Kirpal, Witchy Woman

Photo by Elliott Shaffner

BAD LUCK CAN OFTEN BE TRACEDto a single incident, notes Kirpal (just one name), who has spent 20 years in Hollywood as a practitioner of “folkloric magic.” She recalls a prominent actor whose career tanked after an “evil eye” altercation with a taxi driver in Istanbul. She worked her sorcery, broke the spell, she says, and the actor found a new career in television. She also does exorcisms: After an antebellum barn was transported to a family’s property, the

children became agitated. Kirpal performed a cleansing ritual after realizing that a child had been murdered there.

The patriarch expressed disbelief, but the wife did research and discovered that Kirpal was right. But most often her services are rendered to the lovesick.

Psychic intuitions came to her naturally, not surprising given that her grandmothers were a Celtic pagan healer from Canada and a Mexican shaman from Echo Park. The two trained her how to read tea leaves, tarot, crystal balls, make candles, apply oils and communicate with spirits as well as household pets by the time she was 13. “I was a curious child,” she says.

She moved back here when she was in her 20s, and got a job in studio PR. Her intuitive abilities became hobbies shared with friends. She told a struggling actor to write himself the check of his dreams, say a prayer and light a candle. He did and got a star-making role. They both quit their day jobs. She opened a store, Objets d’Art and Spirit, from which she also offers counsel. Her client list includes people of all backgrounds and extends from Industry elites to corporate boardrooms to customers in South L.A. “But magic only works,” she says, “if you are in the right accord and give thanks to the Goddess or spirit.”