63 pages • 2-hour read
The Book of Magic
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Background
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of suicidal ideation and substance use.
Literary Context: The Practical Magic Series
The Book of Magic is the 2021 installment in Alice Hoffman’s Practical Magic series, which includes elements of both fantasy and magical realism. The series opens with Practical Magic, published in 1995 (which was made into a film in 1998). The 2017 prequel, The Rules of Magic, is about the lives of Jet, Franny, and Vincent when they’re young and live in New York, while Magic Lessons (2020) digs deeper into the past, detailing the life of Maria Owens, who cursed her descendants: Those they love will die.
In The Rules of Magic, Jet, Franny, and Vincent’s mother, Susanna, tries to keep them from learning about magic, but their inherent gifts are too strong. They stay with their aunt, Isabelle, in her house on Magnolia Street, and she teaches them about their lineage. Vincent starts doing black (left-handed) magic and sleeping with various women, including a distant cousin, April. April’s daughter, Regina, gives birth to Sally and Gillian. Eventually, Vincent gives up left-handed magic and comes out as gay, and (after faking his death) lives with his beloved, William, in France. Jet falls in love with Levi, Reverend Willard’s son. Because of the curse, Levi (and Jet’s parents) died in a car accident. Jet goes to the Plaza Hotel, intending to die by suicide, but the bellhop, Rafael, saves her life. They keep their relationship casual to avoid the curse. Franny falls in love with a man named Haylin, but refuses to be with him because of the curse. Jet and Franny open a store offering herbal cures in Greenwich Village. After Isabelle dies, they move into the house on Magnolia Street. After Haylin is diagnosed with cancer, he and Franny marry and live together. At the end of The Rules of Magic, Sally and Gillian’s parents die, and the girls go to live with Jet and Franny.
In Practical Magic, Jet and Franny raise Sally and Gillian, teaching them about their bloodline powers and green (healing) magic. Sally marries her beloved, Michael, and they have two daughters, Antonia and Kylie. However, the curse claims Michael’s life: He’s killed by a drunk driver. Gillian becomes involved with an abusive man named Jimmy. She uses belladonna to drug him and, with Sally’s help, buries him in the backyard of the house on Magnolia Street. Jimmy’s ghost begins to haunt them, and a police officer, Gary, comes looking for Jimmy. Jet and Franny help Sally and Gillian put Jimmy’s spirit to rest. Gary and Sally fall in love. Gillian falls in love with Antonia’s science teacher, Ben.
Cultural Context: Grimoires
The Book of Magic discusses many grimoires, or magical texts, referencing some of the same occult texts as Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein (1818), such as Agrippa’s Third Book of Occult Philosophy. Frankenstein’s father calls Agrippa “sad trash,” but Christopher Marlowe’s 1589 play Doctor Faustus calls Agrippa “cunning.” Hoffman alludes to other grimoires, such as Aradia or the Gospel of the Witches, Red Skin (Rauoskinna), and The Book of Solomon (part of the Old Testament in the Bible, or part of the Apocrypha per some denominations). According to Richard Cavendish in A History of Magic (1977), “The most famous western textbook of magic is the Key of Solomon” (57). Agrippa cites the Key of Solomon in his occult philosophy. The History of Magic, which Ian writes in Hoffman’s The Book of Magic, is comparable to Richard Cavendish’s book.
Hoffman even integrates elements from grimoires into The Book of Magic. The book’s many lists mirror those in grimoires. For instance, she writes that Jet “was delighted to see her neighbors, many of whom had found their way to the Owenses’ front door over the years [for] horseradish and cayenne for coughs, Fever Tea for flu, black mustard seed for those plagued by nightmares” (43). As in Hoffman’s book, grimoires contain lists of herbs; they also contain lists of names for demons, gods, and other spiritual entities. Furthermore, Hoffman describes the red ink used alongside black ink in the fictional Book of the Raven: “a page written in red ink, made of madder roots or berries or blood” (258). Many historical grimoires include both black and red ink. The title of The Book of the Raven recalls The Book of the Raven King, one of the fictional grimoires in Susanna Clark’s 2004 novel Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell.
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