Religion

Witchcraft is presented as a true and genuine form of religion as it is compared and contrasted with Christianity and Catholicism within the novel. Although terms like “Wicca” and “Paganism” are never used in the story, the witchcraft embraced by Eleanor and Adelaide is clearly intended to inspire comparisons to traditional pagan religions that value nature, herbs, and women’s intuition above church doctrine and Western medicine. Rather than discounting Christian mythology and naming the religion a fraud in opposition to the witchcraft that is embraced by the heroines of the story, the novel validates Christianity alongside Paganism by including a demon from Christian lore in the cast of characters that include ghosts, Dearlies, and talking birds. And so, within the framework of the novel and through the omniscient narrator’s all-seeing eye, the Christian religion becomes one of many magical mythologies that truly exists inside...