With Practical Magic returning to our screens, so too is one of cinema’s great drinking rituals: the Midnight Margarita.
In the original 1998 film, the Owens women gather in the kitchen, pull out the tequila and turn making a round of Margaritas into something approaching a spell. Aunt Frances and Aunt Jet chant over the blender, calling for Barbados lime and salt before magically flipping the switch on their makeshift cauldron. What follows is singing, dancing, sisterhood and, inevitably, a little chaos.
But the Margarita isn’t the only place where the everyday and the magical meet.
The Owens’ world is full of plants and ingredients that seem ordinary until you look a little closer. Mint is picked from the garden, and Sally tells us to keep rosemary by the garden gate, plant lavender for luck and throw spilled salt over the left shoulder.
For centuries, and in some cases millennia, people have attached meaning to everyday plants and botanicals: the same things we now muddle, infuse, ferment, garnish and pour into our glasses.
So, ahead of the return of the Owens sisters, we’re looking at five ingredients from the world of Practical Magic that still find their way into our drinks today – and the histories, myths and folk beliefs and how to bring a little of that magic into your glass today.
What are lavender’s magical properties? Luck, Love, Protection and Calm
Used for centuries to scent bathing, laundry and homes, later European folklore gave lavender spiritual power. It was hung or scattered around homes to ward off evil and, during periods of plague, was among the aromatic plants people believed could protect them from disease.
Some of those protective traditions may even have had a practical basis. Lavender has long been used as an insect deterrent, while modern research has found that lavender oil can repel a number of arthropods, including, in laboratory testing, scorpions. That doesn’t mean a pot on the windowsill constitutes reliable pest control, but it does offer an intriguing explanation for why an aromatic plant might have acquired a reputation for keeping unwanted things away.
Its association with sleep and calm also has an interesting scientific echo. Modern researchers have investigated lavender’s effects on anxiety, stress and sleep, with linalool – one of the compounds responsible for its distinctive scent – attracting particular interest for its effects on the nervous system.
The evidence doesn’t give us anything concrete as far as luck is concerned. But perhaps generations of people who associated lavender with good fortune were onto something in a different way: if its scent made them feel calmer and less stressed, perhaps the world simply felt a little luckier. After all, when you’re feeling good, you tend to notice the good things too
Then there is love. Lavender became tangled up with courtship, marriage and romantic divination, appearing beneath pillows, around newlyweds and in folk practices intended to reveal or attract a lover. It isn’t difficult to see how a plant prized for its perfume, tucked into clothing and bedding and associated with cleanliness and the home, could become entwined with intimacy too. Its delicate purple flowers would later add another layer of symbolism, with lavender shades variously associated with devotion and romance.
Imbibing the magic: How to use lavender in drinks
Lavender’s intensely floral, slightly herbal character means a little goes a long way. It works particularly well with lemon, honey, berries and stone fruit, usually introduced through a syrup or infusion. A lavender French 75 or Tom Collins lets its floral character play against plenty of sharp citrus, while a lavender lemonade does the same without the booze. Just use a light hand – there’s a fine line between beautifully perfumed and drinking the contents of your linen cupboard.
What are rosemary’s magical properties? Remembrance, Love and Protection
Native to the Mediterranean, rosemary’s most enduring magical association is with memory.
By the sixteenth century, the connection was already familiar enough to appear in poetry. In 1584, Clement Robinson wrote “Rosemarie is for remembrance”, while a few years later Shakespeare gave us the line that would become even more famous. In Hamlet, Ophelia hands out the herb with the words: “There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance.”
More than four centuries later, science has produced an intriguing echo of the old belief. Research into rosemary aroma has found associations between exposure to one of its major compounds, 1,8-cineole, and performance on certain cognitive tasks, while another study found people performed better on prospective-memory tasks -remembering to do something in the future – in a rosemary-scented room.
That association with memory also helps explain rosemary’s long relationship with death. Sprigs were carried by mourners, placed on coffins and thrown into graves, turning the herb into a physical way of remembering the dead.
Rosemary was also just as closely entwined with love. For centuries, it appeared at European weddings, carried by brides and guests, incorporated into bridal decorations and even used to decorate the marriage bed. Remembrance, fidelity and love became intertwined: rosemary wasn’t simply about finding someone, but remembering and remaining faithful to them.
