Building Your Book – Overview

Hello. My name is Car. I’m an ADF Druid and the one who tells the “Dad jokes” on the 3 Pagans and a Cat podcast. Gwyn and Ode are the writers in the family, but I’d like to share snippets of transcripts and a link from our episode archive. First up, the first of a six episode series called Building Your Book. We start the series by talking about historical grimoires, discuss our own magical books, and cover the general principles and contents of a Book of Shadows. Let me know what you think!

Ode: In this episode, we’re going to be talking about some of the historical grimoires and sort of covering the basics of what a book of shadows is and why you might want one or why you might not want one. Then in the following episode’s we’re going to be covering the sort of things you might put in your book in the process of building one. And Car is going to be building one as we go and following along with this process.

Gwyn: Yeah, we still need to get that first component, right?

Car: Yes, well, that’s kind of the first thing, is to buy a book to put it in. So I’ve seen multiple ideas of this, some of its the leather-bound version.

Ode: It’s kind of a classic.

Gwyn: Which is what I have.

Ode: Or one of the wood bound books. Those are pretty popular right now.

Car: I think that I’m probably going to do a three-ring binder that way I can kind of move stuff around until I get it, you know kind of where I feel comfortable. I’m probably also going to put it inside of some protective sleeves. So that if I’ve got it out and I’m using it and I happen to drip candle wax on it or something like that. It’s not ruined right. It’s just you know, it’s just clean the wax off grab the plastic, right? Yeah. So I’m going to be doing it a little bit differently probably than most but I think it’s a good place for me to start.

Ode: Yeah. I think it’s very practical for your first book of shadows because you’re you know, you’re still very much in the learning process. Basically, my book right now, which I just call the book, is I’m considering a little learning book, but it’s basically just like a regular journal and I’m basically just considering it like at some point. I’m going to destroy it. Like I’m going to take whatever’s useful out of this learning process transcribe it eventually into a permanent book and destroy this one or archive it somewhere. I don’t consider this as my permanent ongoing book. So your way to do it is much more practical, I think than mine.

Car: I think that’s true. But I’m also going to, as I move on in this, I’m going to move to a second binder and I’ll probably take out some of the stuff that I find pertinent or that works and the stuff that doesn’t I’m gonna keep though and just kind of store those binders away and write, BOS 1 BOS 2 right on the spine of them, just so that I can refer back at a later point and see what my process was to get that done.

Ode: And artists do that a lot. They keep a lot of their sort of their early work, so that they can refer back to it further along in their process and it’s always kind of a nice ego boost to look back at your early stuff and be like, wow, I really have improved, haven’t I?

Car: Right. Yeah.

Gywn: Now there are those, however, who are not going to be comfortable with doing that themselves. For instance, when I originally started out in Wicca, I wanted a Book of Shadows that was already pretty much crafted for me. That had all the information I needed at my fingertips but then had spaces and pages  that I could add in later as I learned my craft. That is a perfectly legitimate way for beginners to begin as well. It’s all in there almost like a textbook of sorts, or workbook, that was already put together for me.

For more, listen to the episode below or check out our Archive: