The Ex Hex

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Chapter 5

Chapters 6-9

Chapters 10-14

Chapters 15-18

Chapters 19-22

Chapters 23-26

Chapters 27-30

Chapters 31-35

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

The Eurydice Candle

The novel’s most overt allusion to other literature is the Eurydice Candle, which takes its name from the story of Eurydice and Orpheus in Greek mythology. According to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Eurydice marries Orpheus but is killed by a snakebite shortly after their wedding. Grief-stricken, Orpheus journeys to the underworld to recover his bride. Hades agrees to let Eurydice return to the mortal world on the condition that Orpheus resist the temptation to look back at her as she walks behind him. Once Orpheus reaches the surface, he looks back, but Eurydice has not yet fully emerged from the gateway. She is pulled back into the underworld.

In The Ex Hex, the Eurydice Candle is used to contain a spirit so it can be released later in a different location. While its name refers to Orpheus’s attempt to relocate Eurydice’s spirit, the candle’s deeper significance becomes clear as Vivi and Rhys navigate their own trust issues. Thomas Bullfinch wrote that Orpheus did not trust that Eurydice was with him—either she was real and did not follow, or she was an illusory trick by Hades—and for his distrust, Eurydice died twice. In The Ex Hex, Vivi mistrusts Rhys because of his rakish attitude. She does not believe he truly cares about anything, including her, because he works so hard to appear invulnerable. The element of distrust provokes the question of whether love can exist without trust, and vice versa. The candle invokes allusions to Eurydice’s story to demonstrate how necessary mutual trust is for love to succeed.

Ley Lines

The theory of ley lines was first developed in the early 1920s by Alfred Watkins, an “amateur” archaeologist who saw a pattern of straight lines in the placement of significant ancient sites, both natural and human-made, around the world. As the theory spread, many believers attributed ley lines to sites of supernatural or magical power, and places where the lines intersected were thought to be especially potent sites of concentrated energy. Today, some people still believe in this energy and think it can be harnessed by an individual to raise significant monuments like Stonehenge.

In The Ex Hex, the origin of the ley lines at Graves Glen is not explored, but the lines themselves appear as a tangible form of magic: “The whole cave was lit with a soft purple, flowing rivers of magic pulsing on the floor” (85). What Rhys and Vivi see in the cave, according to the ley-lines theory, is likely the pocket of energy at a site where two or more ley lines intersect. Gryffud Penhallow sought to harness the lines’ power and used Aelwyd Jones’s life force to do so. Once Rhys’s curse transfers into the ley lines, the magical aura itself becomes a visual representation of the town’s health. The lines become blackened, with red sparks dashing out from the sides.

The shift in color is significant because the original purple is a hue associated with royalty, regality, and power. In Greek mythology, purple is a rare color, expensive to produce, and therefore represents wealth, and, at times, greed. Gryffud Penhallow greedily stole Aelwyd Jones’s life for his own gain, establishing himself and his descendants as “witchy” royalty. When the lines blacken, they appear to be burned or charred. The color change is attributed to the curse, but black often represents grief, death, and mystery. As red sparks fly from the lines’ edges, the red infuses the black’s mystery with its own symbolic meanings of violence and anger. The changed colors of the lines reveal the darker history of Graves Glen: Gryffud Penhallow killed Aelwyd Jones to claim wealth and status for himself, and as the truth fights to come out, the magic dependent on the lines’ power becomes more volatile, representing Aelwyd’s anger from beyond the grave.

Tarot

The tarot deck a modern reader may recognize is the Rider-Waite deck, designed by Arthur Waite and Pamela Colman Smith in 1909. Despite illustrating the deck, Smith’s name does not appear in its official title, leading many critics and scholars to regard her as an uncelebrated, uncredited creator. This publishing dynamic mirrors the novel’s revelation of Aelwyd Jones as the true founder of Graves Glen, as it was her power that fueled the ley lines Gryffud seized for his own gain. Similarly, without Smith’s illustrations, the Rider-Waite deck would lack the unique imagery that continues to entrance people over a century later.

The cards in a tarot deck are highly imagistic and place great emphasis on symbolism as a means to connect the cards’ story with the reader’s intuition. Two main cards feature in the novel: The Fool and The Star. In Gwyn’s hand-painted deck, she illustrates Rhys as The Fool, “the card of chances and risks,” and Vivi as The Star, representing “peace, serenity. Steadfastness” (90). These two cards have further meanings not mentioned in the novel that are useful for the reader to understand how Gwyn sees Rhys, Vivi, Elaine, and the other people she paints in her tarot deck. In an upright position, The Star signifies the freedom to be oneself, while reversed it means one is alienated from their true nature. In that sense, The Star is the perfect card for Vivi, as her journey in the novel is about her self-actualization and connecting with the person she is meant to be.

Rhys’s card, The Fool, in an upright position represents personal development within oneself, moving toward deeper self-realization. This aligns with Rhys’s progression to giving himself permission to be vulnerable and emotionally open with Vivi. When The Fool is reversed, it signifies that an emotional or psychological reflex is holding the individual back from their authentic self, much as Rhys’s devilish charm is his default response when things get too personal. That armor holds him back from truly connecting with other people, including Vivi.

At the novel’s conclusion, Vivi reconsiders her understanding of her and Rhys’s tarot cards: “Rhys might have been The Fool, but maybe she was, too, because she realized that the image, a person walking merrily off a cliff, wasn’t necessarily about being reckless. It was about taking a leap and trusting something—someone—would catch you” (307). She recognizes that there are multiple ways to interpret the cards’ imagery and apply the story they tell to her own life. She sees in The Fool a fundamental trust, a leap of faith, that is necessary in love.