The Rules of Magic

The Magical World of 1960s New York takes center stage in Part 3 as the characters find hope and distraction from their woes in the new possibilities brought by societal changes. Part 3 also marks the point in the narrative where Jet and Frances take up Aunt Isabelle’s mantle of making plant cures and love potions. While this is a practice steeped in ancestral Owens tradition, it also aligns with the burgeoning hippie movement’s environmental consciousness as well as its questioning of both Western medicine and the conservative suspicion of mind-altering drugs. While the sisters find that it is difficult to balance the books, their plant practices are in direct response to the demands of their urban clientele; they traffic in love potions and remedies as well as in their adaptation of Aunt Isabelle’s black soap, which protects the wearer from seedy subways and dark streets. Jet herself hopes to escape her grief-stricken state by taking the drug of the moment—LSD—on the Central Park meadow and feeling part of something larger. The drug has the effect of storybook magic when it kicks in, setting Jet on a trip with an onomatopoeic “whoosh” (163) as she experiences a “shimmering hallucination coiling and uncoiling in long stalks” and has the sense of some of her power being restored to her. However, the drug ultimately takes her back to the scene of her grief, as she finds herself running after Levi and wishing to unite with him in death and take her own life. Thus, rather than offering an escape, the drug further exposes her sorrow; Aunt Isabelle’s prophecy that one can never run away from oneself holds true in the face of modern cures for this affliction.

Still, another fruit of a more permissive society does help Jet get on with her life. The free love movement’s liberation of female sexuality and condoning of casual sex enables Jet to progress with her life when she loses her virginity to Plaza bellboy Rafael in Levi’s place, in the exact location she had planned to with her former love. While Jet initially wishes to deny reality, in inviting Rafael to pretend he is Levi, she soon finds that she can tolerate and even enjoy being with someone else. Although Rafael never takes Levi’s place as a partner, he enables her to have a modern sexual experience even as she remains devoted to her original beloved in a more traditional manner. In contrast, Vincent’s experiments with free love prove an empty means of passing the time, as he is fundamentally not attracted to the women he is seeing. Instead, his path to selfhood comes on the back of the gay-rights movement following his encounter with William. Unlike his trysts with women, the affair with William returns Vincent to himself and finally opens him up to the risks of the Owens curse, as there is more at stake for him to lose.

Finally, California, the site of many of the antiwar protests and experiments in social living, emerges on the scene, as April aims to create an environment where Regina will be safe. This sets the scene for Gillian and Sally’s upbringing at the start of the Practical Magic books and introduces the idea that Regina, with the halo of death around her, will not live long. California represents a progressive but fleeting interlude in the Owens family fortune.

In this climate of increased tolerance, the secrecy around the family curse begins to break down. For example, Jet and Vincent begin to share their secret and the threat that love will pose for them with their lovers, thereby making it less shameful. However, Frances, upon being summoned back to Haylin and seeing him allegedly happy with a normal girl, feels more burdened by the challenge of being an Owens than ever. She cannot reconcile her rational sense that Haylin’s ultimate well-being relies on his moving on from her with her overwhelming desire to be with him herself. Thus, the curse continues to cause problems for the characters and forces them into difficult decisions.