Spell Casting as Protest
Protesting for Introverts (and Extroverts)
A spell is essentially an intention spoken out loud. Spells are most effective when they are linked to our bodies and our unconscious belief systems because these are spells we intentionally and unintentionally take action to pull into reality. This is why healing our unconscious programming is important for intentional spell casting. And also, you can’t wait until you’re totally healed to cast spells because you’re already doing it.
Right now, most places in the world, there is some sort of interaction between fascist violence and community care and safety. This is true from Congo to Palestine to Venezuela to Ukraine to Tibet to the government takeover of US cities and kidnappings and murder of citizens. Many of us have seen this interaction in our personal lives as well, realizing that we may have idealized relationships that were not actually safe. In each of these spaces we see oppressive and homogenizing forces encountering community values of safety, care, and inclusion.
Protest energy is essentially spell energy, and whether you protest from home or on the streets, establishing spaces of safety and care is an act that matters.
This is one image that to me captures the power of individual intent in protest:
(Polka Dotted Dress lady in New York flipping off ICE tanks. If you know who I should be crediting here for the photo and the protest spell, let me know, but it was not immediately obvious to me in my search, so my apologies if it’s you.)
“Fuck ICE” or “abolish ICE” are examples of protest spells often cast in group protests in the US right now.
Some do it cute:
(Photo I took at a 2025 protest.)
For more introverted protesters, one way to put this spell into being is to draw into your mind’s eye the thing or person you want banished from your space and then imagine drawing a white X over that image and casting it out of your mind. This acts as a protest banishment.
This is how one local store captured that protest spell as a visual:
(Shout out to Noisette Pastry Kitchen, which, as Jack Kerouac would say offers baked goods that are “delicious and, of course, nutritious.”)
Each of these examples show how we can use our individual correspondences and what resonates with us personally to draw out a protest spell. Some of us may protest in groups, on streets, at home, or in cookies. All of this matters.
For the most effective protest-spell casting, we can craft intentional spells, and I’ll go into examples of that below.
Superstition Versus Intention
One of the most important steps in making our protest intentional is to understand the difference between superstition and intention.
Superstition is essentially fear about technicalities. This can keep us stuck and self-scrutinizing. When we are vigilant that we might do something wrong, we are not taking action and this means that we are not protesting or creating the lives we want. This is the most basic way we let oppression win.
We can honor the power of the spell casting that we are already doing, understand that the spells we cast have impact, and also release superstitious fear.
Intention is a unification of your mind, body, and spirit toward a purpose. This means that your conscious self sets a direction for all of your parts to follow. If your body or spirit is not aligned with this direction, you will experience dissonance, and this gives you the opportunity to do personal alignment work, which is honestly both liberating and devastating to the institutions that keep us oppressed.
Banishing and Welcoming
Whether you are protest spell casting for yourself, another person, or for your local community, the most effective protest spells include what you are welcoming, even if you are primarily casting a protection spell.
So, for example, “fuck ICE” is essentially a version of a banishment spell. It is not the most clear language because we use the word “fuck” to mean so many things in English, and so “abolish ICE” is clearer banishment language, but I don’t think Spirit is confused by what we mean when we say “fuck ICE.” Getting too caught up in particulars like that can be an example of superstition fear taking over.
In witchcraft we typically say, “I cast this circle to protect us from all positive and negative energies and forces that may come to do us harm.” That is too long for a protest sign, maybe, but the sentiment is similar to banishment. Essentially, “should you bring harm to this space, that harm will be visited on you instead” or “this space is sacred and surrounded by safety” or “I’m rubber and you’re glue.”
Most protest focuses on banishment AND the most effective protests also remember to include what we want to see in place of the oppression we are banishing. For example, most protests remind us of neighborhood solidarity, music, dance, art, safety and support, diversity, belonging.
So, when you are creating your protest signs or casting your spells at home, what do you want to bring in? That is just as important, if not more important, as what you want to banish and protect against.
Protest-Spell Crafting
These are the steps I recommend for crafting a protest spell. You can talk these through with a friend, write them in a journal, or think them through in voice memos to yourself (whatever works for you):
What do you want to banish from your life or environment? What are you protesting? (e.g. “I want to banish violence” or “I want to banish government intrusion on my community.”)
What are ways that you might benefit from status quo? (e.g. I don’t like change, I want people to follow the rules as I see them, I don’t like seeing people upset, I don’t want to disappoint people, etc.). The more honest you are about this one, the more effective your spell will be.
If you imagine the banishment completely successful, and in its place, you find the ideal outcome for you, what would that be? (e.g. safety for everyone in my community, thriving business, supportive friendships, equitable and supportive leadership, etc.)
Be honest with yourself about whether you are willing to release the ways you benefit from status quo in order to welcome the ideal outcome for you. This is uncomfortable, but ultimately so is status quo. Be brave!
Now, write your spell. “No” is a powerful spell if it is paired with what you do want. So if your spell is a protest sign, it may look like “No violence” or “violence” on one side and then, “Safety for All” on the other side. If you’re good at creating fun slogans, you can get creative with this, but clarity is important.
If your spell is for you at home, I suggest writing it like this (just as an example you can adjust to your answers above), “I, [name], release violence from my life. I release attachment to status quo and resistance to change. I welcome safety for all in my community.” Then, light a candle to honor your intention or integrate this into your other altar practices. I like to burn spells like this (safely) because fire witchcraft is important to my practice.
Because the human brain does not hear the negative, and positive statements are more effective, it also works, especially for protest signs, to only include the statement of the ideal result you want. For example, it is more effective to tell someone “Please walk” than to say “Don’t run” because the human brain just hears “run.” Take this into consideration in your spells, but in my experience clear banishment in the form of a simple “no” can be helpful and effective.
Sabotage Spells
A sabotage spell happens when we speak into being the future we do not want to see. For example, many people say, “Voting doesn’t matter” or “It’s all fucked anyway” or “Things will never change.” Because the people who say these things usually want the opposite of what they’re speaking into being, these are sabotage spells.
Sabotage spells are something we all do, so there’s no need to fall into superstitious fear if this happens to you, feel bad if you catch yourself doing this, or suffer from the self-righteous expectation that you may be immune from this. If you accidentally speak into being a sabotage spell , all you need to do is bring that vision of the future or statement to your mind and then imagine a putting a white X over it. This neutralizes it so that you can move toward being more intentional with the spells you cast.
As Within So Without
One of the Hermetic principles that we follow in witchcraft and astrology is “as above, so below” and “as within, so without.” Spells are meant to transform us, align us, and magnetize what we do want to bring into being.
While spells have power in our outer environment that power primarily comes from the transformative power they have inside of us.
So, for example, a spell to try to control someone else’s karma or fate will bounce back to you in an unpleasant way that draws your attention to the issues you have around control. (For example, I did an ill-advised spell to try to welcome into being the Harris presidency and spent six months with rashes on my arms, which taught me a lot about control, ideals, and my relationship with my body.) Learn from me and don’t fuck with other people’s fate or karma.
Another example of this is that in an earlier post, I offered a hex on white supremacy. I highly recommend this to anyone, and also the spell is primarily meant to cleanse us of the infection of white supremacy within, so that we also heal our external environments. For me, my experience of this spell was like an exorcism of perfectionism from my body. Intense and incredibly liberating. And (did I say this already?) intense.
I say this because as you think about what you want to bring into being, consider your internal world and your body. As you cast a protest spell, you will receive the conditions to create that result within yourself, and sometimes that is hard.
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