In the days following the presidential election, Riley Wenckus was angry. Specifically, she was angry at billionaire and X owner Elon Musk for the role he played in president-elect Donald Trump’s victory.

“I was feeling really existential about what I can do,” she says. “You know, he is the richest man on earth.”

So Wenckus turned to a solution she’d used for other personal problems in the past: She hired a witch to curse him. Afterward, Wenckus took to TikTok, posting a video in which she yelled, “Elon motherfucking Musk! I just paid an Etsy witch $7.99 to make your life a living hell!” So far, the video has been viewed nearly 5 million times and its audio has been used by other practitioners to show off their magical services. “I really just love the idea of supporting a small business and sending ill will to someone I hate,” Wenckus says.

Wenckus may have been the first one to think of hiring a witch, but she wasn’t the first to express her feelings about Musk’s involvement in the US presidential election online. On TikTok, conspiracists alleged that Musk used Starlink to steal the election, and on Blusky, @keithedwards.bsky.social‬ posted, “Elon Musk gets a lot of hate, but personally, I think we can give him more.”

During the election Musk emerged as one of Trump’s most important backers. After officially endorsing the former president in July, following the first assassination attempt against Trump, Musk threw his full weight behind his campaign. Musk’s America PAC poured close to $200 million into the effort. He appeared alongside Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, held multiple townhalls, and boosted the campaign’s talking points on X, spreading propaganda falsely alleging that Democrats would allow unauthorized immigrants to vote.

Following Trump’s re-election, Musk has taken a visible role in the Trump transition, weighing in on appointments and sitting in on calls with world leaders. Last week, Trump announced that Musk would co-lead a new (and currently nonexistent) government agency, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

“I think that people are turning more and more to their spiritual practice to cope with some of the powerlessness that we all feel in the wake of the last election,” says a TikTok creator who asked to go by her handle, EtsyWitch222, and who made her own video using Wenckus’ audio.

Seeking out witches, psychics, mediums, or other purveyors of magic or mysticism during times of change or uncertainty has been happening for centuries. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Yelp noted a 74 percent increase in Americans searching for psychics, and a 63 percent uptick in searches for astrologers. Following Trump’s first election in 2016, US witches did a mass spell to try to bind him. Witches on TikTok and Instagram similarly hexed Trump and his supporters in the wake of the January 6, 2021 insurrection. After Brexit, some turned to astrology for indications of what might come next.

Wenckus’ audio indicates that, once again, people are turning to magic for help. EtsyWitch222, who does, in fact, sell services on Etsy, has been fielding new requests. She is one of thousands of people in what venture capitalists call the “mystical services market,” which includes other popular topics like astrology. That market, in 2019, was estimated to be worth more than $2 billion.

In her video, EtsyWitch222, implied that she was the one who performed the spell for Wenckus. She wasn’t—Wenckus told WIRED the practitioner she worked with asked to remain anonymous—but her claim caught people’s attention, and inspired some to follow Wenckus’ lead. “I just thought it was hilarious and then it blew up,” EtsyWitch222 says. “I never thought anyone was going to see it, I thought my friends would see it.”

More than 170,000 people watched the video and 26 went to EtsyWitch222’s store and paid $7.99 for a package to curse Musk. She says she received so much interest in the topic that last weekend she hosted a TikTok Live attended by more than 240 people, posting a video ahead of time so that attendees could gather the necessary ingredients (they include a white candle, cayenne pepper, lavender, salt, and bayleaves).

EtsyWitch222 says she doesn’t necessarily believe in hexing or cursing, but instead encouraged participants to focus on manifesting what they wanted to see in the world. She says she used the money to buy some ingredients for the TikTok Live but will be donating the rest to the American Civil Liberties Union.

During the TikTok Live, EtsyWitch222 says, people expanded the focus beyond Musk himself, to other members of the Trump circle including Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who Trump has tapped to be the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who led a suit to end the Biden administration’s asylum policies for migrants from Cuba, Venezuela, Haiti, and Nicaragua. (A US District Court judge dismissed the suit in March.)

EtsyWitch222 says she’s now thinking of hosting these sessions on a more regular basis.

As for Wenckus, she says her hex was specifically geared toward making sure Musk endured some kind of mental torture. “I want him to never know peace,” she says. Though she admits that she may never know if the hex worked, she’s OK with that. “I am a person grounded in reality who believes in science,” says Wenckus. “But I still think there’s something to be said for having millions upon millions of people wishing for your downfall.”