Below you’ll find a witch rant on politics and feelings. Enjoy the typos.
Yesterday I logged on to social media and before I even knew what I was looking at I watched a man get assassinated.
Charlie Kirk, a rightwing pundit. He was speaking at university rally and got shot in the neck, blood gushing everywhere.
I felt frozen. Shaken. Troubled how ordinary it’s become to see people murdered next to cat memes, ads for lipstick, and carrousel posts about climate catastrophe.
In the comments: people applauding, people lamenting his orphaned children, people reminding us that Kirk was famous for saying “a few random gun deaths a year are worth it to preserve the 2nd amendment.”
As I scrolled, my body remembered a moment during the first days of quarantine when we’d all just learned that we’d have to stay inside for months (turned out to be years).
I was leaning against the doorframe of my living room, dizzy, alone, panting, thinking…
“I want off this ride. I want off this ride.”
Now my thoughts careen to Palestine. To Sudan. To the ICE raids South Central Los Angeles. To Trans kids told to commit suicide.
I think about how people have already been living through this relentless uncertainty and violence, day after day, month after month, year after year.
I’m thinking about the trauma of all the billions of people on this planet right now who are living with hunger.
I’m thinking about how the people with power DGAF about them. Homeless people can die in prison for all they care. Slavery wasn’t that bad, Black people should just get over it. Everyone should just get over it.
Unless “it” happens to be something that harms them personally.
Trauma isn’t just an idea, a graphic on a meme. It lives in the body, scratching at the soft tissues, ricocheting around the heart, blasting holes in everyone it touches.
In my own — very privileged — body, the chaos of this moment in history is having serious consequences. Intense pain, like electric shocks, in my arms and legs. Sometimes when I’m trying to sleep I scream into my pillow from the pain. My doctors can’t find the cause. They think it’s stress.
We are all so. fucking. stressed.
I find it infuriating when wellness influencers tell people that it’s possible to be stress free if they just do things like meditate and drink lemon balm tea.
To be stress free, to be calm in a world like ours, means cutting yourself off from your humanity, and from the web of life itself.
We are part of the web of life. We are not separate. The web of life is stressed. And so if you are part of the web of life, then you are also stressed.
When a political figure is assassinated, we are part of that reality, whether or not we liked that person.
Assassination is the logical consequence of the world the Overculture has created. It isn’t surprising.
It’s going to get even less surprising.
Looking around, we see the pathways to stability closing.
We can feel something coming, the excitement of the molecules, the pressure building, the explosions on their way.
I keep scrolling. On the next slide, from the feminist magazine Jezebel (posted two days before Kirk was assassinated):
I didn’t read the article. I don’t want to be drawn into this.
I have a whole jumble of complex thought-feelings about this, in no particular order:
Peace isn’t more important than justice. Often when people say peace, they mean “business as usual” (wherein billions of ordinary people around the world suffer cruelties beyond imagining). The level of injustice in the world is so rampant, and so lopsided in favor of Empire, violence is inevitable at this point. Empire creates the conditions for violent resistance. No peace without justice.
I would love nonviolence to be the way forward. However, Empire is willing to inflict unlimited depravity on the world. There is no child they won’t kill. No woman they won’t sell. No river they won’t poison. Not hypothetically. Now. All over the world. Already. For hundreds of years. They’re not just going to stop because we hold up a sign or call our representatives. WE HAVE NO REPRESENTATIVES. The people “in charge” answer the call of capital, not you and me. We need to claim our power to care for each other.
Non-violence is an important tactic, but it’s not the only tactic. We need all tactics on the table at this point because empire isn’t going to stop unless we make it stop.
Many pundits are saying “violence is never the answer” but THERE IS ALREADY THE MOST DEPRAVED AND HEINOUS violence imaginable. Not just to others. To you and to me as well. Empire is literally poisoning us and makes us pay for drinkable water. We have to acknowledge the reality of our situation.
At the same time, I don’t want to live in a world like this, where people are constantly getting assassinated, including CHILDREN. I don’t want to live in a violent world. I want to contribute to the thriving and joy of the world. I hate all this slaughter. I want it to end.
It annoys me that witches are constantly brought in to curse things. When I was doing more public witch work every time I got interviewed for a major news publication they asked me about curses, as if that was the main thing witches do. It made me want to throw my computer at the wall. Cursing isn’t the most interesting thing about witchcraft, people!
The true power of witchcraft is that it liberates our imagination. And our imagination is our secret weapon, the one Empire fears most. Witchcraft feeds and nourishes our imagination. (Hopefully with the penises we steal from our enemies, they are very nutritious).
Although I personally am no more interested in cursing than I am interested in bouncing on a trampoline holding a jug full of liquid dynamite, I do believe cursing is fair if your enemies have nuclear weapons and you’re renting an apartment without a dishwasher.
Also, who am I to criticize when 1/4 of the people who follow me know me for participating in a spell to bind Trump. Binding is different from cursing, btw. Trump is already cursed, and he’s also a sign of the cursedness of our entire nation. Founded on genocide = cursed from birth. Binding is to stop people from causing harm, just so you know.
In case you were wondering, I’m not binding now because: A) I’m too busy getting a doctorate in how to heal settler colonial relations with the land. So someone else has to carry the binding flag for now. Could that someone be you? B) Publicly binding Trump feels very dangerous right now for obvious reasons. C) I don’t want to think about that douchebag anymore. I want to focus on empowering, rejuvenating and inspiring my community. I want to focus on building things for us to enjoy. I am turning my focus away from Empire and towards US. Well, I’m trying anyway.
Anyway, I am going to resist tying my thoughts about all of this up into a neat little bow for now.
I just wanted to touch base with you and say, if you’re feeling shit and nervous, you’re not alone. We are in this together. We will get through whatever comes together. Please treat yourselves gently.
While rituals (and lemon balm) won’t solve all our problems, they WILL give us a place to gather, and help us stay connected to our hearts and imagination as the storm rages around us.
I love you all. Thank you for being here. Tell me what’s on your mind. I want to hear from you, my wise and beautiful community.
P.S. SOME IMPORTANT THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW…
LIVE CHAT today is cancelled. Sorry peeps. It’s the last day of the class I’m teaching at UCLA and I’m behind on grading and I need an extra hour to go get some donuts to bribe my students. I’ll make it up to you ASAP.
SIGN UP FOR THE WINTER SOLSTICE RETREAT now because you only have three weeks left before the price goes up by $250. Winter Solstice is simultaneously about rest and finding the fire of resistance within. Think Crone magic. You need this! We want you to join us!
READING GROUP, 9/17/25 6PM PT, THEORY OF WATER by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. We’ll be reading 4 short chapters this genre-bending work of indigenous storytelling and apply it to our understanding of the Suit of Cups in tarot. Links to the texts on the events page. Hope to see you there!
I feel as if you looked inside my heart and wrote what has been pumping through my blood, my entire body. By articulating what so many of us are feeling, I feel heard and that feels better, which creates resilience. I did bind the "souvenir" invitation to the inauguration that my senator sent me (with photos of DT+JV) after I requested with no intention of attending to keep a Republican from attending and put it in my freezer. I no longer wish to spend my energy on them and am focusing on regulation of my nervous system and supporting my community 💚 Thank you, Thank you, Thank you for your light ✨
I love you, Amanda! Thank you for all of this and helping to liberate my imagination.