Once upon a time,
Thousands of Occultists casting Halloween Spell against Donald Trump
Thousands of occultists are casting a ritualistic spell to prevent the Trump administration from ‘harming the country.’
A week before Halloween, anti-Trump activists gathered to cast the spell which they hope will bind Trump and his cronies from furthering their agenda.
Participants in the ritual, which has been performed regularly since Trump’s inauguration, say they are encouraged by the Democrats’ recent launch of an impeachment inquiry, which they see as a sign that their magical efforts are working.
“I’m willing to go on record and say it’s working,” said Michael Hughes, one of the organizers of the ritual.
Washingtonexaminer.com reports: The spell is crafted “to bind Donald Trump and all those who abet him,” and is supposed to be performed during every waning crescent moon until Trump is removed from office.
The ritual calls for the use of an unflattering photo of Trump, a tarot card, a stub of an orange candle, a pin, and a feather. Participants then call on the “heavenly hosts, demons of the infernal realms, and spirits of the ancestors” to bind Trump “so that his malignant works may fail utterly.”
Against Hughes’ expectations, the ritual took off, and is still being performed almost three years later, with this month’s event likely to draw thousands of participants at small group gatherings and covens, or meetings of witches, around the world.
Hughes told the Washington Examiner the spell went “immediately viral and just completely exploded” after he posted it on Medium, prompting attention from major news outlets. He said he thought any response to Trump’s election “had to have an equal sense of surreality or strangeness to break through the media and social media.”
“Knowing thousands of people are gathering together at the same time from all over the world to do this ritual and to put our beliefs and our desires into sharp focus, and to do that ritualistically, I think that has a really powerful effect,” said Hughes.
Karen Tibbits-Williams, a New Zealand-based witch and paranormal investigator, said the point of the ritual is to prevent Trump and his supporters from causing harm, but the ritual does not specify how that result should be achieved.
“It could happen by creating unity and strength amongst his opponents, it could be brought about by his impeachment and removal from office,” she wrote in an email to the Washington Examiner.
But while the means by which Trump is bound is not clearly defined, Tibbits-Williams is also confident the ritual is working.
“I’ve seen for myself, many times over, the power and effectiveness of magick. My confidence in the power and efficacy of our Binding — and the effect which it is having — is absolute. I don’t ‘believe’ that it works … I know it does,” she said.
Hughes’ spell comes at a time in which witchcraft is on the rise in the United States. From 1990 to 2008, the number of individuals practicing Wicca, a form of witchcraft, increased from about 8,000 to about 340,000. In 2014, the number of Wiccans in the United States may have been as high as 1.5 million, based on a Pew survey.
Hughes said that a desire for a more direct spirituality, is driving the popularity of paganism and witchcraft.
“They’re embracing spiritual paths, spiritual ideas that allow them to be empowered in their spirituality without that middleman,” such as a priest or rabbi, said Hughes.
And Hughes’ ritual is not the only effort to cast a spell on the Trump administration. Last year, a group of witches gathered to perform a hex to cause suffering on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, using effigies of Trump, Kavanaugh, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.