A group of self-proclaimed witches will gather in Bushwick on Saturday to perform what they described as a “punitive” hex on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, weeks after 50 United States senators voted to confirm him to the nation’s highest court despite multiple women accusing the judge of sexual assault.
“We want to get retributive justice,” said Dakota Bracciale, who is spearheading the supernatural soirée.
Bracciale, a co-owner of Flushing Avenue occult bookstore Catland, and their colleagues will cast the curse in an attempt to seek justice for Kavanaugh’s alleged victims, and give the judge a dose of the pain and suffering the women claim his actions caused them.
“Like the idea of an eye for an eye,” they said.
The coven will conduct two rituals at the witchcraft ceremony. The first will be cursing the beer-drinking judge with what Bracciale described as a traditional hex, to get revenge for his alleged victims, and the second will be a service that transforms participants’ outrage over the accusations against Kavanaugh into strength, which they called the “Rites of the Scorned One.”
“It’s harnessing righteous rage and using it as a tool of resilience and survival,” Bracciale said.
And the magic won’t solely be directed toward the Supreme Court’s newest lifetime appointee — sexual-assault survivors will quietly say, or scream, the names of their own assailants during the ritual, for which participants are encouraged to conjure up any ill-will they’ve received, the host said.
“They can also compound it to add anyone that’s assaulted or hurt them,” they said.
Candles, oils, effigies, dirt from graveyards, and nails from coffins will be used in the ceremony, according to Bracciale, who said marginalized individuals have used witchcraft to fight their oppressors throughout history.
“It really taps into the history of witchcraft, which has been a tool of resistance and resilience used by people on the fringes of society, who are oppressed and marginalized,” they said. “Essentially, it’s acts of social and political resistance magically coming together.”
And although the goal of a hex is to inflict emotional, and sometimes physical, harm, casting one also offers the added benefit of lifting the spirits of those who come together to perform it, according to the local witch.
“We end on an affirming note, where everyone comes together and supports each other,” Bracciale said. “It’s important to come together to uplift each other, and make space for righteous rage.”
Catland’s co-owners organized the upcoming ceremony at the suggestion of a customer following the group’s performance of three similar hexes on President Trump last summer that Bracciale claimed effectively plagued their target.
“We feel they were really successful,” they said. “A lot of people misconstrue, we were not doing the hex because we want Trump to die. We wanted him to be exposed for what he is, and that has definitely happened, with the alleged collusion with Russia, and information about his taxes.”
