Equal Rites

this is as follows: the Guild was given an annual quota which represented a socially acceptable level of thefts, muggings and assassinations, and in return saw to it in very definite and final ways that unofficial crime was not only rapidly stamped out but knifed, garrotted, dismembered and left around the city in an assortment of paper bags as well. This was held to be a cheap and enlightened arrangement, except by those malcontents who were actually mugged or assassinated and refused to see it as their social duty, and it enabled the city’s thieves to plan a decent career structure, entrance examinations and codes of conduct similar to those adopted by the city’s other professions—which, the gap not being very wide in any case, they rapidly came to resemble.

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Annotations

1

Neil Gaiman is the author of the acclaimed Sandman comics series, as well as Terry’s co-author on Good Omens.

Liber Paginarum Fulvarum is a dog-Latin title that translates to Book of Yellow Pages, i.e. not the Book of the Dead, but rather the Phonebook of the Dead. The book appears in Good Omens as well as in Sandman, where it is used in an attempt to summon Death (although the colourist didn’t get the joke and simply coloured the pages brown). Terry said (when questioned about it in a Good Omens context):

'Liber Paginarum Fulvarum is a kind of shared gag. It’s in the dedication of Equal Rites, too. Although I think we’ve got the shade of yellow wrong—I think there’s another Latin word for a kind of yellow which is closer to the Yellow Pages colour.'

The other word for yellow Terry is thinking of may possibly be ‘gilvus’, or ‘croceus’, or ‘luteus’.

2

Refers to Lucille Ball from I Love Lucy fame.

3

A central theme of this book (as well as of the other Discworld witch novels) is the contrast between on one side the (female) witches or wiccans, who are in touch with nature, herbs and headology, and on the other side the (male) wizards who are very ceremonial and use elaborate, mathematics-like tools and rituals. This conflict rather closely mirrors a long-standing feud between occult practitioners in our real world. (And all the infighting within each camp occurs in real life, as well.)

My source for this also mentions that Pratchett’s witches, especially, are obvious stereotypes of the kinds of people one can run into at wiccan festivals.

One of my correspondents recalls that he interviewed Terry in 1987 for a university magazine. In that interview Terry said that one thing which had tickled him about Josh Kirby’s artwork for the Equal Rites cover was that it subliminally (accidentally?) reflected the Freudian overtones of the book (references to “hot dreams”, the angst of adolescence, things that might be called “magic” envy)… Kirby’s artwork “coincidentally” draws Esk with the broom handle where a penis would be (traditionally supposed to be the basis of the “witches flying around on broomsticks” myth).

Kirby caricatures himself as the pointy-eared wizard on the back cover—anyone who has seen his picture in The Josh Kirby Posterbook can confirm this.

4

RAMTOP was the name of a system variable in the old Sinclair Spectrum computers.

5

The name Hoki derives from ‘hokey’ in combination with the Norse god Loki. The description of Hoki is pure Pan, however.

6

These instructions stem in fact from a folk song called ‘She Moved Through the Fair’, which has been recorded by (amongst others) Fairport Convention, Van Morrison and All About Eve:

My young love said to me, ‘My mother won’t mind
And my father won’t slight you for your lack of kine’.
And she stepped away from me and this she did say,
‘It will not be long now till our wedding day’
She stepped away from me and she moved through the fair
And fondly I watched her move here and move there
And she made her way homeward with one star awake
As the swan in the evening moves over the lake

7

A proprietary name for electrical apparatus concerned with sound reproduction and amplification. Now used generally, esp. to denote a form of public address system.

8

i. e. a ‘non-witch’ person. ‘Cowan’ is a commonly used word by Wiccans. A cowan is one who does not follow