Will Magic Bring Us Justice? The Epstein Files and Etsy Witches
"I'm sorry Etsy Witches, I wasn't familiar with your game."
In September 2025, feminist website Jezebel published a satirical essay titled “We Paid Some Etsy Witches to Curse Charlie Kirk,” which quickly became VERY controversial. It has since been removed from the website, but it’s internet, so it will probably live forever.
The author used the real marketplace of Etsy spell‑casters as a frame to explore misogyny, right‑wing politics, and the strange intimacy of digital culture, but its timing—just days before Kirk’s assassination—reshaped how it was read and remembered. What began as a tongue‑in‑cheek experiment in buying “curses” became, in hindsight, a job completed with demonstrable results. That is, of course, if you believe in magic.
At the time I was thinking I wouldn’t be surprised if they held witch trials over this. Now I am actually surprised they hadn’t, but I don’t want them to get any ideas.
The writer contacted several self‑identified witches on Etsy and paid them to cast hexes on conservative commentator Charlie Kirk: spells to “make everyone hate him,” hexes designed to cause petty dysfunction in his life. The author emphasised that she did not wish physical harm on Kirk, framing her desires instead as a barrage of minor humiliations: constant pimples, malfunctioning podcast equipment, an ill‑fitting blazer, even a thumb too big to tweet (a good one!).
Etsy, originally a marketplace for handmade crafts, has long hosted sellers offering spells, hexes, and spiritual services. It’s impressive how easily such services can be purchased: a credit card, a search term, and a message are all it takes to commission a “powerful hex spell” that allegedly manifests within two to three weeks.
Everything changed when Kirk was assassinated two days after the essay went live. What had been clearly labeled as satire suddenly looked, to many readers, like a dark omen or even a moral provocation. Commentators across the political spectrum seized on the timing, arguing that the piece illustrated how dehumanising language and fantasised harm contribute to a culture in which political violence feels thinkable.
I’d argue that this opinion by Kirk contributes to it more, but who am I to judge. “I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational.”
Conservative outlets framed the essay as proof of left‑wing cruelty, while others focused on the unsettling coincidence that one witch had promised effects within a two‑to‑three‑week window that overlapped with Kirk’s killing. Even those who understood the article as symbolic performance questioned whether fantasising publicly about hexing a real, named person—especially a polarising figure—crossed an ethical line once that person was actually dead.
I did a little investigating and the Etsy shop involved in cursing Kirk is now closed. I will not link to it because I am only 90% sure it’s the right one.
Following news of the assassination, the site appended an editor’s note stressing that it “condemns the shooting of Charlie Kirk in the strongest possible terms” and “does not endorse, encourage, or excuse political violence of any kind.” Soon afterward, the original text was removed (but lived forever). The note carefully insisted that their decision to pull the piece was not a repudiation of its content but an act of caution in a volatile environment, prioritising compassion for Kirk’s family.
The author of the article asked if the witch’d noticed more political figures being targeted these days, she said yes: “Clients often turn to spells when they feel unheard or powerless in the usual systems. Our magic becomes both a personal release and a way of reclaiming control,” she wrote. “Whether the target is a boss, an ex, or a public figure, the underlying current is the same… People want to shift the energy in their lives and the world around them.”
EmykoEmyko wrote on Reddit “The fact that Trump is still trucking along is all the evidence I need against the effectiveness of witchcraft.” Ok-Eggplant987 replied: “To be fair he has a lot of fans so it would be expected he has protection spells as well.”
Which brings us to today.
I was deeply moved by Marisa’s essay “what godforsaken hellscape is this?”
And so how, exactly, are we supposed to sit with all that? When we’re just going about our day? When we’re just living, working, writing, mothering, being, emptying the dishwasher, making breakfast, scrolling on our phones, waiting for a train, giving a presentation, drifting along with all the rest of life’s worries, but now these regular knots of thought keep getting interrupted by awful men. Awful, rich and powerful men who are defending and protecting and excusing other awful, rich and powerful men, men who are paedophiles.
What the fuck do we do? What the fuck can we do? Is there anything we can do other than go to the witches?
Witches are the original feminists. Women have turned to witchcraft when other avenues of power were denied to them. In courts, churches, and places that silenced their voices, magic became a language for fear, resistance, and survival.
Witchcraft really is a site of gendered power struggle. Practices labeled “witchcraft”—midwifery, herbal abortion care, and alternative healing—often allowed women to operate beyond state and capitalist control, which made them threatening to patriarchal authorities. Witchcraft accusations targeted those considered socially marginal: poor women, widows, healers, and others who challenged or fell outside patriarchal norms. Courts and clergy framed these women as secretly powerful and dangerously transgressive, projecting fantasies of “malicious female power” onto those who were actually politically and legally powerless.
It’s all rage and powerlessness channeled into force. When institutions are unwilling to confront the full extent of elite abuse, no wonder people reach for other languages of justice: myth, ritual, and magic.
The Epstein files sit at the intersection of sexual violence (rape, paedophilia, and God know what else), money, intelligence whispers, and global politics. Names of the abusers are redacted, no trials are being held, and the sense grows that there is one legal system for the wealthy and another for everyone else.
I am not saying we should hex them with some horrendous dark magic (neither did the author of the original article). I am not Mother Nature to put death upon anyone, even thought in this case I wish I was. Imagine not plagues or lightning bolts, but spells for comically shrivel egos: tiny penises that wither away in humiliation, perhaps, turn green too; skin turned a garish orange, marking the guilty like neon billboards so the public can spot them from across a Davos cocktail party, bank account emptied, a hot pillow all night every night, nose that never stops running, and lots of other shit. AND PRISON TIME.
Jokes aside, they did unspeakable evil and MUST BURN IN HELL.
I am just so sick of it all. I sing songs to my daughter and read the news and want to scream and cry. I am ANGRY. I am aware that the world has never been not on fire, it’s just now we are the ones who are in that fire, but it still feels too much.
The proper response to the crimes is not assassination or street justice, of course, but meticulous investigation, fair trials (a girl can dream), and lengthy prison terms for those found guilty (a girl can DREAM) so they can rot in there, penisless.