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The Famous Five For Occult Kids

by Ruthie Alekseeva  
11/30/2024 / Book Reviews

Fantasy

I recently discovered a new author who isn’t a new author at all. In fact, she has been writing fiction, non-fiction and even essays and poems for at least twenty-seven years, but despite that fact, and even though she is an Australian author, until now, I had never heard of her at all! Nevertheless, this author has won many awards for her writing, including historical novels and retellings of ancient stories like Rapunzel and Sleeping Beauty.

I was pleased to learn that not only does this author write for adults, but she has written stories for kids as well. So, as I love to write children’s fiction, I bought her children’s book and settled in for a delicious treat…or so I thought! The book is for children aged ten years and over but, although I have no qualms at all with books like The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings, which lead readers on spectacular and mysterious adventures of fantasy and imagination, unfortunately, this book immerses child bibliophiles into real and actual witchcraft!

Witchcraft

Sad but true, the book tells a story about a girl who set out to break a curse that her father has not succeed in cracking, but the very first page of this book shows a circular calendar depicting what are known as thin days. According to the author of this book, thin days are times of the year when you can travel to “the Otherworld” or even to previous time periods. These days include the mid points of each season, May Day, Candlemas, Lammas, Halloween and even Christmas! The book also mentions space curvature, time dilation, wormholes, warp drives, black holes and cosmic strings; not as scientific theories but, I believe, in the occultic sense. Once again, this book also mentions faireies, banshees, hobgoblins, kelpies and selkies, but not as cute and friendly fantasy creatures as some children’s books and movies do but in the occultic sense.

Yikes! I thought, upon learning all this. Should this book really be given to children? But then I read further, discovering a character who “casts circle for Yule.” A Wiccan website explains that this is a ritual performed on Winter Solstice, the longest, darkest day of the year, and celebrates the “rebirth of the sun,” with the days from then on, becoming longer and sunnier. The website goes on to say that the ritual requires poinsettia flowers, pine cones, a Yule log, “God and Goddess candles,” pentacles or pentagrams, an altar, a cauldron, holly and mistletoe! The ritual involves standing inside a circle of “low vibration stones,” imagining red, green and gold flames are leaping up between those stones and reciting a chant which honours Wiccan deities.

Communism

If this isn’t worrying enough, although it is a children’s book, it has a page about singing spells, casting curses and a man getting stabbed fifty-seven times with his blood spurting out leaving a red stain all over the floor! It also has a character who wears a t-shirt with the stage name of a deceased singer printed on it. Wikipedia informs me that this woman was an American singer and musician of the 1900s who adopted the stage name so her church-going family wouldn’t complain that she was playing “devil’s music.” She admired Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, even though their ideology and reign resulted in the imprisonment, exile and murder of millions of people all over the world. Not to be outdone, this singer, herself, was also known for her own angry outbursts and abusive behaviour, allegedly towards her daughter and against audience members who wouldn’t remain quiet during her performances. She supported violence for protesting against racism and shot a gun at three people, for relatively minor grievances, wounding at least one and appearing in court for that charge. Is this really a woman we should model to our children?

Saddest of all, the book mentions, multiple times, an era in history when women, suspected of being witches, were burnt alive at the stake. It insinuates that it was Christians who carried out these executions, mentioning “a tall, stern-looking man” who “pointed at the distraught, young woman and intoned words of damnation and hellfire.” It also speaks of John Knox, a “strict and puritanical preacher who led the Protestant Reformation in Scotland.” It describes Knox as a man to “shrink back from” but, although no Christian is perfect, that’s the last thing authors should be teaching their child or adult readers to do because the Bible says witchcraft is rejecting God (1 Samuel 15:23) and that it’s evil and arouses God’s anger (2 Chronicles 33:6). The Bible says practicing witchcraft defiles us (Leviticus 19:3), sets God’s face against us and cuts us off from His people (Leviticus 20:6). It says witchcraft leads us astray (Revelation 18:2) and that it is an abomination (Deuteronomy 18:10-14).

