Pagans are participating in a monthly sorcery session to cast a 'binding' spell on Donald Trump, according to Fox News.
Presenter Tucker Carlsson interviewed the 'Oracle of Los Angeles', Amanda Yates Garcia, who said they had no intention of harming Trump, but wanted to prevent him hurting others.
'Binding spells are symbolic actions used to harness the powers of the imagination and achieve an intangible result,' she said.
'I desire that Trump stop harming people that I care about and instituting policies that also harm me.'
'You seem like a nice person,' Carlsson told her at the end of the interview, though he declined her offer of a magic lesson because it 'scares me'.
It scares a lot of Christians, for sure, and many would say the 'nice person' image of practitioners is a front for something a lot darker. So how worried should Trump be if pagans are working spiritually against him? In fact, how worried should anyone be?
If Christians are worried about kind of thing, it's important to step back, pause and reflect. Most people who describe themselves as pagans, witches or followers of Wicca aren't particularly hostile to Christianity, though they don't really like it. Even the ones who describe themselves as Satanists don't necessarily see Satan as the embodiment of evil, to whom they've sold their souls – though there are some bad, deluded people out there. It's generally best to think of these things as religious movements comprising spiritual seekers rather than badging them as the 'enemy'.
And do their prayers 'work'? There's no biblical warrant for thinking so. One of the problems with the Christian reaction to paganism (a shorthand term for various movements) is that we sometimes assume it's just a mirror image of our own faith. So we pray to God and our prayers are answered, and they pray to Satan and their prayers are answered. But there's no reason to believe Satan hears prayers at all, let alone answers them. He's a very mysterious figure, but whatever he is, he's not a darker version of God – a Darth Vader to his Obi-Wan Kenobi.
And that's part of the problem – Christians' understanding of the occult and of the power of evil has been shaped by the films and books we've absorbed all our lives. We believe in a Hollywood devil. The real one is much more subtle.
Should Trump be worried about pagan binding spells? No, and neither should the rest of us. But we should all worry about the righteous judgment of God, who really does hear prayer, and who rewards us all according to what we deserve.
