Book Of Shadows
My first Book of Shadows is now kept inside a plastic folder as it is falling apart. I got another one, a smart one to look more professional during public rites (it has couple of different Handfastings in it) and a coven/family one that is huge. I also have an original typed Alexandrian BoS as well. That is not counting all my notebooks from teaching Craft for years or my full Dropbox of manuscripts.
A BoS can be many things to many people and back in the day it was all handmade and hand drawn, full of the rituals and prayers. It might have some recipes in the back but correspondences and such were not often put in your BoS but in your diary or journal instead.
A grimoire is a spell book, like a family cook book which is what most people think a BoS is now.
I prefer to try and keep it all separate now. I write my own written Goddess and God charges and prayers in the BIG BoS along with hand drawn and painted artwork.
It amazes me in both a good and slightly sad way that you could just google and print out your BoS these days. I don't begrudge it and calligraphy and cursive script in time consuming and very hard work but there is something meditative and prayer like in the process.
The idea of typing it up on a type writer would have been outrageous in the past but it made a crisp clean copy and is now considered old fashioned and quaint.
There is no right way to have a BoS but I do feel a certain opinion that it is a sacred book, or a enough of a book about the sacred that it should be treated with respect.
If you intend to keep all your magick work together I would suggest either folder or even buying multiple of the same kinds of large notebook that you could get re-bound together at some point.
Try and keep a journal of your magickal work separate because it can be a much more honest form if you do not think anyone will ever read it and that has a power of it's own.
There is a power in ink and paper. A kind of magick all of it's own. Making our mark in your own hand in your own voice is beautiful.
Bright Blessings xxx
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