The Hare Symbol in The Book of Witching
What the Hare Is and Where It Appears
The hare is a recurring animal figure that surfaces in both of the novel's timelines. In the 1594 Orkney storyline, it appears as a shadow in the window of Alison Balfour's cell, glimpsed by her interrogators during a night of forced walking and sleep deprivation. In the modern storyline, it appears as a live creature with a distinctive gold eye near the Triskele's meeting place in Scarwell Woods, and again immediately after Edina's ritual fire consumes the Book of Witching. The creature is also woven into the Triskele's ritual calendar: a member tells Clem and Quinn that the elders will meet on a night he calls a 'hare moon,' which Clem's research connects to 'fertility and new beginnings.'
The hare's appearances are sparse but strategically placed. Each one occurs at a moment of heightened tension or supernatural activity, and each one invites a different interpretation depending on who is watching. In the 1594 timeline, the hare is read as demonic evidence. In the modern timeline, it is read as a guardian or marker of the Triskele's power. The contrast between these readings reveals how the same creature can be made to serve very different narratives.
The Hare as the Devil's Familiar in 1594
The hare's first appearance is also its most consequential. In Chapter Thirteen, Alison is being kept awake by Mr. Addis, who forces her to walk back and forth across her cell while Father Colville and David Moncrief watch. When a shadow moves in the high cell window, Father Colville identifies it as a hare. Mr. Addis responds with fear, and David Moncrief offers an explanation: he has heard that 'cunning folk often have familiars, animals that do their bidding.' Father Colville then makes the decisive pronouncement: 'That is no hare. It's the Devil.'
The shadow then appears to change form, taking on the shape of 'a tall man, striding through the small window into the night.' The men interpret this as Satan coming to ensure Alison's obedience, and Father Colville instructs David to record it as 'the most damning evidence yet.'
This scene is crucial because the hare itself does nothing. It is a shadow in a window, and Alison privately wonders whether it is a trick of the light. But the interrogators' interpretive framework converts an ambiguous animal shape into proof of demonic alliance. The hare becomes evidence not because of what it is, but because of what the men are prepared to see in it. This dynamic connects directly to the novel's treatment of political exploitation of witchcraft accusations: the accusation is manufactured from perception, just as Alison's trial is manufactured from the political ambitions of those who want her condemned.
The scene also shows how the hare functions as a tool of coercive control and cult indoctrination. Father Colville does not merely observe the shadow; he uses it to reinforce Alison's terror and to justify her continued imprisonment. By declaring the hare to be Satan, he transforms a natural phenomenon into a reason for further persecution. The men's shared insistence on what they saw - despite the ambiguity of the shadow - demonstrates how a group can collectively manufacture 'evidence' to serve its purposes.
The Hare as Triskele Guardian in the Modern Timeline
In the modern storyline, the hare appears at two significant moments, both connected to the Triskele. The first occurs in Chapter Twenty-Nine, when Clem and Quinn are scouting Scarwell Woods before the elders' meeting. They discover a tree trunk etched with three spirals - the same triskele symbol Clem photographed in a cave - and as Clem reaches to touch the carving, she spots a hare moving through the field below the tree line. She notes its 'distinctively long ears' and 'the gleam of a gold eye.' When she calls Quinn's attention to it, the hare has already vanished.
The gold eye marks this hare as something other than an ordinary animal. It appears at the threshold of the Triskele's sacred space, immediately after the discovery of the group's symbol, as if guarding the boundary between the mundane world and the group's territory. The hare's sudden disappearance reinforces its liminal quality: it is present just long enough to be noticed, then gone.
The second modern appearance comes in Chapter Fifty-Four, after Edina performs a ritual intended to sever the Book of Witching's attachment to Erin. The book vanishes in the fire, and as the flames die down, 'a hare looks up at her, its head tilted toward her and a paw lifted, before darting into the field.' This appearance is directly tied to the book's disappearance - the hare seems to mark the moment of supernatural transformation, attending to the book's passage from one state to another.
