Woman makes up to £120K a year selling crystals for spiritual spells but has to warn customers not to insert them

A couple who started selling spiritual crystals as a hobby now make up to £120,000 a year after casting their very own “good fortune spell” and being “inundated” with orders during lockdown – but have been forced to issue a warning to customers not to insert them into their bodies.

Jade Berrycloth, 35, and her husband Phelan, 38, from Hinckley in Leicestershire, launched their company, The Crystal Witch, on Etsy in 2017 selling gemstones which they said people use to cast all kinds of spells, whether for falling in love or asleep.

While most customers use the crystals with positive intentions, Jade said some cast “hexes on their exes” and have even gone against her advice and inserted a crystal egg into their body, which became temporarily stuck.

The couple were shocked when, during lockdown, they suddenly received thousands of orders and now their online business is in the top 0.1% of companies on Etsy, according to eRank’s ranking.

“I’ve probably got around 5,000 crystals in this room right now,” Jade told PA Real Life.

“There’s a crystal for everything.

“I opened the shop in 2017 as a hobby really and then during lockdown it really took off – we’ve just reached 20,000 sales and we’re in the top 0.1% on Etsy now.

“Sometimes I still kick myself and think, ‘how did this happen?’

Jade’s mum began collecting crystals in the Peak District, near the so-called Blue John mine, where she grew up.

By the time Jade was born in 1988, she had amassed hundreds, which she displays in cabinets by colour.

“It’s something that I’ve always been interested in,” said Jade, who soon started a collection of her own.

In 2017, Jade launched her own online crystal shop, The Crystal Witch, using the American website and e-commerce platform Etsy.

Many of the crystals are used for witchcraft, said Jade, who is a firm believer in their powers and uses them for “good fortune” and “abundance”.

“There are crystals for relaxation, anxiety relief and sleep,” she said.

“Like Amethyst are supposed to be really good for dreams and getting yourself to sleep, so you can pop one of those by the side of your bed.

When business is slow, Jade said she refreshes her money bowl by lighting a green candle or “charging it under the moonlight”.

“For me it’s more of (a) ritual that sets an intention in my mind to say, right, I need to work and do all these positive things,” she said.

Crystals can be used to cast a variety of spells depending on their colour, explained Jade.

“For example, people will use rose quartz in love spells or black crystals, like Tourmaline or Obsidian in protection spells,” she said.

While Jade encourages her customers to use crystals for positive intentions, she said some people use them to cast negative spells, or hexes.

“A lot of the time, people like to try and hex their ex,” she said.

“A lot of people’s intention would be whatever you have sent my way, I am going to send it back to you and stop it coming to me.

While most of Jade’s customers are women, she has seen a growing number of men looking to get into the “world of crystals”, although some prefer to remain anonymous.

“We get a lot of messages to say, ‘can you not write on the package what it is’,” she said.

“Especially for people who are living in religious households which is interesting”.

Meanwhile Jade has had to warn customers not to insert crystal eggs into their bodies after receiving a message to say one had gotten stuck.

She said the confusion comes from other companies which sell vaginal eggs.

“We’ve had to put disclaimers to say, ‘these are not to insert, please do not do that’,” she said.

Others have insisted on putting crystals in their drinking water, which again Jade warns against as some can be poisonous.

“Malichite contains copper and Bumblebee Jasper contains arsenic,” she said.

Jade said crystals have been linked to spirituality for thousands of years, like the Egyptians, who used the blue stone, Lapis Lazuli, to decorate Tutankhamun’s funeral mask.

Yet there is no scientific evidence to suggest that these stones have beneficial properties to human beings.

“I think if you say, ‘I want my home to be free of negativity’, and then you go and put four stones in the corner of your house, it’s just a reminder,” she said.

“It can help you to take those steps in your personal life and move forward and away from that (negative feeling).”

The global pandemic turbocharged Jade’s business which now turns over between £40,000 and £120,000 a year.

“We were really shocked because we went from earning £1,000 a year to earning almost £800 in (a) day,” she said.

“We were inundated with orders.”

“We cater more towards the spiritual side of things, so we do a lot of tumble stones, raw minerals, palm stones, carvings,” she said.

“Basically, if you can make a crystal into something, we probably sell some form of it.”

Going forward, Jade is hoping to expand her inventory and start selling spell kits.

“We have to be quite careful on Etsy – we can’t perform spells for people but we can sell the supplies for people to use…” she said.

To find out more about The Crystal Witch visit: www.etsy.com/shop/TheCrystalWitchUK.