The Oracle of Los Angeles: Being a Professional Witch
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“…there’s a lot of healing work that needs to be done in this world and people are looking to reenchant their lives…”
Amanda Yates Garcia, known as the Oracle of Los Angeles, is a professional witch. She hosts a podcast called Strange Magic, which addresses issues related to magic, Taro and social justice. She also has a book out titled: Initiated: Memoirs of a Witch.
What is a witch? What is witchcraft?
“Witchcraft,” Amanda says, “is a nature-based practice that sees nature as sacred and that sees spirit as eminent in nature.”
Witchcraft, she stresses, is not a religion, it is a practice. For example, it has nothing to do with Satanism. Satan is an invention of Christianity.
How does one become a professional witch?
Amanda Yates Garcia is a hereditary witch. Her mother was a practicing witch and she was brought up practicing magic and Earth-centered forms of spirituality. Like many others, in her late teens and early twenties, Amanda rejected the traditions of her youth and decided to pursue a career in the arts attending school for dance in London and then returning to the United States for an MFA in writing, film and video and critical theory at the California Institute of the Arts.
After completing her education, she went into the arts professionally. However, she needed to support herself, so, like many young people who are trying to get their careers off the ground, she took work at various jobs such as a waitress, a magician’s assistant, a fashion photographer’s assistant, and an exotic dancer. She ended up working in museums as an art educator and doing adjunct teaching at colleges and then arts education administration.
Working nine hours a day at a job I didn’t like.
“Where I was truly miserable.” She says. “You don’t make a lot of money in arts education, there’s not a lot of job security. And you’re kind of arts adjacent. Even though there’s lots of great things about that work it is so undervalued and your labor is being exploited and you’re working so hard for so little it can be really draining. I was working in Pacoima, which is the industrial armpit of Los Angeles, as an educational administrator. I was writing industrial content for military and car museums, working nine hours a day at a job I didn’t like.”
This ran counter to how she thought she should be living. It raised in her mind questions that many of us ask ourselves at one time or another in our lives: Why am I working at this job which I really don’t like? Why am I wasting my time and talent?
It was at this point that Amanda came back to witchcraft. At first, it was for her personal enrichment, but then she realized that other people would benefit from the principles she had learned from her mother’s practice.
I just needed to create the world I wanted to live in…no one was going to rescue me.
“We are here in this magical and beautiful life where people are just doing things that they don’t care about, spending their entire day, their weeks, their months, their years, doing things that they’re not passionate about, often with people they don’t even like. And I started to realize that I just needed to create the world that I wanted to live in. There wasn’t going to be any escape, no one was going to come rescue me. It was then that I returned to witchcraft.”
She started performing spells and rituals for people as a side business but was still not able to leave her day job and pursue her passion. She was trapped in the cycle of needing to make money and not having enough time to develop her business.
She needed help.
“And I did this spell for help. It was really humble. I was on my knees in front of my altar, and I asked for help in a way I hadn’t before where I was prepared to do whatever was necessary to change my life.”
Soon after that she was laid off from her job and was able to collect unemployment. Then, out of the blue, she received a check for $10,000 from a relative.
“Because it came as a result of the spell, I decided that I would just focus on doing my true work, the work that I really wanted to do. I would only do what I really wanted to do and what I believed in until the money ran out.”
That was seven years ago, and she has been able to keep it going.
Amanda has been able to go from working at a miserable office job to having her own business, doing work about which she is passionate and finds fulfilling. That’s the dream, right?
Sure, but she had done a lot of groundwork.
Do really good work for someone…it spreads by word of mouth.
“When I was first starting out, the readings I was doing were super affordable. People would get them for themselves and then get them as gifts for friends. If you are doing one on one work that is a really good way to grow your business. Do really good work for someone and then in your newsletter or promotional material you can say this makes a good gift. And so it spreads by word of mouth.”
As with any other business, marketing is important. Amanda has a newsletter and website, which are updated regularly. She is also on Instagram with tips on dealing with events such as a lunar eclipse, how to “clear an object” with a simple chant, Tarot instruction and more. It is a lot of work staying on top of this aspect of her work but essential.
She is a healer.
Amanda sees herself primarily as a healer helping people deal with the obstacles of life: aging, work stress, money problems, racism, sexism etc. She wants to help cultivate love and beauty in their lives and be their best selves, something that is hard to do when pressed with the endless swarm of life’s problems. It is easy to feel overwhelmed and forget to see the good in ourselves and in the world.
TWE, “So are people coming to you for guidance through the rituals to get to their empowerment?”
AYG, “Yes, exactly. That is the purpose of my work.”
The purpose of the rituals, the magic, is to create a shift in consciousness. It is about helping people find their agency.
By finding our agency we realize that we have power and that we can change our reality according to our will by using that power and using our imagination to shift our perspective to see possibilities that we didn’t realize were there.
One of her clients is a Phd candidate at Berkley who is having trouble finishing his thesis and needs help breaking through some mental obstacles. Another client is a writer and comedian who likens the sessions with Amanda as spiritual coaching: part therapy, part ritual. It is like going to see your priest or rabbi but with a dash of something else. She also does purifying ceremonies for businesses and public ceremonies.
Amanda also performs public ceremonies at places such The Getty Museum and The Los Angeles County Museum of Art. She stresses the importance of the communal rituals and explains that in witchcraft there are no spectators, everyone is a participant.
“An important function of ritual is that we are literally doing it together. That communal aspect is really important to the work. We live in a very individualistic society that tells us that if we pull ourselves up by our bootstraps that we can have everything that we want if we work hard enough. But so often that is not the case. A lot of the changes that need to be made in order for us to live the lives of beauty and freedom and joy and connection that all being have a right to, we have to work towards that communally. There are no individual solutions to the problems we are facing as a culture. By doing rituals together we are creating community.”
The rituals are needed so people can actually experience a shift in perception and not just know about theoretically. The communal aspect is an essential part of that.
“It is scientifically verifiable that when we sing in community with one another, when we come together collectively in groups that share our values we feel extremely comforted and empowered by this.”
America is terribly divided right now, with fear and anger driving people to the basest of actions. Rates of anxiety and depression have been on the rise for the last twenty years. Materialism isn’t working. People report being unhappy with their jobs, saying they find nothing fulfilling about them, no higher purpose. Teenagers say they are filled with fear about the future, with an existential dread that there will really be no future for them, no jobs, no safe water to drink, no air to breath. It seems like the things we should hold most sacred in life are cast aside.
No wonder people turn to people like Amanda for guidance and healing.
“I think it’s because there’s a lot of healing work that needs to be done in this world and people are looking to re-enchant their lives so there is a lot of work for witches.”
Amanda hosts a podcast called Strange Magic, which addresses issues related to magic, Taro and social justice. She also has a book out titled, Initiated: Memoirs of a Witch.
