Witch Hunt

July 6, 2020
Sollee (Witches, Sluts, Feminists), who teaches a course on witches at the New School, explores the archetype of the witch in this entertaining mix of travel guide, journal, and ghost story collection. Highlights include an examination of the divination culture of Italy, including the tarot-dedicated Museo dei Tarocchi in Bologna, and of England’s occultism, including the Chelsea Physic Garden in London, where “the occult is inseparable from the landscape.” Historical figures such as Joan of Arc in France and Dame Alice in Ireland are recast both as early examples of gender-fluidity and powerful women who were killed by fearful men. These and other historic women are featured in fictionalized “visions” that overcome Sollee, and work as a narrative device in which the dead impart knowledge of their craft and details of their often violent fates. While the author admits these scenes are fantastical, they nicely round out and give context to the catalogue of sites visited. Sollee’s informative history doubles as an intriguing travel guide for those interested in the travails of witches and occultists.

August 15, 2020
A historian travels far beyond Salem in search of lingering marks of witchcraft's past. In Witches, Sluts, Feminists (2017), Soll�e, a writer and curator who teaches gender studies at the New School, offered a quick introduction to centuries of misogyny and the ways in which superficially distinct categories of womanhood overlap. In her latest book, she takes readers on a tour of physical sites with witchy pasts in Europe, the U.K., Ireland, and the U.S. The author provides historical and geographic specificity that is often elided and obscured in popular depictions of witchcraft--including those by self-described witches. Some locales in the book have turned their connections with witchcraft into kitschy pastiches of shops and attractions, but even in those places, Soll�e digs into the history that lies beneath the tourist trap. The author's trip to Germany is emblematic of her journey as a whole. When she climbed the highest peak in the Harz Mountains, she was visiting a place sacred to Saxon pagans, the setting for a diabolical orgy in Goethe's Faust, and the site of an annual gathering of contemporary witches. In Thale, Soll�e went to a theme park where she saw "statues of a naked Devil and witch that children were treating like jungle gyms." The medieval village of Quedlinburg offers a quiet contrast to the sensational entertainments of Thale, but this storybook town executed so many accused witches that it's the source for the oft-repeated and ahistorical suggestion that millions of women died during the witch hunts of the early modern era. This is clearly written for a general audience, but Soll�e's judicious use of scholarly sources adds weight to the text and serves as a guide to readers who want to learn more. A valuable resource for planning a magical itinerary--or exploring the landscape of witchcraft from the couch.

COPYRIGHT(2020) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.