Further Thoughts on The Patriot Witch

[akirlu]

Paul Kincaid reviews the entire C.C. Finlay Traitor to the Crown trilogy (of which The Patriot Witch is the first book), over at Strange Horizons.

The review is spoilery, so if you don't wish to be spoiled, don't go there.



I think the thing that most disinclines me to carry on with the trilogy is finding that the plot arc of the second and third book will be substantially the same as the first. It wasn't such a brilliant plot arc that it really can stand re-hashing two more times in quick succession, with the same cast of characters.

But one of Paul's criticisms of the trilogy strikes me as deeply wrong-headed. He says, in summary to various charges that Finlay ignores historical fact in order to maintain the Revolutionary War myth, that

...the biggest fudge comes in the very raison d'etre of this trilogy: witchcraft is somehow made out to be profoundly Christian.

Well, duh. It would be, wouldn't it? It certainly wouldn't be neopagan. Neopaganism is an invention of the 19th and 20th centuries. Nor would it be paleopagan. Old school paganism was wiped out all over Europe, and the people who emigrated here from Europe were themselves profoundly Christian people. America was founded by the descendants hyper-religious nutjobs so thoroughly invested in their faith that that were willing to forsake friends, family, fortune, and all benefits of civilization, in order to risk life and limb on the voyage over and fighting for survival in the wilderness once they arrived. They were laying down their whole lives when they came over. And for what? For the ability to practice their particular flavor of Christianity in their particular way. That's what I call profoundly Christian.

And the thing about Finlay's colonial witches is that they are portrayed as having very little formal training, tradition, or literature to learn their craft from. They are, essentially, making it up as they go along, working from first principles, random discoveries, and their own pre-existing beliefs. Which would be profoundly Christian. And being devoutly Christian, naturally they wouldn't take up witchcraft if they thought it was not compatible with Christianity. There were no casual atheists in 18th C. America.

Also, if you look at the magical traditions that have developed in the New World, they are larded with Christianity. Santeria incorporates trappings and saints from Catholicism. Hoodoo borrows all sorts of iconography from the Old Testament, along with origins in the Kabalah. Pennsylvania Dutch hex signs were drafted as corporeal prayers, in the name of the Trinity, often including signs meant to denote the Trinity, and made by entirely Christian hexmeisters, and publicly displayed on barns in Christian communities, in an era that was hardly ecumenically lax. Water dousers, rainmakers, and all the other rural witchery and magic that runs through American tradition, borrows from, and uses Christianity. It wouldn't be tolerated otherwise.

So yes, Finlay's witchcraft is profoundly Christian. It wouldn't make sense in a colonial context if it weren't.

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I thought that was a plus, too.

[scbutler.livejournal.com]

Interesting take on American witchcraft. I've never thought of it this way before. And yet it's so obviously right.

[wild-patience.livejournal.com]

Have you read The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane? A modern-day Ph.D. candidate is researching the Salem witch trials and discovers a previously unmentioned witch, one who really was a witch and who was a Christian.