The hare's connection to the Triskele is reinforced by the 'hare moon' that marks the elders' meeting. Clem's research links the hare moon to fertility and new beginnings, suggesting a pagan framework that aligns with the Triskele's practices. The hare is thus embedded in the group's ritual calendar, appearing at the times when the group's supernatural power is most active.
The Hare as a Liminal Creature
Across both timelines, the hare appears at thresholds and moments of transition. In the 1594 timeline, it appears at the threshold of Alison's cell window - a boundary between the dungeon and the outside world, between the human and the supernatural. In the modern timeline, it appears at the boundary of the woods where the Triskele meets, and at the moment when the book vanishes in the ritual fire.
The hare's association with the moon reinforces this liminal quality. Hares are crepuscular animals, active at dawn and dusk - the boundary times between day and night. The 'hare moon' marks a time when the elders gather to perform their rituals, suggesting a moment when the ordinary rules of the world are suspended. The hare, appearing at these boundary moments, seems to belong to the space between worlds.
The hare's connection to the Book of Witching deepens this reading. The book is described as 'thousands of years old' and 'knows its mind,' with 'shadows and whispers' that are 'tantalizing and inescapable.' The hare, with its shadowy appearances and its gold eye, seems to belong to the same order of being. It appears when the book's power is most active - near the Triskele's meeting place, where the book's fate is being discussed, and immediately after the book vanishes in the ritual fire.
Character and Theme Connections
The hare connects most directly to Alison Balfour and Clem. For Alison, the hare is the instrument of her condemnation - the 'damning evidence' that Father Colville uses to justify her continued imprisonment. For Clem, the hare is a witness to her search for Erin and her encounter with the Triskele's rituals. The creature links the two women across four centuries, suggesting that the forces that condemned Alison are still active in the modern world.
Thematically, the hare embodies the novel's concern with cyclical persecution and supernatural recurrence. The same creature appears in 1594 and in the present day, suggesting that the patterns of accusation and persecution repeat across time. The Triskele, which in the 1594 timeline is a persecuted group, has in the modern timeline become a secretive organization with its own power structures - and the hare attends to both.
The hare also connects to the theme of healing knowledge versus institutional authority. In the 1594 timeline, Alison's healing knowledge is criminalized, and the hare is used as evidence against her. In the modern timeline, the hare appears in connection with the Triskele's rituals, which draw on the same tradition of folk knowledge that Alison practiced. The hare thus marks the persistence of that knowledge across centuries, even as institutional authority continues to condemn it.
Study Questions
1. How does the hare function differently in the 1594 and modern timelines?
In the 1594 timeline, the hare is a shadow in Alison's cell window that her interrogators interpret as the Devil or a familiar. It is used as evidence against her - Father Colville calls it 'the most damning evidence yet.' In the modern timeline, the hare is a live creature with a distinctive gold eye that appears near the Triskele's meeting place and after the ritual fire consumes the book. It functions as a guardian or marker of supernatural presence rather than as evidence of wrongdoing.
2. What does the hare's appearance in Alison's cell reveal about her accusers?
The hare's appearance reveals that the accusers are primed to see demonic agency in any ambiguous phenomenon. The shadow could be a trick of the light - Alison herself wonders about this - but Father Colville, Mr. Addis, and David Moncrief immediately interpret it as Satan. Their willingness to convert an animal shadow into 'damning evidence' shows how the witchcraft accusation framework shapes perception, turning innocent phenomena into proof of guilt.
3. Why does the hare appear after Edina's ritual fire consumes the Book of Witching?
The hare's appearance immediately after the book vanishes suggests it is connected to the book's power or its movements. The book is described as ancient and self-willed, and the hare - with its folkloric associations and its gold eye - seems to belong to the same supernatural order. The hare may mark the book's passage from one state to another, or it may be a guardian attending to the book's fate.
4. How does the hare connect to the novel's treatment of the Triskele?
The hare is woven into the Triskele's ritual calendar - the 'hare moon' marks the time when the elders meet. The hare also appears near the Triskele's sacred space in Scarwell Woods, where the triskele symbol is carved on a tree. The hare's association with the Triskele links it to the group's pagan heritage and its supernatural practices, while also connecting the modern Triskele to the persecuted practitioners of the 1594 timeline.