For a long time, I kept my altar in the corner of my home office.  Partially because it was convenient, but mostly because my home office is on the second floor of my house.  Out sight and out of mind.

There wasn't anything overtly wrong with that arrangement.  I spend a lot of time in my office and the energy there is usually pretty calm.  I have incense and candles and a recliner in the corner where I sometimes take a meditation break.  But it is a working space.  

The office is where I write and blog and broadcast and make and take all sorts of phone calls and file my taxes and budget and pay bills and work on my shop...and the list goes on and on.

Which is probably why setting my grandmother's sideboard up as an altar in the corner of that work space never felt quite right. And why (after a year of keeping my altar in the office) I decided to bring a few key items down to shared first floor living space.

In my old house that space would have meant the den or kitchen but here, in this house, we have a few very appreciated extra rooms.  One of these is my home office.  Another is a living room  with a big mirror in the space that would ordinarily hold the black hole of an unused TV. 

No available TV means that other family members don't stay in the living room for long and because of this the room has gradually become my space and the natural repository for my favorite things. And so, over the last few weeks, it seemed more and more appropriate that my altar items be among those things.

The only problem I could see was this the living room is where we entertain the occasional guest and (shades of my mother) I found myself worrying about what that guest might think.

Magical Cabinet on Display for All to See!

So I began to change things in a cautious way.  The first change involved a very inconspicuous wall altar (above).  The second placed some occult looking tchotchkes on an upper shelf.  I noticed that other people noticed these changes but I found that I really wasn't all that interested in the conclusions that were drawn.

Recklessly, I began to fill up my grandmothers old china cabinet (at right) with the accoutrements of the Craft.  In a few short weeks the majority of my altar items had made their way downstairs.

The living room is different, now, though the change is not extreme. I don't have a permanent freestanding altar, my Goddess statues aren't big enough to stand out and there are a lot of things I put away when they aren't being used.  

At first glance the living room seems pretty ordinary or at the very least subtly unlike other small town rooms.  But subtle isn't the same as hiding and hiding was what the office altar really meant.  So why was I okay with doing that for an entire year?

Maybe because I didn't know how freedom felt.

Last month when I went to Salem I walked the busy streets in the company of dozens, if not hundreds, of other witches.  It seemed like everyone was wearing pentagrams and I saw that some were even wearing cloaks.  Nobody seemed concerned with that.  Which, of course, wasn't always the case.

In between the witch trials of 1693 (when my own great aunt was hung) and the pre-Halloween celebration of 2015 Salem changed from a place of rampant intolerance to pretty open-minded place. Mixing with that crazy crowd it occurred to me, that in order for that to happen, a whole lot of people had to overcome their fear of what other people think.  And that was meaningful to me.

I am still mostly in the closet in my daily life. Nobody notices my herb garden. Or asks me why I don't go to church.  The outer changes I am making are tiny, insignificant, almost imperceptible shifts - but, for me, they are a start.

"Practical Magic" is one of my all time favorite feel-good movies.  I love it because it is lighthearted  and fun while at the same smart and well-acted and magical.  And I have watched it more times than I care to admit.

I don't love it just because it is about witches and magic or because Nichole Kidman is one of my favorite actresses.  I love it because it really is a wonderful movie.

Sally is sympathetic and brave.  Gillian is compellingly flawed.  The aunts are adoptable.  The house, which is not (sadly) a real house, is to die for.  To me, the whole movie is absolutely enchanting from start to finish.  (And they play "Crystal" which is one my favorite Stevie Nicks song at the end.)

And so - having liked the movie so much for so long - it's really kind of surprising that I didn't get around to reading the book (actually listening to the audiobook) until just last month.  But I have to say that I'm glad that I finally gave it change.

"Practical Magic" the book, is not like the movie, in many ways which is not unusual of course in books that are later made into movies.  The book isn't comedic - though it is funny at times - and it isn't really all that lighthearted.  It isn't enormously fast moving either.  In fact, there is a lot backstory, a fair amount of description, and not as much dialogue (or action) as you might expect.

The book does something, however, that the movie does not.  It leads us into the minds and hearts of all of the characters - delicately, carefully and very insightfully.

In the book we get the full story on why Sally is afraid to love.  We learn why she became her sister's partner in crime.  We understand exactly how Gillian allowed herself to end up in such a predicament.  We get a look at the aunts that we do NOT get in the movie.

And we find ourselves caring about all of this in a way we probably did not when we watched the movie.

I was actually a little surprised how invested I became in the characters considering that I already knew exactly how the book would turn out.  Or close :)

So if you loved the movie (or even if you somehow did not) consider given the book a read (or listen)!