“I will only marry the one who brings me an authentic blue rose,” said the princess to her father, the emperor, in order to avoid a forced and loveless marriage.

“I will only fall in love with someone who has two eyes of different colors,” declares the dark-haired Owens sister in the opening scenes of Practical Magic (1998), scattering rose petals spiraling in the air. She wanted to escape the Owens curse, which doomed every true lover to a tragic death.

Forgive my parallelism—jumping from an ancient Chinese folktale to a cult film like Practical Magic (based on the homonymous novel by Alice Hoffman).
But in the end, what is so different? I’ll tell you what I think.

Women have always tried to escape their destiny in societies that often wanted them subdued—or even branded them as witches.
And what is the one thing they wished for?
To be free to truly love. To be free to be with their authentic love—or better, to be alone forever.

Nothing has truly changed in that respect. We are still tragically romantic, rebellious, trembling—but standing on our own two feet.

I recently gifted an old friend of mine our Blue Roses Triskelion, and that’s why.

Blue roses are symbols of rarity and the unattainable. This stems from the fact that it was once nearly impossible to obtain a blue rose—it does not occur naturally, and it took years of genetic experimentation to create even a light-blue variety.

They stand for rarity for that very reason. You either have to paint a rose blue or breed one yourself.

My friend is rare—not only for her exceptional imagination and courage—but also because she is about to achieve what she once thought impossible: to publish her children’s stories in a saturated editorial market, where connections (which she lacks) often mean everything.

She needs blue roses to remind herself that she is special, and to accept that her dream is not as impossible as she once believed.

The Triskelion we chose to match our blue roses adds another important meaning: there are always three guiding principles in every life that should never be betrayed.
This is the only prerequisite to chase your dreams and succeed.
And indeed, this is the hardest part—to find your guiding values and never let them go.

The princess eventually fell in love with a penniless minstrel and convinced everyone that he had brought her the authentic blue rose required for their marriage.
It wasn’t true—he had only brought a white rose.
But who cares? She got what she wanted!

Sally Owens, too, found her two-colored-eyed, good-looking detective.
It took some magic and even a murder along the way—but hey, the dead guy was cruel, and as for the magic… she simply couldn’t help it.

So this is our conclusion:
Take your blue roses with you any time you think that what you can attain is more important than what you might have to sacrifice along the way.