The Western Gate

A brief overview of creating and making my own personal Grimoires (Book of Shadows)

Pronunciation: /ɡrɪmˈwɑː/
noun.A book of magic spells and invocations.
Origin; Mid 19th century: French, alteration of  grammaire ‘grammar’.

The vast majority of writings that could be termed ‘grimoire’ or as the Wiccan and ‘Gardnerian’ witches would term ‘Book of Shadows‘ that I have personally written were burnt. I would burn them every Samhain, and start again. However there were some I kept. Each ‘ritual’ of burning was alike the Hindu ‘Agnihotra‘ (a fire sacrifice) would be cathartic and from the ashes a new impetus to rewrite, rework and with progress of new found knowledge make a better ‘grimoire’. Though in the main these works were derived from sources already written, much was taken from personal inspiration, channelling, lucid dream work.
The first ‘books, I wrote were all in the same format, a little black book (A6). Inspired of course from the line ” I’ve got a little black book with my poems in…” (Pink Floyd – Nobody Home)

Although these notebooks contained an eclectic mix of poetry, songs, notes, quotes, insights, dreams I decided to create a fully fledged ‘Book of Shadows’ dealing only with writings concerning ‘The Craft’. Although many of these were in A4 sized books, most were burnt. I decided to buy a bulky journal from a shop in Glastonbury. the paper was recycled, a bit rough, not ideal for writing in fountain pen being my weapon of choice’ and the front cover was a bit contrived, anyway in no time I filled the whole thing up, much of the material was from sources such as Pagan Rituals, and lots of edits from grimoires ~ Abramelin, Dragon rouge, Petite Albert etc as well as information concerning herbal craft ~ Verdant Gnosis. I also copied surviving works from those A4 ‘grimoires’ I had ritually burnt, that I could remember or more exactly were imprinted upon my psyche.

My next ‘Grimoire’ was much the same format as before;- A4, I did bind the book with some quarter bound leather and made a frontispiece image.. I called it Book Zero. (Year zero). The whole of this book was a channelled and inspired creative piece concerning a discourse between ‘The Horned God’ and ‘The Goddess’ . I dedicated the book to St.Therese who died on the date of my birthday. I don’t suppose St.Therese would be too enamoured with the idea of being associated with a Pagan book, though essentially it was her devotion to her belief that struck me, as is my continuous and unwavering stand.

This was followed by ‘Book One’ dedicated to St.Jerome who also died on my birthday, the translator of the bible, A logical connection being as this book would primarily contain material from a variety of sources such that it became a reference book, there were of course many other articles that I created. The vast majority of this book was printed using InDesign which I then printed onto A3 paper, folded to give me the A4 leafs. I made the book from scratch, sewing up the signatures and hand binding, covering in a buckram cloth. It wasn’t perfect, but neither am I and making a grimoire by hand just seemed the right thing to do.

This was followed by ‘Book Two’. dedicated to Rumi, who was also born on my birthday. Unlike the previous grimoire this was to be all hand written, though I did print some pages with various images. Again I made it by hand and this time covered it in Burgundy Goat leather.

Synchronicity is a strange concept known to many wayfarers upon the crooked path. It was many years later after creating my initial Black book grimoires and then the big Red books that I first learnt Carl Jung (I had only previously read his analytical psychology book) had created himself, black books, and a big Red book, it was a wonderful piece of synchronicity, almost an archetypal design.

Part of me regrets having burnt many of the books I made, yet, it seemed to spur me on, each time perfecting and building on the previous knowledge, which of course had to be remembered and evolved.