When Metaphysical Fairs are more Meh than Magic.

 

I hit two metaphysical fairs this week. Two. Back-to-back. Normally that’s my idea of a good time: stickers on my coffee thermos, antique tarot decks, hand-blended oils, someone selling vintage bone beads out of a velvet box — the whole carnival of curious energy. But let me tell you something: both of these fairs had the same vibe.

Sticky.

And not in the “sweet, honey-on-your-fingers, beeswing-on-the-altar” kind of way. I mean sticky like when you walk through it you feel like somebody tried to sell you a healing crystal with back rent attached.

These two fairs usually pack the room. Normally, you’re fighting the crowd just to even see the tables. There’s a tarot reader in one corner with a line ten people deep, a forest of incense smoke in another, and vendors out here trying to talk you into buying hand-drawn sigils on birch bark for $45 a pop.

Not this week.
This week felt like someone had pressed pause.

Very few quality vendors. Think multiple vendors with duplicate products. 
Very little variety. Which SUCKS! Both fairs have, in the past attracted TONS of quality vendors.
Very lukewarm energy. Some of it was desperate. Some of it was ick.

I walked in expecting the usual sensory overload — color, scent, noise, movement — and instead I got three tables of soap, an oddities salesperson hawking gimmicky readings, and one booth with jewelry so repetitive I thought the display was glitching. I mean now many sets of planchette earrings can you sell?

It all felt like reruns.

And the energy? Thick. Stagnant. Sticky. Like when you walk into a room and you know somebody just had a conversation you weren’t supposed to overhear.

I know energy. I’ve curated enough rituals, house clearings, healings, and flea-market witchery to tell the difference between a slow crowd and energetic mud.

This wasn’t slow.
This was gummed up.

There’s a phenomenon I’ve seen before, especially in the metaphysical community: when everyone’s trying to sell, and no one is actually feeding the energy, everything starts to feel like a yard sale of intentions that never made it off the vision board.

• People selling crystals they didn’t clear.

• Tarot readers who didn’t ground before touching the cards. And who aren't protecting their energy. Not one reader I met (with one exception) even felt like they wanted to give a reading.

• Vendors with booths that feel like they were dragged from one event to another without resetting.

• And the big one: competition instead of community.

I could feel it — that tension under the surface.
Like everybody was watching everybody else’s table instead of connecting with their own spirit work.

Now, I’m going to put a massive exception here, because one person cut straight through the static:

Tarot Crow.

Andres is hands down the most awesome human I’ve met in a while. No performance, no persona, no faux-mystic sales pitch. Just pure intuitive presence and actual connection. I bought the Bee Tarot deck from Kristoffer Hughes from him — beautiful deck, by the way — and noticed something I haven’t seen in a decade of buying decks:
He offers a 365-day guarantee on the tarot decks he sells.
Bring it back in good shape within a year and you get credit toward another deck.

Who does that nowadays?

Nobody. Absolutely nobody. That’s the kind of customer care and magical ethics we need more of in the community.

He also told me about some very near-future plans — the kind of news that made me stand there grinning like a crow that found a silver button in a parking lot. I’m not sharing those here because they’re not my stories to tell, but let’s just say I’m genuinely excited for him. You can find him at tarotcrow.com 

When I tell you that he was the entire bright spot over two days and I'm confident he knows his shit. I'm going to go get a reading as soon as I can. 

Back to the fairs as a whole:

We’ve all been to those events where the energy is electric. Where people are genuinely excited to share, learn, trade, tell stories, and touch the weird and wonderful. Where you walk in and you know you’ll leave with something unexpected — maybe not even something you can hold in your hands.

This week?
I left both fairs with nothing in my bag except disappointment and the ghost of somebody else’s stress headache.

There is a lesson in this, though.

Energy follows intention.
And when the intention is “sell something because bills are due,” the air gets heavy real fast.
When the intention is “connect, teach, share, build,” the space comes alive.

If the metaphysical community wants to keep these events thriving — real, magical, community-fueling thriving — we need to get back to why we gathered in the first place: curiosity, craft, shared knowledge, and the weird, wild pulse of spirit.

Otherwise?
We’re just flea markets with incense.

I’ll still go to metaphysical fairs — I love them. Always have.
But this week reminded me that not every room with crystals and tarot cards is sacred.

Some of them are just sticky.

Sticky energy is a sign:
Either clear it, or don’t come back until someone else has.