The writer said he published details of the spell because he felt "it would be very welcome to a lot of people". Under the tenets of witchcraft, a "binding spell" does not wish harm on its target, but aims to stop them from doing harm themselves. MaryPat Azevedo, who took part in the ritual in Arizona, said she saw the ritual as "a unity prayer". She told the BBC: "A true witch would never cast a spell on anyone without their permission. This prayer is for wellbeing and peace for all beings.
Ms Azevedo said she hopes to see "physical, emotional, and spiritual changes in Donald Trump and American politics". Participating witches plan to repeat the spell on days when there is a waning crescent moon, until Mr Trump leaves the Oval Office. The next ritual is set for 26 March. Perhaps unsurprisingly, some of the president's followers are less than thrilled.
Joshua Feuerstein, an evangelical pastor who has previously condemned Starbucks for taking Christmas symbols off its seasonal red cups, issued an "urgent warning", saying "millions of witches" were trying to curse the president.
The Christian Nationalist Alliance, a conservative religious group, named 24 February a "day of prayer" to counter the magical fraternity. In a post online , it called the witches "occultists" who want to summon dark spirits against Mr Trump.
The group said it will urge people to pray every time the spell-casters reach for their candles. Most ritualistic magic is conducted in groups or covens. Witchcraft's own religion, Wicca, makes much use of it. Does magic work? Graham King thinks so. Four years ago, King sold his successful business making specialist cameras for archive libraries, got rid of the Jag and the country cottage, burned his collection of silk ties and bought the Museum Of Witchcraft, Boscastle, on the north coast of Cornwall, which he now runs as a going concern.
Fifty thousand visitors come to the museum every year to peer at the cases of charms, amulets, poppets wax dolls , wands, athames ceremonial knives , scourges ceremonial whips and talismans. Having spent 20years as a scientist, technician and businessman, King now devotes his life to witchery.
Look, I have been employed in the electronics industry, and I don't know how electricity really works, either, but it does, right? Hands up who really understands how the telly makes pictures, or the microwave makes dinners. As for the VCR. Debate as to whether magic is a psychological or supernatural power, or a bit of both, boils like a brothy cauldron in the witching community.
Vivianne Crowley no relation to Aleister, incidentally is in no doubt. Even the British Psychological Society has become interested in the ability of spiritual practices to manifest healing powers, and in clairvoyance, psychometry [the ability to divine by touching something] and telepathy, those techniques psychologists call parapsychology. According to Crowley, Wiccans simply harness and develop these parapsychological techniques.
Which is both disappointing no fabulous supernatural phenomena and intriguing anyone can do it. When I told her that some witches claimed to be able to turn lightbulbs into frogs, she just laughed and said, "Rubbish! The obvious question remains. And why isn't every witch a millionaire? Or immortal? Ah, well. For one thing, witches are human, as fallible as doctors or politicians and we all know how fallible they are.
Most witches just aren't all that competent, and the ones who are tend not to mouth off about it. Not so long ago, a very public attempt by the self-proclaimed king of the witches, Kevin Carlyon, to prevent the building of the Channel Tunnel by burning an effigy of a train raised a good few nudge-nudge, wink-winks in the pubs around Lewes, East Sussex, Carlyon's home town, and knocked something of a dent in the reputation of The Craft.
These days, most witches have learned to be more modest about their powers. Then there's the responsibility. If I waved a wand, I'd just be disempowering you. King recently cast spells for a couple who were finding it hard to conceive, and "baby Sean arrived nine months later".
On the other hand, "I only get involved with things where there's real need. Someone who just wants a new boyfriend can sort themselves out. What about black magic? Officially, Wicca operates a no-harm principle, the so-called Wiccan Rede, but King claims that "the principle is recent and not many witches stick to it".
King himself admits to having cast spells with "broken mirrors and effigies and coffins to warn people to behave well. The circumstances haven't yet arisen where I might actually curse someone, but that's not to say there are no such circumstances. Rands isn't so circumspect. In the odd years she's been a witch and a civil servant, qualified nurse, nanny , she's found herself in the hexing business twice.
