Grimoires

Other than the witch itself, a grimoire (also known as a book of shadows, although I don’t particularly like that name as it sounds like something a teenage goth made up to sound mystical and mysterious) is the most important tool you can have.

When embarking on magic-making, you are beginning a course of study. This can be just as intensive as schoolwork, depending on the methods you’re using, and just like in a science classroom, you need to track your results.

When I first started out I simply used a composition notebook. You know the ones – they’re the black-and-white cardboard-bound ones that sell for about a buck fifty at Wal-Mart. Because I was undergoing pretty intense study (I was being taught, first as a Gardnerian Wicca high priestess, and then as a Native American shaman) that little notebook soon became full and I needed another.

After years of yearning I finally bought myself a lovely hard-bound parchment notebook, the kind I’d always dreamt about having as a kid. I soon realized that it had the same problem that the composition notebooks had – namely, that it filled too fast and was damned hard to organize. That notebook is now relegated to my writing projects, which is what I’d always dreamed about having it for anyway.

In 2004 I began the long, arduous task of transferring all of my notes to a three-ring binder, with divider tabs and plenty of notebook paper that could be re-arranged. I have dreadful handwriting, so a great deal of this stuff was transcribed on the computer and printed out, and then I used a hole punch to put the pages into the correct spot.

In this process I began editing. I kept all of my old composition notebooks and the pages I ripped out of my hard-bound notebook, but for the most part I don’t need those early experiments – just the results. Eventually I was able to narrow everything down to a small eight-by-six pocket binder, which I keep to this day. When I’m doing experiments I still use notebooks, which I store faithfully should I need them in the future, but I use the binder for my results, and any facts I’ve learned.

This may not work for you. You may need a glorious leather-bound tome. You may need to start a wordpress blog similar to this one (I do suggest wordpress for things kept online, as it’s wonderful for content management). You may want it all kept in a word document. You may want to stick to notebooks. Figure out your own system, and don’t be afraid to start one thing and then toss it out and transfer your material to a new medium. Any way that works is fine.

Any time you do a spell, you should keep track of it. If you do a tarot reading, you should keep track of it. A rune casting? Ditto. It all needs to go into your grimoire. I have dream interpretations, analysis of interpersonal relations, and weather patterns. Anything that you think needs to go into your grimoire ought to, but at the very least, your spellworking and divination exercises ought to.

Keep track of it by date. You will begin to see patterns, and that is important. Everything you do involving magic should go onto those pages, because older you will learn from them.

Read through it frequently. Refresh yourself on the information contained in that book. You may find yourself surprised.