Fire Symbol Analysis in The Book of Witching
What Fire Is in the Novel
In The Book of Witching, fire is both a literal element and a recurring image that binds the novel's two timelines. In the 1594 storyline, it appears as the execution pyre at Fynhallow, the instrument of state-sanctioned killing. In the 2024 storyline, it appears as the Beltane ritual fire that erupts in a cave and kills Arlo, and as the fire that burns Erin's body. Between these poles, fire recurs as a tool of destruction—burning cottages, burning records, burning books—and as a supernatural conduit through which the novel's magic operates.
Fire as Execution and State Violence
The novel's historical frame is built around fire as punishment. The Historical Note records that Alison Balfour was executed at Gallow Ha' in Kirkwall in 1594, the first of over seventy women executed in Orkney on witchcraft charges. The execution itself, described in Alison's final chapters, involves a stake, twigs set around the base of the pyre, and a hooded executioner who strangles her before her body is burned. The procedure is designed to erase her entirely: there will be no burial, no grave. David's later account confirms the intent—the flames are stoked until her body cannot be inhabited by the Devil, until it is ash.
Fire here is the state's final word. It is the endpoint of a legal process that has already included torture (the caschielaws, heated metal strips applied to Alison's legs), sleep deprivation, and the murder of her husband William under a door weighted with stones. The fire is not merely punishment; it is annihilation, a way of ensuring that nothing of the accused remains to be remembered or revered.
Fire as Ritual and the Beltane Ceremony
In the 2024 timeline, fire appears as a ritual element. Erin's TikTok videos, reviewed by Stephanie, show her discussing a fire ceremony she planned to perform on Beltane (May 1st) in Fynhallow, Orkney, on the instruction of a man named Paul. The purpose was to destroy The Book of Witching, which Erin had tried to dispose of multiple times—throwing it in a bin lorry, tossing it in the Clyde River—only to have it return.
The ritual itself goes catastrophically wrong. Erin describes lighting a small fire in a cave, with Arlo kneeling beside it in the role of the Green Man, his hands bound. When Erin speaks the words of the spell, the fire erupts, shooting out toward Arlo, climbing up his clothes and melting his T-shirt onto his skin. Erin's attempts to save him—throwing sand, beating the flames—fail, and Arlo dies. Erin herself suffers fourth-degree burns on 20 percent of her body and third-degree burns on another 20 percent, with some digits amputated.
The Beltane fire is thus a ritual that inverts its intended purpose. Instead of destroying the book, it destroys the ritual's participants. The fire is not a controlled element but an uncontrollable force that responds to the book's presence, not to the spell's intent.
Fire as Destruction of Knowledge
Fire also functions as a tool for destroying inconvenient records. Father Colville, after learning that David recorded Alison's retraction of her confession, rips the page from the record book and throws it into the fireplace, watching the flame curl around the edges until the page is ash. The act is a small-scale version of the larger destruction the authorities seek: erasing Alison's final words, her declaration of innocence, and her curse.
Clem performs a similar act in the 2024 timeline when she finds the notebook page reading