How Scotland's biggest human rights scandal – the Witch Trials – shows the power of books
In our current frightening times, powerful men are once again trying to demonise the powerless but the written word provides a way to fight back
For the last five years, alongside Claire Mitchell KC, I've been campaigning to raise awareness of the greatest human rights miscarriage in Scotland – the Witch Trials. Between 1563 and 1736, at least 4,000 people were accused of witchcraft. Of those, 2,500 were executed and around 84 per cent of those were women.
A huge part of our work has been humanising the accused and, in fact, the accusers. These earlier Scots were not the ignorant, pitchfork-bearing brutes we like to imagine they were.
The witch trials happened in an educated, civilised society ripe for the events that unfolded. In times of desperation – whether the driver is local and personal, such as crops failing, or it’s a much bigger national, political issue such as plague or war – humans seek to make sense and take control back.
We ask why is this happening? What can we do to stop it? And, most chillingly, who can we blame?
A king’s sinister best-seller
In 1597, King James VI published his book Daemonology. This was a literal ‘how to’ guide for identifying, trying, and dispatching witches. Daemonology was a best-seller which was read very widely and shaped Scotland’s belief system for a long time. Fear sells. The book held great power.
This all happened hundreds of years ago, but what's the relevance now? Sadly, we humans haven't learned that blame, barbarity, and dehumanising vulnerable people brings nothing but generations of pain.
We are living in frightening times where it would be easy to fall into hopeless despair. But, at this critical point in our small but beautiful country, we should have hope. So, how do we keep hope alive and try and live more fully as humans?
I believe that it’s through the creation of art, specifically through writing and reading. However we’re not only at a crisis point politically and morally. We’re also at a crisis point intellectually.
Social media’s challenge to books
There’s a growing sense of what is the point of books? We know that literacy levels are horrifyingly low and, in the age of social media, why bother? All humanity is online.
I can scroll and see anyone, anywhere in the world. I can watch animals doing cute things, I can watch people being executed in all manner of ways, I can watch people monologue about their lives and thoughts long into the early hours.
We can be entertained, horrified, moved and distracted within seconds and we’ve managed to cleverly do away with all the tedious business of turning pages and decoding letters and words on the physical page.
Let’s spool back in time a bit. Learning to read is miraculous. Very few of us remember the before or the after. We move from being read to, to being able to read for ourselves. The world is then ours.
Reading to wild boys
I always knew I wanted to be a writer, but I wasn’t one of those children who wrote their first novel at six. I was one of those children who read and read and read. I was one of those children who sought refuge in imaginary worlds and someone whose teachers quickly realised that when reading, I wasn’t disrupting and so I was often sent to the library to give everyone else peace.
But reading isn’t just a place to hide and be quiet. When we read, we’re building our view of the world and who we are in it. I’ve been a teacher for 25 years and have largely worked with challenging classes, mostly boys.
I have never taught a class that didn’t enjoy being read to. Something special happens when you read to a class. The wildness calms and the reading opens up the important talk. Who am I? Who are we?
And this is why we write. We’re gathering what it is to be a human. We have a compelling desire to connect with readers – to explore and detail what it is to be alive. We’ve come so far, but the journey ahead is treacherous and difficult.
Especially now when powerful men would see us frightened and distracted. If we're picking on the powerless, we're not looking at the real issues – appalling greed and wealth, climate disaster, war, horrendous abuses of human rights.
But we have the power to challenge that. If we engage in deep thinking about being humans, we can be so much better.
An intelligent debate
Make no mistake, we’re at a very important crossroads where we must think and act consciously about where we go next. We need to move back towards intelligent debate on the page where there’s room for different ideas and beliefs and where we can think deeply about who we are as humans.
We need to learn from the past to shape a better present. As ever, I’m turning to Toni Morrison for guidance. She wrote: “I get angry about things, then go on and work.”
We need that anger to avoid complacency and isolation, but we need to channel it into work, into writing to illuminate ourselves and to see the path forward.
We need to still be open to joy and wonder, to feel awe and then express it so that we can gather others to us and wrestle back the direction we’re going in. Not by singling out the vulnerable, but by gathering everyone in.
Writing and then reading has that power. We have that power. We must use it wisely and use it now.
Zoe Venditozzi is a best-selling author and one half of campaign group Witches of Scotland with Claire Mitchell KC. This article is an edited version of a speech she gave at the Saltires, Scotland's National Book Awards.
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