How to Kill a Witch
The Patriarchy's Guide to Silencing Women
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3.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
“Terrifying, fascinating, and important.” —Sara Sheridan, author of Where Are the Women? and The Fair Botanists
Nothing brings people together like a common enemy, and witches were the greatest enemy of all.
Scotland, 1563: Crops failed. People starved. And the Devil’s influence was stronger than ever—at least, that’s what everyone believed. If you were a woman living in Scotland during this turbulent time, there was a very good chance that you, or someone you knew, would be tried as a witch.
During the chaos of the Reformation, violence against women was codified for the first time in the Witchcraft Act—a tool of theocratic control with one chilling goal: to root out witches and rid the land of evil. What followed was a dark and misogynistic chapter in history that fanned the flames of witch hunts across the globe, including in the United States and beyond.
In How to Kill a Witch, Zoe Venditozzi and Claire Mitchell, hosts of the popular Witches of Scotland podcast, unravel the grim yet absurdly bureaucratic process of identifying, accusing, trying, and executing women as witches. With sharp wit and keen feminist insight, they reveal the inner workings of a patriarchal system designed to weaponize fear and oppress women.
This captivating (and often infuriating) account, which weaves a rich tapestry of trial transcripts, witness accounts, and the documents that set the legal grounds for the witch hunts, exposes how this violent period of history mirrors today’s struggles for justice and equality. How to Kill a Witch is a powerful, darkly humorous reminder of the dangers of superstition, bias, and ignorance, and a warning to never forget the past… while raising the question of whether it could ever happen again.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Novelist Venditozzi (Anywhere's Better Than Here) and lawyer Mitchell, cohosts of the Witches of Scotland podcast, provide a droll and gruesome history of Scotland's witch trials. Organized like a macabre how-to, the book recounts each step of a witch trial, from how to identify a witch like a professional "witch pricker" to how to bury one in a manner that avoids creating a "revenant" who returns from the dead. The authors cite contemporaneous documents—from King James VI's "textbook on witch-hunting" to accused witch Isobel Gowdie's four "fantastical" confessions of a tryst with the devil—as well as interviews with scholars, activists, and even a fire expert, who explains "what it takes to dispose of a human body using fire." The grim material is leavened with wry humor ("See it, say it, sorcery"), while the most moving sections are the profiles of the accused, among them a 16th-century woman suspected of "using a cat to invade people's dreams," and the last woman tried under the Witchcraft Act (in 1944!). While the authors consider other factors that contributed to witchcraft hysteria, from poverty to religious zealotry, they show how women, who made up 85% of the accused, were "viewed as difficult, foolish, and sexually dangerous," making them "perfect targets for... society's fears." It's a lively tribute to the past's persecuted women and "quarrelsome dames."
