My fourth supernatural thriller from St. Martin’s is out now, Book of Shadows, my first novel without “The” in the title, and my favorite book so far.
It’s about a very male, very rational (he thinks) Boston homicide detective who reluctantly must team up with a very female, very irrational, mysterious (and of course, hot) witch from Salem, to solve what he thinks is a Satanic killing – which she insists involves a real demon.
I have been fascinated with witches and the modern practice of witchcraft for as long as I can remember. I mean, please, didn’t we all grow up with The Wizard of Oz, not to mention Halloween? And in a way the book is precisely about that existential question posed by Glinda the Good, in her very first line of the movie: “Are you a good witch, or a bad witch?”
And I don’t mean that just literally, but metaphorically. Because the whole history of witchcraft seems to me to boil down to the question of whether women are good or bad. For centuries, during the times of the old earth religions, witches were seen as good: healers, midwives, mystics, helpers, the folk equivalent of doctors. In the Middle Ages (and I’m sure throughout history, but particularly starting in the Middle Ages), the organized, patriarchal church (and male doctors) tried to stamp out this manifestation of feminine power with the systematic torture and genocide of women in the form of the Inquisition. Witches were evil, women were evil.
In the 1960’s, when societies were expanding the borders of ordinary consciousness, there was a newfound fascination with the earth religions and an upsurge in the practice of goddess worship, including witchcraft. I know most of us who who’ve lived for any amount of time in California have known a practicing witch or two in our lives – anyone who’s ever been to the Renaissance Faire as many times as I have probably knows whole covens.
But get outside of California and OH, it’s a different story. It’s always been hard for me to comprehend he defensiveness that arises in response to the suggestion that God might actually be female, too. (Um, doesn’t even Genesis (that’s the Bible Genesis, rock stars…) say “God created man in his own image, male and female he created them”… ?)
I mean, I love you guys, you know I do – but you’re only HALF the human equation.
Try referring to God as “She” in, oh, the Bible Belt, for example, though. Which yes, I do frequently, and I feel that collective internal gasp of horror around me (And then women, girls, come up to me in private to say, ‘Thank you”).
Women are just not supposed to have that kind of power.
So in Book of Shadows, I wanted to dive right in and explore some of those things that make some men – and a lot of women – uncomfortable with feminine power, and feminine energy, and feminine sexuality, and feminine deity – the whole yin of things. It’s noir, but it’s supernatural noir. I wanted to take two people who were as different as I could make them on the surface: male vs. female, rational vs. intuitive, doing vs. being, real world vs. the unconscious, psychic world – even their cities are opposites: Boston vs. Salem – and force them to work together and learn that they’re a lot more similar than they seem on the surface.
Actually I think my cop protagonist, while he doesn’t exactly trust this witch, probably with good reason, takes all of the above feminine stuff pretty much in stride, admirably so. What he’s not so comfortable with is the idea that there might really be something supernatural going on in this troubling case.
One theme I come back to over and over again in my writing is the idea that messing around with the occult, or other dark forces (which you could say about drug abuse, or certain kinds of sex, or abuses of power) can open doors that let undesirable elements through that aren’t so easy to get rid of. And that young people are particularly prone to supernatural experimentation – and attack by supernatural predators as well as human ones. That’s definitely something that goes on in the book. And some of my earliest exposure to that idea was my sixth grade study of the Salem Witch Trials. (That’s right, isn’t it – we all got the Salem Witch Trials about sixth grade?)
The ambiguity of that situation has always drawn me. Were the girls who accused the “witches” pawns of land-grabbing villagers? Bored and frustrated pre-teens seizing the only power they’d ever have by acting out? High on ergot? Freaked out – maybe a little possessed – by their experimentation with voodoo under the tutelage of Tituba? Wouldn’t you just kill to know?
I tried to capture some of that ambiguity in my accused killer, a troubled musician in a Goth band who has taken a little too much of an interest in that very bad real-life magician, Aleister Crowley.
The research for this one was a real treat, too. Of course I had a whole backlog of witch stories to draw on, from people I met working at the metaphysical bookstore The Bodhi Tree, in L.A. (and that’s also where I met a lot of grunge teens who were rabid about Crowley), to attending ceremonies with Craft friends, including witnessing what for me was the real magic of “Calling the Corners”. I’ve had a love affair with Boston since I set The Price, there – it’s not just layered with American history and an amazing art history as well, but there’s just something deliciously eerie to me about the whole place. I got to go to Salem on Halloween (think Bourbon Street at Mardi Gras but with more witches, pirates, and Puritans). And I was incredibly lucky to find a criminalist in the Boston Police Department who gave me an extensive tour of Schroeder Plaza, the department and the crime lab, and answered all kinds of technical questions for me. It was one of those projects where even though circumstances around me were very complicated at the time, everything I needed for the book fell into my lap – I love it when that happens.
Almost like… hmm, magic.
So my questions for the day are – What’s your take on witches? Know any? Are you familiar with the way witchcraft is actually practiced, or is that whole world completely mysterious to you? Or do you do the odd spell or two yourself?
- Alex
There are many “schools” of witchcraft extant in the US, and all the witches I know (and I know more than a few) think that their particular variety is the one most widespread. That is probably truer than they might like to think, since the differences between practices are so minor as to be virtually nonexistent (but don’t tell any of them I said that). They all seem to be an odd blend of wanting to be unique and different and yet needing to be identified with a particular class.
Just like most human beings.
That’s an interesting take, Wolf. I was surprised when I was interviewing a lot of witches that some are very rigid about practice, almost as if they just imported their childhood religious structure and applied it to the Craft.
I persnally think the great thing about the Craft is that you can practice it to whatever extent you want to engage in it, and still get a huge benefit.
Most interesting piece, Alex. I do recall reading about the Salem witch trials and plans to keep women from positions of power but never related killing witches to any plan to eliminate women. I also recall reading about a dunking chair in which a suspected witch would be tied to a chair and dunked in water. Supposedly, if she survived, it meant that she must be a witch and was hanged or burned Whether she survived the dunking or not, she would end up dead; and that certainly seems a plan to eliminate at least the woman in question.
Wolf’s comment that all the witches he knew “think that their particular variety is the one most widespread” rings in the same key as most religious believers that I have met, not so much in believing their religion Is the most widespread, perhaps, but in believing their religion is the only true religion.
Your comments about your new book compile a combination of elements that promises a very good read indeed. And the timing seems just about perfect.
Bob