LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

“I love this chair,” I told my friend recently, when I visited her new apartment for the first time. It really was good: a mid-century style lounge chair with dark teal velvet upholstery, which I would have easily believed was from West Elm or the actual middle of the last century.

“Thanks,” she said. “I’m pretty sure I manifested it.”

This friend of mine is a Virgo, and extremely good at it. She’s organized, she’s no-nonsense, and she once scared me out of taking a vacation with her by sending me a color-coded packing list spreadsheet four months in advance. She is, in other words, not exactly the type I would expect to believe in manifesting. And yet. She said she wanted a small loungechair for her small new space, and she specifically wanted it to be green or blue, to go with the rest of the apartment — and the day she set all that in mind, she found the exact chair she wanted on the sidewalk in her neighborhood.

A few weeks before that, another friend told me she manifested her boyfriend; a third friend, who’d been job hunting for months, texted me a link to a promising listing with the comment, “gonna manifest this for myself.” They’re joking, I think. But, at least from the anecdotal evidence provided by my friend group, it seems there’s some real curiosity around the practice of manifesting.

It’s not just us, either: Currently, there are nearly 7 million Instagram posts hashtagged #manifestation, and on TikTok, the #manifestation hashtag has 15 billion views. It’s not surprising that more people might be drawn to magical thinking given the chaos of the pandemic years, and if you’re curious to learn more, we invite you to check out Nylon’s guide to manifesting. In it, you’ll learn the best days to manifest in 2022 and how to shop for the best candles to support your practice; you’ll also find specific guides on manifesting money, better sex, and your dream home. Happy manifesting!