Those who don’t like Donald Trump and the current Republican administration are mobilizing in all sorts of ways. They’re speaking up in town halls and calling their representatives. They’re organizing protests and demonstrations. And, for the magically-inclined, they’re casting spells.
Starting at midnight on Friday, witches around the country are calling for a mass spell to be cast on Donald Trump every night of a waning crescent moon until he’s driven from office.
The spell was publicized by Michael M. Hughes, who told ELLE.com that it was tweaked from multiple spells he saw going around private witchcraft groups. He published it on Extra News Feed because he felt “it would be very welcome to a lot of people.” It quickly spread, with events being formed around the country and support on social media.
Hughes explained that he chose a binding spell because “we’re not wishing harm on anyone, we’re just trying to stop the harm they’re doing. It’s not the equivalent of punching a Nazi in the face, it’s the equivalent of tying him up and taking his bullhorn away.”
The ritual itself is pretty standard magic working, binding Trump from doing harm to others and to himself, rather than asking any forces to do harm to him. There are objects to represent the elements and to represent Trump himself. The tarot card of the Tower represents ambitions built on lies, which are struck down by a lightning flash of truth. For those who believe in witchcraft, it looks to be an effective spell.
However, even for those who don’t, the ritual can have meaning. Witches have gathered to create spells for social justice before, whether it was to hex convicted rapist Brock Turner or exorcise the Pentagon. “My feeling was people were feeling so helpless in the face of all this,” said Hughes, who sees the ritual, as much as anything, as a self-exorcism. “So many of us are overwhelmed by this guy’s face, this energy―it’s ever present and beating a lot of us down. I see this as a way of people reclaiming their own power…it’s not just that we can stop him, but we can expunge him from ourselves.”