I thought I would elaborate a little bit about Grimoire and Book of Shadows, I've talked about what they are, and what the difference is between them, but as I was writing in my Grimoire this morning I was thinking back to the first Grimoire I ever made and I remembered how daunting it was starting one. So I figured I would talk a little bit about how to go about creating a Grimoire & BOS, how to select the type of book to use, what things you can use as a Grimoire & BOS, how to organise your book, how to decorate your book, what to put in it, and most importantly how to use your book.
I remember growing up and watching the TV show Charmed, they had the most beautiful Grimoire, and even now I see the prettiest books on Instagram and Pinterest, and I always think they are just so magickal, they look so impressive. Alas, I am no artist, I've got no talent at all in the department, I can't even scrapbook, I've tried, and it ended up looking like a 3-year-old had made it.
But regardless of how artistic you are, you can create a beautiful and more importantly functional Grimoire.
A BOS or a Grimoire?
This is often the first decision that needs to be made when first creating your Grimoire or BOS, you need to keep in mind what you are going to be using your books for, did you decide to have a BOS & Grimoire, or just one. Is your Grimoire going to contain all your knowledge and research and your BOS your personal account of your magickal journey that holds all your spellwork and rituals? Do you want different Grimoires that are topic specific, one for herbology, one for lunar magick, and one for correspondences?
Once you have decided on that then it will be easier to select the type of book you need. So from this point in the post onwards, I'm going to refer to a Grimoire as research and knowledge and a BOS as spells and rituals, but remember you can choose what to call your books, or even if you want books at all you may decide digital is easier, you decide what information to collect and keep. You do what resonates with you.
Witchcraft is a never-ending journey of knowledge you can never “know-it-all”, there is always something else to learn or a new topic to be studied. Your knowledge will evolve naturally over time as will your craft. You may fill many many Grimoires and Book of Shadows you don't just have to have one. It’s actually a great trip down memory lane to look back over your past Grimoires and see not only how far you have come and the knowledge you have complied, but how you have evolved as a person and as a witch.
Another thing to keep in mind is that when you first begin to walk a witchcraft path you may start off as Wiccan, or a Green Witch, etc, but as you grow and learn you will probably decide to branch out and learn and explore other paths. As you do this your Grimoire will reflect that. My first Grimoires and Book of Shadows were all Wiccan, then slowly morphed into what I am still practising today, eclectic, grey witchcraft.
Selecting your Book.
Selecting the type of book to use for a Grimoire is tricky and usually witches will discover through trial and error what works for them and what doesn't.
I've tried a lot of different ways, handwritten large tomes that hold all my information, research, and spellwork in one place, I've tried two separate books, I've tried digital, I've tried typed pages that I printed out and put in a folder, a three-ring binder, I've tried a craft book, I've tried to make my own paper and bind my own book, I've tried a journal, and at one stage I even tried having notebooks that were just for one category but I ended up with over 20 notebooks. There are pros and cons to each choice, it's just finding what's right for you.
So the way to select your book is by thinking about
What type of organisational structure do you want to follow
Chronological order
Write it down as you learn
By topic
How do you want to record your information, knowledge and spellwork
Handwritten
Typed and printed
Cut and Paste
A mix of both
Pictures like a scrapbook
Digitally stored
Do you want your book to be like a novel, a textbook, or an encyclopedia?
Will you use paint, like watercolours? (Mixing the watercolours with moon water is a great way to imbue magick into your book.)
Will you use a collage-type approach and forage from nature things like feathers, leaves and soil?
Would you like the pages to have the same layout and style or will it be freeform?
What kind of personality do you have?
This one might sound silly, but, if you are organised and OCD like me with no artistic ability, a digital Grimoire is great once you have researched and got everything you need you can then copy it into a book of your choice or print it out.
But if you don't mind a bit of chaos then writing it down as you learn it is a great way to go. Either way, a great tip is when you are preparing for a spell or ritual mark the pages you will need with tabs, and copy or print out the pages you will need for your ritual, this allows your spellwork to run smoothly and doesn't waste time flipping through pages until you find what you need.
There are multiple items that can be used as a Grimoire, here's a list of some ideas:
An art book
A scrapbook
A notebook
A three-ring binder with clear protector sheets
A handmade book
A journal
A digital Grimoire (apps like google drive, Evernote, Onenote)
Make your own paper and bind your book
Cleansing & Blessing your new book.
So you have decided on what to call your book, you have chosen the book itself, and now it's time to cleanse/purify and bless your book, this is the same process that your use for any ritual item you use or a tarot deck you might get.
It doesn’t matter if your using a Grimoire and a Book of Shadows if one is purely for information and the other is for spellwork, it doesn’t even matter if your Grimoire is digital (Ipads, tablets, laptops and PCs, if they're used for any magickal workings, should all be cleansed and blessed).
Think of the cleansing and blessing of your book as the same as getting a new tarot deck, how many people have touched, held, and handled it? Those that have touched it, their energy has been transferred to it. Whoever created the book - their energy is on it, while it sat on a shelf how many people picked it up and held it, in fact, someone even had to unbox it and place it on that shelf, that's a whole lot of other peoples energy on your sacred book.
You want to start off with cleansing because that's like a blank page, you can then bless the book imbuing not just your sacred energy into the book but creativity, positivity maybe even wisdom and knowledge whatever you feel is needed or wanted. A blessing also has the added benefit of protection, and you definitely want your books protected, your Grimoire is an extension of you, the more of your energy and your magick, that you infuse into your book the more powerful it will be.
As I said before you cleanse your Grimoire with the same method you would a ritual tool or new tarot deck, there are a few different ways to do this, you can use, cleansing with smoke, crystals, sun and moon, salt, sound, and visualisation. To read the Cleansing post click here. While you’re cleansing your book with your preferred method, you can bless the book at the same time. Simply think of what your intentions are for the book. Do you want it to be protected? Will it hold your wisdom and knowledge? Will it be your guide and reference book while doing rituals? Will it be filled with your creative energy?
Organising your Book.
As with selecting the type of book, you use the way you organise it is a personal choice, there are a few different ways to organise your information, and each way has pros and cons.
For instance, if you choose say a leatherbound journal that has parchment-like paper (like I did at first) once you put the information in you cant rearrange it, so if you arrange by category or topic as I do, either have all your research and information in a digital version or a handwritten version in another notebook ready to copy into your Grimoire or guess how much space to leave in that section for more information. If you don’t want to arrange your book by topic then this won't be an issue, but sometimes it's hard to find information about a particular topic if it's scattered all over the place.
My biggest suggestion when it comes to organising your Grimoire or Book of Shadows is to remember that your magick book is meant to be used, whether it's to reference information or in a ritual, so ease of use is the most important element.
It is helpful for me when I start a new Grimoire or BOS to make a list of all the main topics I want to include in my book, and then all the sub-topics under those headings. For instance, under the main topic of divination, I would have the following sub-topics: tarot, runes, scrying, pendulums, palmistry, numerology and astrology.
You can even make title pages, or divider pages to keep your book organised and its a great way to get creative.
Always leave the first few pages blank, they are your opening pages, and they will contain things like a page dedicated to you (I call mine the About Me page) dedication page, a protection page, a blessing page, a Witches Creed, and 13 goals of a witch if your Wiccan the Wiccan Rede and the Rule of Three. You don't need to have all or any of those things if you don't want them, it's up to you.
So at this point, you know what a grimoire is, you have chosen what to call your magickal book, you have selected your book, you’ve cleansed and blessed your book and you have an outline of what topics to put in your book and how you will organise them.
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