The Commercialization of Digital Mysticism: Cultural Anthropology of Online Shamanism and the Trade of Spiritual Services

Abstract

Ritual and occult practice has migrated onto commercial livestreaming platforms, and the figure that has emerged from this shift is the algorithmically optimized shaman. This study examines how spiritual practitioners on TikTok Live reconfigure sacred ritual into monetizable spectacle. We also examine how platform infrastructure, including gift economies, engagement metrics, and recommendation logic, reshapes the form and meaning of mystical performance. We used digital ethnography (netnography): data came from online participant observation of TikTok Live occult sessions and from in-depth interviews with practitioners and audience members. We analyzed the data using Miles and Huberman’s interactive model and interpreted them through Baudrillard’s theories of commodification and simulacra. The findings show that ritual efficacy becomes secondary to performative legibility. Practitioners restructure liturgical sequence around gift-triggered escalation, compress symbolic vocabulary for algorithmic readability, and stratify spiritual labor into tiered, paid consultation packages. Audiences treat the livestream less as a site of transcendence than as a participatory drama, where gifting functions as both payment and dramaturgical cue. We argue that what emerges is a simulacral sacred rather than secularization in the classical sense: a self-referential sign system that retains ritual aesthetics while detaching from cosmological referents. The study extends Baudrillard’s framework beyond mass media into algorithmically mediated, interactive religious economies, contributing a platform-sensitive model of religious commodification with implications for the anthropology of digital religion and platform studies.