7 - Exploiting a News Story

 

Solar Eclipse Made Her Do It?

This breaking news story hits close to home, a popular online astrology influencer, Danielle Johnson Ayoka known online as 'Mystic Lipstick' kills boyfriend and 8 month old child, attempts to push 9 year old child out on interstate, then crashes to her own death, this occurred Monday before the Solar Eclipse. 

I followed her when I first became interested in Astrology and Tarot years ago but haven't seen her online in awhile. This story is definitely going to be exploited due to the timing of the Solar Eclipse and sensationalism of it all. As an astrologer and spiritualist myself I'm bracing myself for the comments that will surely follow about believers of spiritual and astrology being crazy. 

Danielle seemed to be obsessed with the Solar Eclipse warning that it was an apocalyptic event and spiritual warfare, as seen in the below tweets. 

Danielle Ayoka on X

As someone who follows astrology and reads tarot professionally it saddens me that this happened to a peer of mine in the spiritual community, but what hurts more is that this type of thing will be exploited as a result of her spiritual beliefs and not because of mental health. I know that many will be blinded by the fact that she had tarot cards and candles present in her home, which was mentioned in the article. 

However, if you take a deep dive into her tweets you will see she had many messages for her followers, including conspiracy theories about vaccines, astrological predictions, and antisemitic beliefs. Her beliefs were problematic but because she had a big platform of 105,000 followers, I think her popularity overshadowed her mental health issues. 

Do I believe the eclipse made her do it? No. I believe that she was dealing with unaddressed psychological problems, possibly postpartum depression, her baby was only 8 months old. I hope that the surviving child is going to be taken care of and gets therapy after going through this. I know many others who feared the eclipse, but none to the extent of murder suicide. 

https://www.newsweek.com/astrologer-ayoka-murder-suicide-children-boyfriend-car-1889296