Should we celebrate the murder of CEOs?
Plus Reading Group TONIGHT and Full Moon ritual invite for SUNDAY
Inside: A discussion of the arrest of Luigi Mangione for the assassination of United Health CEO; and an invitation to tonight’s reading group and Sunday’s Full Moon in Gemini ceremony.
If you’ve been tuning into social media lately you’ve seen an endless scroll of memes joyfully celebrating the (admittedly 🍆 🥵) guy who shot the United Health CEO in New York last week.
[In truth, I’ve been reposting a lot of those memes].
On the other hand, if you’ve been focusing on mainstream media like CNN or the NYT you'll have witnessed a spare-no-expense FBI manhunt and endless hand-wringing about how Americans could be so heartless as to celebrate anyone’s murder (especially not a millionaire family-man job-creator 😭).
Of course, the irony won’t be lost on you that the people who run the institutions responsible for unimaginable, horrific violence on a truly mind-boggling scale are wagging their fingers and moralizing now that someone has decided to take out one of their own.
You’re here, on my Substack, so I know that as MSNBC has been crying about the insurance CEO, you’ve been shouting at the television as follows:
What about the Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls who’re murdered and trafficked at 10 times the rate of white women, where’s the international man-hunt to bring their attackers to justice?
What about the maiming, murder, starvation and displacement of millions of people in Palestine?
What about the genocide in Sudan? What about the children in Congolese cobalt mines?
What about Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Mike Brown, Trayvon Martin, Elijah McClain?
What about the 45,000 people who DIED LAST YEAR because they couldn’t get health insurance?
Where’s the front page news for all of those people, who also have families and lives worth living just like rich businessmen do?
We all know that CEOs and politicians make decisions every day that casually lead to suffering and death for thousands of people and then they get rewarded with awards, stock dividends, their faces plastered on Time Magazine, and their names on the walls of hospital wings and museums.
Further, we know that those same privileged folks are condemning the entire planet to an apocalyptic future of fires and floods, drinking poisoned water and paying extra for vegetables not smothered in carcinogens, if they can find them at all.
We know that “those people” drinking toxic water and at risk of losing health insurance are not abstract strangers in a foreign land. They’re us, you and me and everyone you love.
I’m not here to tell you what you already know.
My thing is witchcraft and magic, so I want to offer that lens to the “should we all rise up and guillotine the CEOs” discourse.
The power of enchantment awakens within us when we skillfully wield our imaginations.
When “New Agers” talk about de-calcifying the pineal gland, we can understand it as a metaphor for chipping the necrotic plaque off our third-eye and seeing the world without delusion, but also with the full force of our imagination.
Our “pineal glands are [metaphorically] calficied” by the brainwashing of the dominant culture.
Magic and witchcraft require us to slow down and listen to our intuition, our deep self.
We gleefully crow about the abs on assassins or cheer at becoming the world’s greatest fighting force or whatever when our imaginations are stunted.
The overculture wins if the best we can imagine is becoming more like the murderers in power. More wealthy, more successful. Or overthrowing them in some kind of robot dog-busting blood bath.
Remember, “Who gets to kill?” is THEIR question. We have to ask, “What is OURS?”
Maybe the question we should be focusing on is not “who deserves to die?” But the much more challenging question of “how do we help each other live?”
If we ask the first question, we aren’t going to get our hands dirty. We get to stand in the bleachers and root for a gladiator: Robin Hood vs. Robo Cop.
If we ask the second question, we are each invited to contribute and co-create this moment. Helping each other live requires action.
Now is the time to radically re-center health/care of all kinds.
As a witch, YOU are empowered to use what is available to you right now to make healing happen. How you do it is up to you. What do you choose?
With love and magic,
Amanda
Upcoming Event Reminders
Tonight - Reading Group: Weds 12/11/24, 6pm
David Graeber’s “Possibilities,” Chapter 1. Text and link to join the discussion below.
Sunday - Full Moon in Gemini Ritual: Sun 12/15/24, 5pm PST
This ritual will be a fun one because we’ll be doing our end of the year letters to self. I always love this opportunity to reflect (and to read the letters from last year). All paid subscribers welcome to attend. Link to join the ritual here.
Solstice - Book of Shadows Workshop: Sat 12/21/24, 11am to 1pm PST
The first of the Hermit Year workshop series, on setting up a Book of Shadows to record your progress for the year. Solstice is the perfect time for reflecting and intention setting! All yearly and Founder’s level subscribers get this workshop free with membership. More info here (scroll down).