What the eclipse cracked open in you.
A ritual for the tender, fresh energy of a post-eclipse beginning.
Two days ago, a total solar eclipse crossed Leo.
If you felt it, good. That means you're paying attention.
Eclipse energy doesn't always arrive as dramatic revelation. Sometimes it's quieter than that. A decision that suddenly feels obvious. A relationship that looks different in the light. A desire you've been negotiating with yourself about that simply stops negotiating.
Whatever cracked open for you this week doesn't need to be analyzed yet. It needs to be tended.
We're in the Waxing Crescent now. The first sliver of the new cycle, fragile and full of potential. This is not the moment to sprint toward what opened. It's the moment to protect it while it finds its shape.
Also, if you've been listening to the podcast, this week's episode of Encomium dropped on eclipse day. We went deep on reclaiming spirituality and what it means to find your way back to something sacred after it's been used against you. If that's territory you're sitting with, it's a good one.
✨ SPELL
Even when the moon isn’t new or full, we don’t have to wait for a “special” sky to practice reclaiming ourselves.
Ritual isn’t about the calendar—it’s about interrupting the grind, reorienting to what matters, and reminding yourself you’re not just here to produce.
Here’s a ritual for this week, aligned with the current zodiacal season. Minimal supplies. Maximum reclamation.
Fire for the New Beginning
A post-eclipse ritual for protecting what just opened.
Supplies:
A candle
One sentence
Steps:
Light your candle.
Complete this sentence out loud: "What opened this week is ________."
Say: "I protect this while it becomes what it's becoming."
Let the candle burn for a few minutes.
Blow it out with intention.
You don't need to know the whole shape yet. You just need to know it's real.
✊ HEX
You don’t need a rundown of the headlines. You’re living them. Whether you’re in the U.S. or just suffering under its ripple effects, the harm is real—and relentless.
This isn’t catharsis. It’s counter-spell.
Each HEX is a ritual of refusal—a channel for holy rage, spiritual disruption, and deliberate, directed dissent.
Here’s who we’re targeting. And what to do about it.
The Documentation Does Not Comply
I'm writing this while watching Todd Blanche perform sunshine and rainbows. On loop.
Here's the context, because it matters:
Journalist and attorney Katie Phang sued Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche over the DOJ's handling of the Epstein files. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan privately reviewed the unredacted Epstein documents on July 30. He didn't like what he found.
He scheduled a hearing for August 13 specifically to press the DOJ on three things it has failed to explain:
Why the DOJ has not provided documentation proving that the names it redacted actually belong to Epstein victims and not to powerful men using victim protection as cover. Sullivan said the DOJ's previous claims (and I want you to hear this in his exact words) "do not comply with the court's order."
Why the DOJ is withholding handwritten FBI interview notes from four sessions with a woman who alleged that Donald Trump sexually and physically assaulted her when she was approximately 13 years old.
When the DOJ intends to produce a complete log of all redactions, which the Epstein Files Transparency Act legally requires.
These are not new questions. They are questions Sullivan has already asked. Questions the DOJ has already failed to answer adequately. Questions that required a federal judge to review the documents himself in private, and then schedule a separate hearing because what he saw didn't match what he was told.
Judge Sullivan also ordered a public phone line for today's hearing so that anyone — any member of the public — could call in and listen to the DOJ being pressed to explain its violations.
People called. I called. Multiple times. For over an hour. The line disconnected us. And yes, I know how conference lines work. I understand that there are capacity limits. That should have been taken into account when the hearing was supposed to be publicly available for almost three-and-a-half million people.
There is also a YouTube livestream that is supposed to be carrying this hearing live.
It is not carrying the hearing.
It is a loop. Fifteen to twenty minutes of Todd Blanche on repeat. And here is what is on that loop:
Not Judge Sullivan pressing DOJ lawyers to explain why handwritten FBI notes documenting allegations that a sitting president sexually assaulted a 13-year-old girl are being withheld. Not arguments. Not compliance questions. Not answers.
It’s Todd Blanche telling a romanticized version of his origin story: how he started as an intern in the Bond Building in, and I am quoting him directly, "the year of our lord 1995." How he got a job as a paralegal in the same building. How he moved to New York with his young family. How "every job I had was just a little bit better and a little more fun than the one before." How grateful he is to Donald Trump for his selection as Deputy Attorney General. How honored he is to now serve as Attorney General. And blathering on about what an incredible job the DOJ is doing.