Occultism

So, rather than describing Christians like John Knox as frightening and strict, we should describe them as incredibly brave and loving! They were simply trying to help people understand that faireies, banshees, hobgoblins, kelpies and selkies are not beings we should associate with in anyway at all whatsoever because faireies, banshees, hobgoblins, kelpies and selkies are actually demons! And these Christians often were burnt at the stake themselves for pointing out things like that, a fact this book neglects to mention. But The author of this book does show some insight into the things I’ve stated in this article, describing Winter Solstice as a dangerous night to be out on and saying “the Fair Folk” are “strange,” “dangerous,” “cruel,” “malicious,” “powerful,” “the same height as us” and “don’t care much for mortals.” Kate’s book says some have the ability to “blight crops,” “freeze the ground” and “steal humans away to fairyland.” Who would want anything to do with creatures like that? Not me! Instead, the only supernatural, “otherworld” being we should seek to have contact with is God, through His word, found in the Bible, and by reading and listening to biblically sound books and sermons.

But what are the book’s good points you might ask? Well, there are some! For instance, there’s no swearing or sexual inuendo, unless, of course, you count the male character who, on one occasion, when everyone is dressing up Halloween style for a special event, wears his normal male clothing but with black lipstick and black nail polish. For some boys, wearing female articles is a sexual fetish, meaning it sexually arouses them. I hope it wasn’t meant this way in Kate’s book. The other good point is that I gained a Famous Five vibe from it. You know, those five adventurous children created by the children’s author Enid Blyton? You see, the book has a scientific, rational character in it who doesn’t believe in all the children’s hocus-pocus nonsense. That’s kind of like Enid Blyton’s Uncle Quentin who is much too busy researching his next scientific invention to have much knowledge of the comings and goings of his five children.

Inculcation

The Famous Five also seem to spend a lot of time keeping their adventures secret from Aunt Fanny, much like children of the book I’m reviewing who must keep their antics secret from a woman named Mrs Underhill. They also all seem to enjoy spending time exploring the countryside. Admittedly, The Famous Five go by bike on unseasonably warm April days in England, drinking ginger beer, orangeade and gingernut biscuits, but the other children walk and sleep in cold, misty, Scottish landscapes, and eat marmalade cake, because bikes have not yet been invented. There is another difference. The book I’m reviewing has a cat named Jinx, but instead of giving the children communicative woofs, friendly licks, excited tail thumps and acting like their baby-sitter and guard, as The Famous Five’s pet dog, Timmy, does, Jinx has an evil and menacing underside to him.

And here’s my final conclusion. Although reading Famous Five books always left me with a scrumptious, last-century, comforting feeling, while reading the other book, I experienced a perturbed sensation all over my body and all over my skin as soon as I realised that this book is steeped in real and actual witchcraft and is designed for bringing children into all that too. The Bible says parents should teach their children godly things and as writers, movie makers and other such people are also teachers, and teachers of children, that’s what we should be doing also. So, although Enid Blyton also wrote stories filled with pixies, elves, faeries and goblins, I’d stick with her books, rather than reading any more of the other kind, as Enid’s whimsical creatures always felt exactly like that to me, just whimsical but never really occultic.

 

Deuteronomy 18:10-14

There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, or one who practices witchcraft, or a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer,  or one who conjures spells, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead.  For all who do these things are an abomination to the Lord, and because of these abominations the Lord your God drives them out from before you.  You shall be blameless before the Lord your God. For these nations which you will dispossess listened to soothsayers and diviners; but as for you, the Lord your God has not appointed such for you.

 

References

1 Samuel 15:23 NKJV

2 Chronicles 33:6 NKJV

Leviticus 19:3 NKJV

Leviticus 20:6 NKJV

Revelation 18:2 NKJV

Deuteronomy 18:10-14 NKJV

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