigenous people with a “starter witch kit” that it planned to offer through Sephora. An August 2018 Fast Company article explains that the kit was to debut in Sephora’s online store on October 5. However, Pinrose pulled the kit after severe blowback on social media. To understand the angry responses, it’s worth deconstructing the potential problems with the kit.
Commercialization With a New-Age Feel
Journalist Janel Martinez reported in a September 5 HipLatina piece that Pinrose’s newest item was labeled as a “starter witch kit,” packaged in a pretty box colored in a spectrum of soft pastels and containing several items:
- A deck of tarot cards
- A bundle of white sage
- A piece of rose quartz
- Nine small vials of fragrance
After plans to release the kit made news in late August, social media blew up with criticism toward both Pinrose for its creation and Sephora for agreeing to sell it. A September 1 Snobette article revealed that neo-soul artist SZA, a former Sephora employee, expressed her concerns on Twitter about how current staff would support the product and then added, “don’t do magic at the mall kids [sic].” Quartzy writer Sangeeta Singh-Kurtz points the finger at Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle brand Goop for inspiring the lucrative trend of “mystical wellness,” adding that Pinrose is just the latest in a long line of beauty companies jumping on the bandwagon.
Copyrighted Images and Compensation Issues
Some of the discussions about the now-shelved kit on social media centered around its tarot deck. Concerns were first raised about whether the deck’s artist, Vera Petruk, was properly compensated for the rights to use her images. The deck’s artwork came from her Samiramay Tarot digital deck series, which she created in 2015. In a Patheos post about the backlash over the kit, blogger Jason Mankey included a screenshot of a Facebook post in which Petruk expressed gratitude about the use of her artwork but revealed that she hadn’t yet been offered payment.
White Sage and Cultural Appropriation
Meanwhile, others accused Pinrose and Sephora of cultural appropriation and stealing business from smaller merchants in the witchcraft community who produce and sell supplies. BuzzFeed reporter Lauren Strapagiel revealed that some called the move “disrespectful,” perceiving it as antithetical to the custom of learning from other witches in the community and divorced from spiritual traditions present within modern witchcraft.
At the same time, Pinrose’s inclusion of white sage bundles was denounced as irresponsible. Demand from New Age suppliers has led to overharvesting, resulting in Native people having limited access to the herb for their spiritual practices. More than that, others are questioning the ethics behind the commercialization of a religious tradition shared by several Indigenous civilizations across North America. As Native Appropriations blogger Adrienne Keene disclosed, smudging and other spiritual customs were not explicitly protected by United States law until the American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978. Keene commented extensively about this troubling history in her own take on Pinrose’s start witch kit and added, “…when our religious practices are mocked through these products, or folks are commodifying and making money off our ceremonies it’s not about who has the ‘right’ to buy or sell. It’s about power.”
When Commercialization and Religion Collide
For people who’ve been marginalized based on their race, religion, gender, or other reasons, their spiritual and cultural traditions often hold profound meanings that are closely tied to aspects of their identity. Commercialization of these practices can be regarded as offensive, since it may not account for both their origins and the suffering of the people who fought for their rights to observe their faiths. Such commercialization likely won’t disappear, but larger issues of cultural appropriation and responsible consumerism will continue to be debated.