Many politicians misleadingly use ‘witch hunt’ as a dismissive label when being held accountable for their own lies, corruption and misdeeds.
Whereas, actual witch hunts in the UK are conducted by HM Office of the Witchfinder General, a secretive arm of law-enforcement concerned with enforcing ‘magus laws’, and ‘Protecting the public from the unnatural since 1645’.
DARTFORD, KENT – 29 June 2023 – Elsewhen Press is a publishing house specialising in high quality, entertaining and thoughtful speculative fiction from talented authors, including many debut authors. One of our more established authors is Simon Kewin. Perhaps best known for science fiction novels, Simon is, nonetheless, an accomplished author of fantasy stories that often include witches. His Witchfinder series of books is predicated on the premise that the role of Witchfinder General in Britain was instigated by parliament, and indeed has survived to the present day in the form of HM Office of the Witchfinder General. The OWG is now a shadowy arm of law-enforcement concerned with enforcing the ‘magus laws’, and trying to ensure that the general public are not aware of the evil forces that are at large. Their mission statement is ‘Protecting the public from the unnatural since 1645’. But the main protagonist, Danesh, an officer of the OWG, questions their approach and attitude towards all magic users not just those who are a danger to the public. Indeed, he objects to the Office’s motto ‘Maleficos non patieris vivere’, which while literally translating as ‘You shall not suffer an evildoer to live’ is widely interpreted to mean ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live’, thanks to the misogynistic translation in the King James Bible. The ambiguity of Danesh’s evolving position is a compelling sub-plot in the Witchfinder series of books. The OWG’s treatment of magus law-breakers today is rather more nuanced than in the 15th century, and Simon Kewin’s witty writing style makes the books both thrilling and engaging.
The third novel in the series, Head Full of Dark, is a book close to the author’s heart, revealing, as it does, certain autobiographical details about him – including his own connection to the Office of the Witchfinder General. While names have been changed to protect the innocent, it remains to be seen how the Office will respond to one of their own breaking ranks in this way. He very much hopes that he will be able to produce further (redacted) reports on the battles waged against malign magic use and supernatural incursion – and that he does not, for example, get consigned to Oblivion never to be heard from again...
In reality, of course, the actual role of Witchfinder General was one that Matthew Hopkins invented and assumed for himself in 1645 during the English Civil War, pretending to have been commissioned by Parliament, and using many techniques from King James’ own book Daemonologie to discover witches. Like many entrepreneurs, cult leaders and fascists since, Hopkins made a fortune from the gruesomely lucrative business of ridding communities of an imagined enemy, often used as a cover by power-hungry locals to remove their rivals or exact revenge. Within a couple of years, however, his methods and motivation were called into question by a popular puritan cleric who described them as “abominable, inhumane and unmerciful” and Hopkins was forced to retire in 1647. He wrote a book justifying his own methods and the results of his hunts, A Discovery of Witches, which became a popular legal text especially in the Colonies, and is widely recognised as having had considerable influence on the Salem Witch Trials in Massachusetts some 45 years later. Ironically, the man responsible for the deaths of at least 300 women was reputed, in contemporary legend, to have died in one of his own ducking stool ‘trials’ after he had himself been accused of witchcraft; but more prosaically, in fact, he actually died not long after his retirement, either of tuberculosis… or a curse.
Today narcissistic politicians, especially in English-speaking nations, use ‘witch hunt’ as a conveniently dismissive label when being held accountable for their own lies, corruption and misdeeds. While hoping to leverage the perception that witch hunts were unfair and often conducted for ulterior motives, they fail to recognise that unlike modern judicial reviews and law enforcement activities, historical witch hunts were conducted without evidence and against (usually poor) victims who had neither the resources, nor often the wit, to defend themselves. The two situations could not be more different. Perhaps those politicians are trying to identify themselves with the poor defenceless ‘wise women’ typically portrayed in popular myth as the victims of witch hunts – which, given the largely misogynistic behaviour displayed by those same politicians, would be a cynical irony if it weren’t so contemptible.
Head Full of Dark, the third book in Simon Kewin’s Witchfinder series, is available as an eBook from today and in paperback from 31st July 2023.