Despite the brouhaha on social media about the mass casting of a binding spell on President Donald J. Trump, the event scheduled for Friday night at midnight wasn’t exactly a smashing success.

The Daily Mail is reporting that only a “handful” of people gathered outside Trump Tower in New York City to watch a group of self-proclaimed witches enact a ritual intended to bind the president to prevent him from hurting himself or others.

The ritual, which was widely circulated online and involved the use of a picture of the president, candles, a pin, and a particular tarot card, is the first of what will be a series of similar rituals to take place “under a crescent moon” from now until Trump is driven from office. Upcoming dates for a repeat of the ritual are March 26, April 24 and May 23.

However, several former practitioners say the ritual used was wrong and violated Wiccan rules.

“I belong to an online pagan community and am a registered republican,” said a man names James Riddle who commented on a FoxNation.com article about the spell-casting.

“Having read the spell they were casting it is headed for disaster because in the fourth line of the one posted was – and I quote – ‘Demons of the infernal realms.’ This is strictly against everything I was taught and have been teaching. First of all Wiccans do not believe in the devil or demons, so this tells me that they are not true to the faith and have opened upon themselves a severe penalty because having studied religion in all forms when you mess or request the aid of darkness(evil) it will require some form of payment in return for being summoned.”

He added: “I am now a Christian but I still have friends that are pagan and I can guarantee from talking to most of them they stayed as far away from this as possible and are instead praying for healing of the nation and guidance for Mr. Trump.”

Faith M. Martin offered a similar comment. “They also are casting a binding without knowledge of the harm it may do, and without the permission or acknowledgement of the individual. They are already in violation of the Rede, and the Law of Three is in play now. Perhaps they will be lucky, and the backlash of this failed spell will not fry their psyches.”

Martin is referring to the Wiccan Rede which states that “And it harm none, do what ye will.”

The Law of Three is another Wiccan belief which states that whatever “energy” a person puts out into the world, be it positive or negative, will be returned to that person three times. In other words, they believe if anyone was casting a spell on Trump with malice in their hearts, this “energy” would be returned to them three-fold.

Even though the event drew much fanfare from the mainstream media and brought many a hidden Wiccan out of the closet, it was far from a unified effort. This is mostly due to the fact that witchcraft in general is individualistic to the point of being anarchic. There is no centralized authority or even any agreed-upon definition of what a “witch” is. In essence, a witch is anyone who ways they are a witch and their beliefs and practices amount to whatever an individual witch actually does or believes.

However, according to Witchcraft Goes Mainstream by Brooks Alexander, author and founder of the Spiritual Counterfeit Project, there are four basic tenets that can be ascribed to the neo-pagan belief system of modern witchcraft.

First is a belief that divinity is immanent in all of nature (called animism/polytheism/pantheism); second, it is female-centered and goddess oriented; third, it does not believe in the concept of sin and the uniqueness of Christ; and fourth it believes in spiritual reciprocity or “what goes around comes around.”

This lack of connectedness could explain the lack of enthusiasm within their own ranks for the scheduled Trump rituals.

Meghan Kalgren, who works at Artemisia Botanicals in Salem, Massachusettes where ritual tools, books, herbs, and candles are sold, told the Boston Globe “at least one person” came to the shop on Friday to purchase an orange candle which is used in the spell.

“She said it was to bind Donald Trump and his antics, or something,” Kalgren said.

But some spell-casters were jubilant the next day, such as Sara Batchelder who commented on FoxNation.com that the night was “super fun, but even more fun watching the ‘Christians’ freak out about it. Are we living in the 21st century?”

Trey Mitchell, another commenter on the site, “freaked out” with the typical Christian response. “There are far more people out there praying for Trump than this hand full of hateful people praying against him. No worries, no fear, but grateful to know that God’s blessings are upon President Trump and our nation.”

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