The rise of the "witch aesthetic" seems almost more like a fashion subculture and tumblr seems more preoccupied with exploring the variance of visual aesthetic and the accoutrement rather than the variance of occult philosophies. The surface of witchblr seems more like a game of identity, like those "what kind of crystal are you?" quizzes. I think for many, the assumption is that a "witchy identity" is the final goal, to become a "witch", to be something rather than to fall down into a rabbit hole of study for the sake of curiosity or aptitude, and you can easily buy most of the accoutrement to signal your "witchiness", to affirm your identity, tarot cards, black clothes, and etcetera, but you can't really buy the fruits of study, and while practitioners can often sense each other in passing, there isn't something you can buy that imbues that palpable quality of the aura of a person who is long-steeped in magical practice, which, ironically, I think is what most would-be witches really want, but you don't get there chasing that for it's own sake. You get there as a byproduct of chasing knowledge and practicing and making things happen. I think many people on tumblr still see the operative witch as a folkloric identity, something that isn't quite real, and so the tea stirring, and the intention setting and the watching the moon and so on is the closest they feel they can get to bringing that identity, that power, into themselves. The constant "you don't have to practice constantly to be a real witch!" and the constant outcry of "you're still valid!" seems to betray that the goal, for many, seems to be to feel like a witch rather than to do functional magic, but I don't really think you can reach the state of being an operative witch if you see the possibility of things like raising storms or punishing the vile or what have you as merely tropes of fantasy. But witchcraft is, at its heart, an (often frightening) striving for genuine power, to do things, to keep things safe, to protect those you love, to have real demonstrable agency, to wreak real observable havoc, not a dress code with a quirky superstitious side hobby with which to decorate your identity in order to feel less like no one.
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