It’s quotes like this: "I promise to run this department with integrity." And: "We're going to go after criminals."
On loop.
While a federal judge in that same building is asking why the documentation does not comply.
While the names of the men who paid to access children remain redacted.
While the phone line that was supposed to let the public hear the actual hearing disconnected them instead.
While he walked up to a podium to applause and responded with, "You're just clapping because I'm your boss." And, "You make me look good."
The man who promised integrity on a loop while violating a transparency law.
The man who is “going after criminals” while protecting the ones in the Epstein files.
The man whose career origin story is playing on repeat while the public that was supposed to hear this hearing got disconnected.
This is not a glitch.
This is not an accident.
This is the mechanism.
There is also a 67-page Senate Finance Committee report released today titled "Looking the Other Way: How Wall Street Banks Enabled Jeffrey Epstein's Sex Trafficking." It documents how top American and Russian banks shielded Epstein from federal scrutiny by delaying the reporting of suspicious financial activity and helping hide certain transactions entirely.
Released today. (Well, yesterday by the time this email is sent.) While this hearing is happening.
While Blanche performs “transparency” on a loop.
Here is the thing about "looking the other way" as a title:
It names the mechanism precisely. It is not that the banks didn't know. It is not that the DOJ doesn't know. It is not that the men in those files are unknown. It is that the institutions with the power to act (the banks, the courts, the Department of Justice) have, at every turn, found reasons to look elsewhere.
The disconnected phone lines are looking the other way.
The YouTube loop is looking the other way.
The redactions that violated the law and were called mistakes are looking the other way.
The withheld handwritten FBI notes are looking the other way.
The 67-page report on Wall Street's role released on the same day as this hearing is looking the other way.
"You make me look good" on a loop while a federal judge asks why the documentation does not comply. That is looking the other way.
And the survivors showed up anyway.
Epstein survivor Dani Bensky called Blanche's previous meeting with survivors a "check-the-box exercise." Liz Stein called it "demoralizing." Sky Roberts said: "This was your opportunity to acknowledge them. You failed to do it again. Nothing got answered today. It was just a show."
It was just a show. And today the show is on loop.
So today we hex all of it.
We hex the assertions that do not comply.
We hex the withheld handwritten FBI notes about allegations against a sitting president.
We hex the phone line that disconnected the public when they tried to listen to a hearing they were invited to hear.
We hex the YouTube loop playing "you make me look good" instead of the actual hearing.
We hex "the year of our lord 1995" and "every job was a little bit better and a little more fun" delivered in a federal courtroom where a judge has found the documentation does not comply.
We hex "I promise to run this department with integrity" from the man who is in violation of a transparency law about child sex trafficking.
We hex "we're going to go after criminals" from the man protecting the ones in the Epstein files.
We hex the banks named in today's 67-page report who helped a child sex trafficker hide his money and called it banking.
We hex the looking the other way in all its forms: the loops, the disconnections, the redactions, the performances, the career origin stories delivered where accountability should be.
And we name what compliance actually requires:
Prove that the names you're hiding are victims, not perpetrators using victim protection as cover.
Release the handwritten FBI notes about a 13-year-old girl and the sitting president.
Produce the complete redaction log the law requires.
Examine every bank transaction that was delayed, hidden, or ignored.
A phone line that doesn't disconnect the public when they try to listen.
A YouTube stream that shows the actual hearing.
The judge is not buying it.
The survivors are not buying it.
We are not buying it.
And the documentation, as Sullivan himself said, does not comply.
🔥 On The Loop
The performance of accountability played on repeat while the public gets disconnected is not transparency.
It is the mechanism of concealment with better production values.
Name it. Every time.
📞 Action
Read Senator Wyden's report released today: "Looking the Other Way: How Wall Street Banks Enabled Jeffrey Epstein's Sex Trafficking." It will be buried under the loop. Don't let it be.
Follow Katie Phang's reporting. She filed the lawsuit that got us into this courtroom today.
Support survivors: https://epsteinjustice.com/
With tenderness for what's new,
Keli Lyn Jewel
PS: The eclipse cracked something open for a lot of people this week. If what surfaced feels too layered to hold alone, The Deep End offers 1:1 support for exactly this kind of threshold moment. And if you want to process it in community, The Spiral Path is where we do that together.