And as for protection, rosemary’s powerful fragrance made it useful around bodies, homes and crowded ceremonial spaces. During outbreaks of plague, aromatic herbs including rosemary were burned in attempts to purify what people believed to be corrupted air. Such practices helped strengthen the plant’s reputation for cleansing and protection.
Here, too, there’s a small scientific twist. Rosemary contains compounds with demonstrated antimicrobial properties, and laboratory research has found rosemary extracts and essential oils can inhibit certain bacteria and fungi. That certainly doesn’t mean rosemary could protect someone from plague, but our ancestors weren’t entirely imagining its ability to make life difficult for some microbes.
Imbibing the magic: How to use rosemary in drinks
Rosemary’s piney, resinous character can stand up to much bolder drinks. Use rosemary syrup in a Whisky Sour, pair it with apple in a Calvados cocktail, or add a sprig to a Negroni, where its herbal character plays particularly well with the bitter botanicals. It also works beautifully with pear and honey in colder-weather drinks. If using it fresh, give the sprig a slap between your palms first to release its aromatic oils. Bartenders also sometimes torch rosemary to perfume a glass with smoke — an unexpectedly fitting modern echo of the centuries when the herb was burned in an attempt to cleanse the air.
What are salt’s magical properties? Protection, Purification and Luck
For much of human history, salt was far more than seasoning. It preserved food, made otherwise perishable supplies last and became valuable enough to leave its mark on our language. Our word “salary” comes from the Latin salarium, a word connected to sal, or salt – with the story being that Roman soldiers were literally paid their wages in salt.
Its ability to stop things from spoiling also made salt an extraordinarily potent spiritual symbol. Across different cultures and thousands of years, it repeatedly turns up wherever people are trying to purify, protect or make something endure.
In the Hebrew Bible, salt accompanies offerings, while a “covenant of salt” signifies an enduring agreement. In ancient Rome, salt also entered sacred life: the Vestal Virgins, priestesses of Vesta, prepared ritual foods and materials used in sacrifices and religious ceremonies.
Travel much further east and the underlying idea is strikingly familiar. In Japan, salt has a longstanding association with ritual purification in Shinto traditions. One of its most visible survivals happens before sumo bouts, when wrestlers scatter salt across the dohyō, or ring, to purify the space before fighting.
Elsewhere, salt became a defence against things less easily seen. Across European folk belief and later magical traditions, it acquired a reputation for keeping malevolent forces at bay, eventually giving us the familiar image of a protective circle of salt drawn around a person or place. Different traditions supplied different explanations, but the underlying logic isn’t difficult to understand: salt could prevent physical corruption, so perhaps it could keep spiritual corruption away too.
But salt could apparently bring bad luck as easily as it could keep it away.
By at least the early modern period, spilling salt was recorded in Britain as an omen of quarrelling or misfortune, with throwing some of the spilled salt over the left shoulder becoming a way of averting the consequences. Its value may have helped reinforce the belief – wasting something useful and expensive was hardly fortunate – although, as with most superstitions, there is no single tidy origin.
The left may be significant too. Within some Chrisitian mythology the devil is said to lurk behind your left shoulder, waiting to take advantage of your mistake. Throw the salt backwards and you effectively fling a substance associated with protection straight into his face. Indeed this is echoed in the English word “sinister”, derived from the Latin sinister, meaning left or on the left side.
Imbibing the magic: How to use salt in drinks
Salt does far more than sit on the rim of a Margarita. In tiny quantities it can soften bitterness and make other flavours seem more pronounced, which is why bartenders often use saline solution by the drop. A salted Margarita is the obvious place to start, but try a few drops of saline in a Martini, Daiquiri or Negroni, or use a pinch in drinks built around coffee, chocolate or caramel. Protective circle optional.
What are agave’s spiritual and sacred meanings?
First, an important distinction: tequila and its ancestors are not the same thing.
Agave has been woven into life in what is now Mexico for thousands of years. Long before anyone distilled tequila, Indigenous peoples were using different species of the plant for food, fibres, tools and fermented drinks. Tequila, by contrast, is a distilled spirit made specifically from blue agave, and the drink as we know it emerged much later, its history largely belonging to the colonial and post-colonial periods.
Among the oldest agave drinks still made today is pulque.
