Word Magic & Crafting Purpose: What is Practical Magic?

One foot in my door today could easily convince you that I am, in fact, a witch.

Guilty by association, I have a homemade sailor’s knot hanging on that door, drying herbs above you in the foyer, sea water boiling on the kitchen stove, a permanently present deck of tarot cards on the coffee table, and fresh-cut dahlias by my side at the colonial writing desk in the corner.

I remind you that “whimsical” furnishings and behaviors are again becoming very popular, and you relax.

Don’t mind the flock of nearly fifty starlings out the window, I haven’t the faintest idea why they choose my yard mid-murmuration. Instead, I’ll bring your attention back from the declining sunflowers, still buzzing with bees, back to our hand-held windows to the world, where social media buzzes in anticipation of the release of Practical Magic 2.

Though I’ve been watching this movie with the women in my family for decades and reading the books as a young adult, I find myself, in my modern era, wondering about the title and its implications.

“Practical Magic…” I avoid the instinct to quickly let the internet interpret Alice Hoffman’s goals for such a title to instead, allow my own word magic to slip through.

Practical, as in the realistic, regular usage of magic behaviors in life. To be practical and witness the importance of living a very human and modern existence while leaving room along the seams of routine for the allure of old magic to weave through its gaps.

Gaps, the spaces of rare peace in my life when both children are sleeping and I do something useful with my magic. Or perhaps the real magic, when both children are awake but fully invested in sharing an activity with me. I recognize the potent power of learning, love, and laughter, everything that takes place within a wake window.

Window, a dedication of time (however fleeting) that life communes with the values of nature. Be it a short window for witnessing a newborn return to birthweight, or perhaps a longer one, like that of the first full year of breastfeeding, I wonder, can we witness a window of time while we’re in it? Or, like the double entendre suggests, can we only look back on, through the lens, a window of time to realize its preciousness?

I’m learning that you can’t push the people in your life to appreciate a personal daily magic; to be equally moved by it, as you do. Recently, my husband laughed at my reaction to him not recognizing the word scrying. “Really, scrying, nothing?” I looked on, confounded. “Why would I know what that is? He teased.

“Scrying is an old magic,” I told him, a magick, I thought to myself to avoid further confusion. “It’s how diviners and people of all different ability gazed into a medium to read a fortune, or gain guidance.” Bless his muggle heart, but he wasn’t following and stopped listening as I carried on with my point internally. Magic balls, mirrors, lakes, smoke, there was almost always an element of water involved in scrying — in reaching — to better know ourselves and the forces around us acting as influence. Along with defining a practical magic in my life, I question what version of scrying I utilize. I can easily see how writing is what I lean into, the screen of blank potential waiting to be shaped by my question or request. If a longing to write is the magic, the sitting to build a world of words then, is the craft.

Craft, a practice of cultivating skills and, in the process of honing them, creating a new medium that previously didn’t exist. I like to craft: to spend time making the things I see in my head come to life with my hands. I enjoy the calendar dependent or somewhat impulsive arrival of new crafts in my life, so much so that I named my online writing platform, A Casual Craft. This play on words and its coastal theming takes weight off the pressure of creating new material under the title of “doctor,” releasing me from speaking as an authority figure on every topic that I share. After publishing two wellness books, I feel that I’ve exhausted that single lane highway and this title is a way of saying up front, “I’m keeping it Caj here.”

It’s freeing to write without the goal of converting a reader into clientele and sharing passion without a monetary purpose…while I’m between purposes.

Purpose, I drift between modalities of art, music, plants, writing, and physical expression, striving to understand both my personal and communal impact from each realm. Despite actively raking through the sand to find my one grain of sole (soul) purpose, I am wise enough and Sagittarius enough, to know that my quest is a lifelong endeavor. In the meantime, while writing to you all, I quench my thirst for knowledge by organizing and verbalizing the impact that new experiences have on me. In an unformatted and practical way, I write on the rare days when I can casually craft letters, essays, short-stories, and the occasional book, in hopes that my pensive observations of nature and human nature, will remind you readers to shine the lantern in all directions as you make forward progress in life.

Life, the ultimate craft. That we have the ability to be custodians for gardens, guardians for children, and artisans that can shape our desires into reality…it’s a largeness that is hard to swallow. Yet, like my first attempt at making sea salt from local waters, I get closer to the perfect recipe with each attempt. Boiling all themes to their breaking point and using water to separate bitterness from beauty, I reduce my final offerings into something singular, inviting, and digestible. So that when delivered, you see or hear something so familiar that you find a place for it in the real-world.

The legacy magic for me, is the most compelling piece of Practical Magic’s story. Of course we want the house, the bangs, and our sister to live with us forever; she, like any sister knows, shines brightest when she’s surrounded by women who know and celebrate her. But the legacy magic that the Owens women demonstrate, the white magic that wins any battle, is what draws us in as viewers. I love the tangible feeling of belonging that comes off the screen; a small smirk from an aunt, a hand that lingers on the wooden banister, or dressing like a crazy person in the garden. Each numinal behavior inspires me to create such a space, for both myself and a daughter; I hope to pass on only the best of me.

I aimed to close this flow of word casting with a strong statement about honoring legacy and learning a craft to pass on, but, now I that I’m here and actually living my closest version of the life in Practical Magic, I realize the importance of un-learning a craft. Where had I interpreted the sense of perfection — somewhere between Faith Hill and Stevie Nicks — in the women’s journey of adapting, committing, and surrendering? The younger versions of myself missed the mature point of inner magic; a living skill that is ever unwinding.

I now know that I’ll need to un-learn the large things I’ve experienced. For the sake of rediscovering all that is small and sacred, I’m remembering how to teach and express admiration for it all. While doing this, I hope to pass on a flexibility when it comes to learning a craft so that children, readers, and students, can continue to spread magic despite gaps in purpose, brief windows of change, or the inevitable small cracks that appear in the making of life.

Why? Because all the lives that we find ourselves in a circle with will bring forward any tools that they have to get the job done and we, in response, will need to know how to receive it and put it to good use. So play with all the hobbies and crafts to familiarize yourself gently with…everything.

All amateurs are welcome.

Bring brooms, vacuums, paintbrushes, knives, pencils, shovels, scissors…

bring whatever instrument you are currently transfixed on,

whatever you believe in,

whatever’s practical.