I so enjoyed seeing everyone’s Book of Shadows. I particularly enjoyed the more ornate and beautiful ones which had been purchased to be a BofS and were just too good to use, so hopeless as a grimoire. Other notables were Allisons Bofs system – which seemed to involve every notebook in the world, and Samael’s Old Harry Potter notebook with colour coding system and complex information.

Thank you all for sharing – see the notes below.

Cast a Circle Spell:

This is possibly the most important part of this coven meeting, because this is what will connect us and defend us.  Point your hands/wands towards the ground and turn around whilst saying these words: You may need to say them more than once.  I normally get people to say them three times as this has a nice ‘Ready, Steady, Go’ energy feel to it. 

“I cast this circle, let nothing that causes me harm, be allowed within it.”

Purify and Cleanse

As normal we will all do a smudge so that everyone can remove any bad jujus or nasty energy from them.  – Ginny to check everyone’s cleansing.

Book of Shadows

The phrase BOS was invented by Gerald Gardner when he put together the rites for Wicca religion, before then, witch’s books were simply referred to as grimoires.

Today a grimoire is simply a spell book where a BOS is looked upon as something more akin to a witch’s handbook so people might put in

Phases of the moon

Stones and crystals

Herb correspondences

Rituals

Spells

Details about the fae and spirits that one might meet

Magic is in everything – it is important to remember this when casting spells as you can forget the magic in your environment otherwise. 

My first few BOS were very intricate in detail, now I have grown as a witch so I can be a little more laissez faire with how I do things as now I just know, but that is because I wrote a book of shadows for so long

Important to write down things, gives the spells something to hang onto really, also your energy is put into the book and this is a really good thing to use,

I have chosen a BOS that I wrote about five years ago. And I thought I would flick through a read you some passages about what is learnt about and why – and also as a processing tool for me.  So I will give you some examples from early BofS and an example of my current BofS.

Dedication Ritual

It is really important to decide what your BofS is here to achieve for you at the outside and then to perform the spell to help clarify this when using.  A BofS is a spell in and of itself, so everything that you write down in it will be part of that spell.

So we are going to perform a dedication ritual for you all to write your own BofS spell. 

My current one is

“Let everything that is written within this book be for my greatest and highest good’

But previous spells have been for more specific goals for example to further my magical understandings. 

1. Write down and work on what you actually want to achieve with the help of a BofS
2. Cast the circle around the working area.
3. Pull in the energy and intention into your body and then distribute it down the arm into your writing hand
4. Write your dedication, date it and sign it.  Close the book light a candle and say so mote it be.  This finishes the spell

Often people will feel the witchy shivers when performing this ritual and as it is intensely personal are there any volunteers to say the best thing and the worst thing about their BofS.

Grimoires

I have a couple of grimoires here which I wanted to share with you all about personal development.  These are very useful to understand psychic development.  For it is from psychic development that you will discover your pathway and your talents and abilities.