I'm old-fashioned in that way. An eye for an eye. I cursed one man who was forcing his sexual attentions on women and he's now got a very nasty incurable skin disease.
That might not have been my doing, of course, it might have happened anyway. That said, most witches hesitate to use black magic because they believe in the threefold boomerang - that their actions will return to them three times over.
Since sending her victim a skin disease, Rands' own health has taken a downturn. Cursing and hexing are partly what gives witchcraft a bad name, of course. All the same, there's a reluctance among many witches to talk freely.
You can hardly blame them for having a persecution complex. Somewhere in the region of 40,, mostly women, were murdered in Britain during the great witch-hunts, for an assortment of evils ranging from spinsterhood and warts to ergot poisoning.
Ergot is a fungus that infects rye, causing convulsions and hallucinations in anyone who eats it. There is now plenty of evidence to suggest that the symptoms of the "possessions" at Salem and elsewhere - in the UK in East Anglia especially - during the witch-hunt period were the result of ergot poisoning.
Even now, in our secular age, we can't quite make up our minds about The Craft. Though the Witchcraft Act was repealed in , we're still edgy about witching.
Lest we forget, it was only 15 years ago that we had our own Salem, with the tabloids screaming blue murder over supposed acts of satanic abuse by witches and Devil worshippers. Even though a government enquiry into the whole affair found that ritual abuse "has never been substantiated by empirical evidence", the public remains willing to lump witchcraft in with Satanism, as though the two were some devilish double act.
Earlier this year, evidence of ritual activity was discovered on the hills overlooking the Meon Valley, near Southampton. Wax had been dripped on to the ground from candles and, buried in a circle, investigators uncovered 12 dead rats.
Shock and horror! Wax drips and dead rats. Unfortunately, discrimination against Wiccans and pagans is alive and well, tinged with ignorance and paranoia. Drama teacher Ralph Morse was recently suspended from his job at Shenfield high school in Essex after admitting to being youth officer for the Pagan Federation and a practising witch he was later reinstated.
The school's headteacher, John Fairhurst, issued a statement saying, "We completely and unequivocally reject their world of witchcraft and magic. In the US, things are even worse.
Despite a constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech and religion, Harry Potter our own dear HP! The rows of chain stores and discount outlets piled high with pointy Hallowe'en hats and broomsticks are okay, though.
That's just business. Thankfully, witches appear not to have returned the religious bigotry. Having made the journey from Catholic to witch, Rands insists, "there's not much distance between them. They share the same sense of ritual. I would visualise him and ask for his assistance. I don't think he's the son of God, but he's a pretty good witch. The next decade could see Wicca completely throw off its associations with the occult "occult" means hidden and go mainstream.
Which would no doubt please its founder, Gerald Gardner Claiming to have been initiated in the "Old Ways" by a crone named Dorothy Clutterbuck in the New Forest in , Gardner published Witchcraft Today soon after the repeal of the Witchcraft Act in and effectively founded what has become Wicca, the witches' religion.
A mildly eccentric ex-colonial civil servant whose influences ranged from Hinduism to folk magic to freemasonry, Gardner conceived of a celebratory religion whose focus was on the power of the natural world. Wiccan rituals generally begin with the drawing of a magic circle, offerings to the elements and the four directions, and continue with a series of rituals, incantations and chants whose power rests in the symbolic marriage of male and female. But does that amount to a religion?
Vivianne Crowley says it does: "A religion is a set of ritual acts and practices invoking or calling up the divine. Do you experience frequent financial losses? Are you losing enthusiasm for life and often think of giving up on family? Is your relationship failing even after trying too hard?
If YES is your answer to any of the above questions, I think you are likely to be the victim of black magic practices and I am here to help you. Practice this remedy on the night of Amavasya.
Take a black thread and tie seven knots at equivalent distance on it. Rotate seven dried red chillies seven times over the thread and wrap them in a black cloth. Burn the cloth outside your home or building after putting some oil on it and wear that black thread on your right ankle.
I also advise you to donate seven black clothes to different unprinted people on the night of Amavasya. I suggest you not to consume alcohol as people consuming it are more vulnerable to negative energies.
I suggest you rotate salt seven times over the victim anticlockwise and dissolve it in any water body.
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