The Rules of Magic

Travel Guide

Magic in Manhattan

“New York City was a cauldron of pollution and humidity”

This is the Manhattan where the Practical Magic sisters lived in the 1950s. No one knows they are witches and they don’t even know themselves but  their childhood is very different to that of other children and they start to learn.

Aunt Isabel’s house – Massachussetts

Where they go to grow and become the adults and the witchery kinds they will become in Practical Magic. Their aunt lives on fictional Maria’s Island in Massachusetts where they spend the summer

Magic bits   The Magus

The Magus was so hot to the touch she burned her fingers on its binding as she plucked if from its hiding place. It was not the sort of item a person licked up on a whim. You had to know what you were looking for, and you had to have the courage to handle it.

Any copies that had been unearthed at the turn of the century had been burned in a bonfire in Washington Square.

When the anti-witchcraft mania raged in New England, spurred on by politics, greed, and religion, ignited by Cotton Mather and the infamous and cruel judge John Hathrone, in New York only two witch trials had taken place in 1658 and again in  1665, one in Queens, the other on Long Island, then called Yorkshire in the town of Satauket, both involving residents who had ties to Boston.