Unlike tequila, for which the agave hearts are cooked before fermentation and distillation, pulque is made by fermenting aguamiel, the sweet sap collected from certain mature maguey (agave) plants. The result is a milky, slightly viscous, lightly alcoholic drink whose history stretches back long before European colonisation.
In pre-Hispanic central Mexico, pulque occupied a place that went far beyond refreshment. Its production and consumption were bound up with social rules, ceremony and religion, while archaeological and historical evidence points to a very long relationship between maguey, fermented drink and ritual in the region.
Among the Mexica and other Nahua peoples of central Mexico, maguey was associated with Mayahuel, a female deity closely connected with the plant, nourishment and fertility. Surviving pre-Hispanic and early colonial codices depict her emerging from or sitting within a maguey, making the relationship between deity and plant unusually literal.
The mythology surrounding pulque becomes more colourful still. Mayahuel, alongside Patecatl, a diety associated with pulque and fermentations, were regarded in some traditions as the parents of the Centzon Totochtin, or “Four Hundred Rabbits” – a host of rabbit deities representing intoxication and its many different forms. The number 400 signified an almost uncountable multitude, rather than a literal tally. The idea was wonderfully observant: there wasn’t simply one kind of drunkenness. Each rabbit represented a different way alcohol might take hold of you. That doesn’t mean, however, that a sacred drink was an excuse for everyone to get drunk.
As for tequila, there are no ancient beliefs to uncover. The spirit emerged centuries later, following the introduction and development of distillation in colonial Mexico. But at its heart is the same plant: agave, whose connections with gods, fertility, ritual and intoxication stretch back thousands of years. So while there may be no ancient magic in the liquid itself, there is plenty in what it’s made from.
Imbibing the magic: How to drink agave
The Midnight Margarita is the obvious place to start: tequila, orange liqueur, fresh lime and salt – but agave has far more range than Margaritas alone. Tequila works particularly well with grapefruit, chilli, tropical fruit and herbal flavours, while mezcal brings smoke and earthiness to drinks such as a Mezcal Negroni or Oaxaca Old Fashioned. And if you can find pulque, try it neat: it’s about as close as your glass can get to agave’s ancient drinking history.
What are lime’s magical properties? Cleansing, Protection and Prosperity
Despite the Caribbean landscape evoked by Practical Magic‘s “Barbados lime”, the ancestors of today’s cultivated limes originated in Asia. Citrus travelled west through trade, migration and conquest, eventually reaching the Mediterranean before crossing the Atlantic with Europeans.
By the colonial period though citrus had become firmly established in the Caribbean. Barbados developed an important lime-growing industry, exporting both the fruit and its juice.
Evergreen trees covered in fragrant white blossom and brightly coloured fruit – and capable of flowering and fruiting at the same time – make a pretty convincing case for why citrus became such a potent symbol of abundance and prosperity.
Citrus also found its way into cleansing and protective folk practices. Lemons and other citrus fruits have been pierced, hung, washed with or combined with other ingredients in rituals intended to repel unwanted influences.
And, once again, there may be a little practical reality hiding behind the symbolism. Citrus peel contains aromatic compounds whose essential oils have demonstrated antibacterial and antifungal activity in laboratory studies.
As for protection, there was one area in which citrus really did live up to its reputation. In the 1700s, scurvy was devastating sailors on long voyages, causing exhaustion, bleeding gums, loosening teeth, old wounds to reopen and, eventually, death. Yet it was discovered that citrus fruits could prevent and treat the disease, even though nobody understood why. It would be almost two centuries before vitamin C was identified and scientists could explain what those sailors had experienced firsthand. If citrus already carried associations with protection, saving people from one of the most feared diseases at sea can only have helped cement its reputation.
Imbibing the magic: How to use lime in drinks
Lime is indispensable behind the bar, providing the sharp acidity that balances sweetness and brings freshness. But look beyond the usual suspects: pair it with pandan and coconut for something green and aromatic, use it with tamarind for a sweet-sour edge, or combine it with watermelon and chilli for a punchier summer drink. Lime also loves savoury flavours; cucumber, coriander and even a touch of fish sauce can work brilliantly in cocktails – while black lime, made by drying whole limes, brings an altogether different character of earthy, fermented citrus to drinks.
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