A self-described witch at the center of a bizarre talking point following Charlie Kirk’s assassination says she wants to talk privately with his widow. Calling herself “Priestess Lilin,” the occult practitioner told Daily Mail that the hex she placed on the conservative firebrand before he was gunned down was “spiritual in nature,” not meant to cause harm, and that she “did not celebrate the loss of life.” She added that she “regret[s] any distress” and would welcome a one-on-one with Erika Kirk to address concerns.
The overture comes amid the blowback to a now-infamous piece published days before the killing, in which Jezebel writers said they paid “Etsy witches” to put a curse on Kirk, who built a career debating campus liberals and turning confrontation into clicks. The article, framed as tongue-in-cheek media commentary, nonetheless detonated across the right once Kirk was shot, becoming a symbol to his allies of leftists that dehumanized him while he was alive and mocked him in death. Newsweek summarized the stunt and the fury it unleashed as details of the assassination broke.
Megyn Kelly poured fuel to the fire of the controversy, telling her audience that Erika was “genuinely rattled” by the Jezebel piece and that the couple asked a Catholic priest to pray with them the night before Kirk’s final appearance. Kelly’s account transformed a nasty internet provocation into a viral morality play: curses, prayers, and a movement in mourning. Follow-on reports reiterated that Erika, now the CEO of her husband’s organization from behind the scenes, took the episode personally.
The killing itself, on September 10 at Utah Valley University, remains the brutal core of the story. Kirk, 31, was struck by a sniper’s bullet while speaking outdoors during a Turning Point USA stop, a moment that flooded social feeds within minutes and stopped the campus tour, which was on its first event. Authorities have charged a suspect as the case moves through Utah courts, while scrutiny continues to mount over security planning for the event.
Into that grief vacuum stepped Priestess Lilin, who insists her work was never intended to inflict physical damage and was commissioned as a professional service, the kind Etsy’s occult corners advertise as “cleanses,” “protections,” or “baneful magic,” depending on the buyer’s appetite. She says she respects Erika’s feelings and wants a private conversation, the kind of framing that reads like damage control to conservatives who see the “hex” as grotesque in hindsight, joke or not.
On one side, progressive media satire that treats “put a curse on him” as an edgy bit about internet commerce and the meme-ification of politics. On the other, a movement arguing that years of dehumanizing rhetoric, from “hexes” to slurs, help create the conditions for real-world violence. Priestess Lilin’s outreach to Erika lands squarely in that minefield, part apology, part PR, and entirely inseparable from a national argument over how far is too far when politics becomes performance art.
Meanwhile, Turning Point USA is trying to move forward, returning to campus stops even as tributes roll on. For Erika, who has emerged as the movement’s grieving standard-bearer, the witch’s offer presents an excruciating choice: ignore it, condemn it, or engage and risk turning private sorrow into another viral spectacle.
