Herbal Bliss

I could not be happier. I found a place here in town to buy herbs at. Anacortes Health and Nutrition has a wonderful bulk herb section that made me incredibly happy.

What's in a Book of Shadows?

Something I have been wanting to do for quite some time is create my own Book of Shadows. I have many books on my shelf that I use as resources, but I wanted my own book that kept all of the knowledge, rituals, spells, etc that I use in one easy to find place. I actually started making my own a year ago or so. I got a non-descript black book and wrote down the 'Charge of the Goddess' and the 'Witches Reede.' I felt these were good starting points to start my BoS off with. However, from there I am not sure how to proceed. How do I want to organize my BoS? What should I put in it? How do I factor in room for things that I have yet to learn and may wish to include at a later time?

To help me plan and undertake this endeavor I turned to the internet. I found may great sites talking about the ordering, layout, and creation of your BoS, but relatively little about the exact information mentioned in a BoS. As a solitary and someone still learning the pagan ways, being able to see what is inside someone else's BoS word for word would be extremely helpful.

I had bookmarked the Internet Sacred Text Archive over a year ago when I first did research for how to make a BoS, but I had never really looked into it that much until today. with little effort I was able to find both the Internet Book of Shadows and the Gardenieran Book of Shadows. Both are full text copies and in 12pt Verdana the IBoS is 447 pages long in MS Word. So now I have a lot of material to review.

Lesons From Last Night

The ritual I performed last night was eye opening. I learned a few very important lessons about conducting a ritual that I need to work on.

First off—plan your ritual ahead of time! I had a general idea last night of what I wanted to do, but the exact order was not planned out and found myself constantly going outside my circle to get something I forgot to place inside the circle before I started. I'm sure this alone aded to the overall length of such a simple ritual.

Second, I need to rehearse my wording. I'm still learning and growing and have not yet memorized the invocations and wording or written my own ritual. I kept tripping over my own words and invoking the same things over and over while forgetting other. This too added to the length of the ritual.

The third things was to have a raised up working space. I'm currently using a try placed on a cloth on the ground to define my scared working space. While I have no issue sitting on the ground for the ritual, bending over everything all the time took it's toll on my back. Even a small, low table would work and make doing magical work more efficient.

My Samhain Altar

Lastly, I found that I need to test how any herbs I use will burn before I burn them. I wrote down negative aspects I wished to be gone in the coming year on bay leaves and attempted to burn them. The leaves didn't burn well and they smelled atrocious. I ended up grinding up my leaves, aded some patchuli and put that mixure in the fire this morning (we heat the house with a wood stove.)

I feel that overall my ritual last night was a resounding success and something much needed. It has given me strength and motivation, both things I was lacking in recent weeks.

May the Lady and Lord watch over us all in the new year!