Practical Magic 2: Sisterhood, Sacrifice, and the Sacred Path

This blog contains spoilers for Practical Magic 2. If you haven’t seen it yet sisters, go watch it, it’s out for digital release today!

For too long, across generations, witches have seen themselves portrayed in stories as the villains. People have long been taught to fear witches, and witches have learned to fear themselves. Even today, there are many stories, books, games, and movies that cast witches as villains, leaning into perpetuated stereotypes of evil women cackling at their cauldrons and stealing youth, beauty, and power that doesn’t belong to them.

This I believe is one reason why so many witches have been drawn to Practical Magic, both the book and the movie from 1998. I encountered it when I was a much younger witch, still on my journey to come out of the broom closet myself, and seeing the family of witches on screen was very special to me. And aside from some understandable movie magic, I find that the practices of the Owens women are fairly close in many ways to the way that the craft is actually done by witches today. The women grow their own herbs, perform sacred rituals, and I felt that the story of Maria Owen’s desire to protect her daughters twisting into a curse because of her fear and anger is an insightful representation of how magick actually works. 

Like many witches, I was very excited when Practical Magic 2 was announced, and have at this point seen it in theaters several times and am thrilled that it’s coming out to watch digitally today. Nothing will ever replace the deep love I hold in my heart for the first movie, but I have come to love this one in its own way as well. As always with content about witchcraft, I watched with a discerning eye and have thoughts about different elements of the movie that I want to share with other witches. Like all of my offerings though, this blog is just my own opinion, please always feel free to take what resonates with you and leave what doesn’t.

Sisterhood

Practical Magic 2 carries something forward from the first movie in a beautiful and I think very intentional way: the power of sisterhood.

I’m always encouraging witches (as well as women who are not witches) to gather together as much as possible. There’s something deeply magickal about women cooking or laughing or eating together, sharing stories, and helping each other. I’ve witnessed this magick many times in person, and I love seeing it depicted in these movies. 

The first movie demonstrated the power of sisterhood in many ways, centering on the bond between Sally and Gilly, but we also see it woven into the interactions of the Aunts and even Sally’s young daughters. And of course, one of the most iconic scenes in that movie was when Sally called in the help of the other women in the community to banish Jimmy’s vengeful spirit and save Gilly’s life.

Although I have loved that scene for a long time, one element that I want to speak to now is that not all women are witches. As witches are shown in a more positive light in the media, I see a lot of misinformation about this. It’s true that the power of sisterhood is real and sacred, and I always want to encourage women to gather regardless of whether they are witches or not. And, witchcraft is a sacred practice that is deeply misunderstood, and much of our history has been destroyed. I am not here to invalidate any person who knows that they are a witch. And I want to say clearly that yes, all sisterhood is sacred, yes there is real power in women gathering together. And, not all women are witches.

Because sisterhood is so important to me, I deeply appreciated that in the second movie, the power of sisterhood was again woven throughout. And not only the power, but also the preciousness of the sister bond. Even when Sally and Gilly are bickering and they seem like they can’t stand each other, they’re there for one another, and we see that depth of care between Antonia and Kylie as well.

Also, when the witches were facing down a powerful man at the end of this movie, we had a beautiful recall to the original. It wasn’t the handsome professor coming to the rescue or a powerful artifact or a trick up a sleeve that won the day. It was a group of women, united in purpose, creating a powerful circle, holding one another’s hands.

Sacrifice

One topic that I want to discuss with care and gentleness is about Franny’s sacrifice at the end of the movie. I thought it was a beautiful scene, very much in harmony with the spirit of water, and I know many witches who shed a lot of tears at the passing of both Franny and Jetty at the beginning of the movie. And at the same time, it pushed me to contemplate themes of curse breaking and sacrifice, and the narratives about them that we carry forward in the modern craft today.

I myself had actually forgotten that Franny’s death was included in Alice Hoffman’s The Book of Magic, which Practical Magic 2 is based on. When I went back and looked over the book again, I saw that the movie had crafted a careful adaptation of that scene. And even though I felt that drowning was an unlikely death for a witch (old knowledge says that witches float, which was likely due to the fact that women often float because of a higher bodyfat percentage than men), the imagery was beautiful and powerful and has stuck with me long after watching the movie.

The only thing that I have been contemplating is the belief woven into this theme of sacrifice: that one must sacrifice something irreplaceable in order to gain something precious. We have an old narrative in our society of “a life for a life”, which I have found to be deeply rooted in patriarchal beliefs. 

I think it’s important for witches today to keep things like this in mind when taking in any content, but I think that we need to be especially discerning when watching movies because movies and shows are so influential for our societal consciousness right now. Movies like Practical Magic are even shaping how witches are practicing because we’ve lost so much history and there’s no standard of practice for us unless you follow the Wiccan religion. Because we don’t have that solid bedrock of knowledge handed down to us, we need to be especially conscious of what we choose to include as a part of our craft and what we don’t want to be part of it. The mythology we carry forward is important, and in our modern day, movies have become part of our shared mythology whether we are aware of it or not.

I want to be clear that I fully understand how Franny’s sacrifice makes sense within the plot of the story. I understand that within the story, it was the only way to break the ancestral curse on the Owens family, and the only way to save Gideon’s life.

However, even incredible authors who highlight the power of the divine feminine can sometimes weave in old patriarchal themes without intending to. I don’t mean this as a criticism to Alice Hoffman. I hope that we can shed light on the bedrock of this idea that sacrifice is somehow necessary in life and in magick.

We see the theme of sacrifice deeply embedded in many patriarchal myths and religions. We can see it clearly in Christianity, of course, as well as in Abrahamic religions that pre-date Christianity. And we know that the Christian religion teaches codependence through the narrative of sacrifice: it teaches that you need a savior, and that savior died for your sins, and so trusting and worshipping that savior honors the life-dept that you owe.

My intuition tells me that the truth of the power of sacrifice is not what we think it is today. I believe that the universe sees sacrifice as part of the cosmic balance, but not in the way that our stories have expressed. In the great cosmic cycle, beings die so that others may live, but it’s part of the huge and ever turning wheel of life.

My intuition says that maybe “a life for a life” was never meant to balance on such a short timescale as something like Franny dies so that Gideon may live. What if there had been a different way to lift the curse on the Owens family line? What if it was messy and it looked like years of introspection and self-care and inner healing like it is for many of us witches looking to break our own ancestral curses today? It might not have been as cinematic, but what if Franny didn’t need to give up her life, she just needed to pass on her wisdom and learn about pattern-breaking herself along with the younger generations of witches?

Franny walking into the water, holding Jet’s hand, is a beautiful image, and one that is deeply layered and meaningful. And I hope that other witches will contemplate with me on this theme of sacrifice, and whether it’s a narrative that we choose to carry forward in our stories and our craft.

The Sacred Path

One more aspect of Practical Magic 2 that I want to look at with a discerning eye is their depiction of the paths a witch may choose to walk in witchcraft, and particularly the movie’s handling of “the left-handed path”.

It can be tricky for many modern witches to navigate the binary that many still try to place on the craft today. I personally have received the question, “are you a good witch or a bad witch” many times throughout my life. My answer for those who ask is that a witch is a witch is a witch. There are no simply good or bad witches, just like there are no simply good or bad people. The craft is expansive and complex, and each witch makes their own choices based on their own knowledge, intentions, and the situation at hand.

This is not to say that baneful magick does not exist. It does. However, differentiating between baneful magick, or “the left-handed path” and non-baneful magick is not as simple as the movie made it out to be.

When witches were granted the 13 powers of the craft, one of the abilities granted was to bless and to curse. Importantly, it was to bless and to curse, both in one ability. The power to curse was given to us as a form of self-protection.

In the movie, the “left-handed path” could easily be mistaken for something bad or evil. When Kylie begins pursuing the left-handed path, disturbing images flash across the screen and it’s portrayed as dark and scary. Baneful magick can absolutely be dark and scary (although remember that again, darkness and evil are also not the same), but the way that the movie made it out to be can make it seem simply selfish and evil.

When Thomas is facing off against Gilly, Sally, and Kylie at the end of the movie, his stolen power is depicted as dark threads of energy, while the women' s threads of energy are golden and bright. This to me was showing us that Thomas was using what we were meant to understand as the “bad” magick, while the witches were using “good” magick.

But witches know that magick is more subtle and complicated than that. What the Owens women did at the end of the movie was in truth baneful magick itself, creating an energetic boundary around Thomas until his own stolen power destroyed him. In witchcraft, creating an energetic boundary like that is a hex. As the viewer we don’t fault them for this because Thomas was attacking them, the women were acting in self-defense. And if the visual language of the movie was more nuanced, we would have understood that the act of self-defense was itself part of the left-handed path.

Also we can see baneful herbalism in both movies when the sisters dose men with the belladonna, but one more example is actually the love spell shown in the first movie, when the aunts take a request from a woman and have her kill a dove for the working. (I want to express that I never sacrifice or harm animals in my craft, I am a vegetarian and care deeply for all animals). Aside from the sacrificial element in the movie, love spells impact the agency of the subject of the cast, and so I define them as baneful magick as well.

All of this is not to say that I found anything wrong with the Owens women using baneful magick in the movies to protect themselves, or that I think baneful magick should be used frivolously. I see a lot of content on social media where witches are teaching people to curse or hex other people (I’ve seen a lot of things like “hex your ex”) and as an experienced witch, I want to sincerely recommend that you do not hex or curse casually. It can be unjustly harmful to the subject of the working, and it also often comes back to negatively impact the witch in unexpected ways.

Like many things about witchcraft, the left-handed path is complex and much more nuanced than can be easily captured on the screen.

 Moving Forward with Intention

After watching Practical Magic 2, I’m glad to see another depiction of witches in the media that portrays us in a kind and humanizing way. The stories that we tell have deep, lasting impacts on the shape of our reality. I hope many witches are inspired by the movie and enjoy watching it as much as I have.

I also believe that it’s always important to use our discernment when encountering new stories, even if it’s content that we enjoy. A witch knows that all things, even the things we love, are almost always more nuanced and complicated than they seem.