It’s time to get your spellbinder!

When ideas come to you during your daily rituals, throughout your studies, or even while surfing online, you may wish to keep a record.  Your Book of Shadows may be the second most important tool of Witchcraft (the most important being yourself).  Up to this point in the course, you have been writing down your experiences and feelings in a notebook, journal, or current Book of Shadows.  This lesson will help you bring that notebook to life as a practical tool you will find indispensable, your real BOS which we’ll call the spellbinder.

The Spell Binder:
People change, and because your Book of Shadows is a direct reflection of you and your practice, it will constantly change too.  Rather than purchase a leather or cloth bound tome in which to illuminate and calligraphy with beautiful lettering, it is recommended that you use a binder or screw-post scrapbook that is more flexible.  If you make a mistake, you can pull out that page and replace it.  It is possible to rearrange pages, and they are infinitely expandable.  You can use different colored pages for different purposes such as organization or magical color correspondences, and you can even use black paper with gel pens in milky white or silver to write in reverse of normal (this is sometimes easier to read in moonlight and candlelight).

Three-ring binders can be found almost everywhere and some cost as little as a dollar or less, or if you’d like the luxury models with leather covers, you can spend several hundred times that amount.  There are incredibly talented Witches offering beautiful designs on Etsy, eBay, Facebook, and many other online marketplaces.  Be sure to check your local Witch shop or metaphysical store too!

If you like to collect spells from books or the internet, you can print them out in fancy fonts or substitution ciphers like Celtic font, Theban Alphabet, Rune fonts, or old manuscript fonts.

Please Note: Always quote your sources. If you are printing out web pages, be sure that the location (URL such as https://WitchAcademy.org) appears on the printed page, and note the author. Anything taken from books, magazines, newspapers, etc. should also have the source and author noted. Remember that you can use the works of other authors for your own, individual, personal use, but cannot distribute them such as by placing them on your web site or passing them out to your students.

Five reasons for quoting your sources:

1. You may wish to refer to another area of the same book or web site and if you have the information right with the materials, you don’t have to search or guess.

2. You can refer back to pages as you change and form more experienced opinions of various sources and authors.

3. When your grandchildren, friends, or coven members inherit your book and wish to publish it to pay off your debts, they aren’t sued by copyright owners.

4. For many works, it is a legal requirement to include the author and source if you wish to print the work (such as with WitchAcademy.org lessons)

5.  It is the right thing to do to honor and respect other Witches and elders.

You can use several Spellbinders for various purposes. For example, if you are extremely interested in herbalism, you might wish to keep your herbal notes, recipes, and spells in a separate green Spellbinder; another binder can keep your divination notes, and yet another can be your daily journal or keep your Craft poetry. You can use different types of Spellbinders such as the small-sized six ring binders which are easy and discrete to carry, or the large four ring legal size binders to give yourself lots of room to work in. There are also presentation folders and books available which may suit your purposes. Explore the school and office supplies in your stores, Witch shops, and online vendors.  It may take some experimentation, but you will find what you need.

Although some old-school techno-Pagans may use a ‘Disks of Shadow’ (jokingly referred to as DOS) or save information on a computer, there are many times that the lack of portability and other factors can make this inconvenient.  Most ‘disks of shadows’ are at least partially printed out and archived.  It is usually much easier to use a physical copy of a ritual or spell when you are inside a ritual circle than it is to use an electronic device.

In the next lesson, “The Presentation Book”, we will explore transferring your favorite parts of your Spellbinder into a more formal book.  Meanwhile, let’s get started on your Spellbinder, which is your active BoS workbook.

Assignment:

Obtain a binder. A 3 ring standard binder is recommended because templates will be made available which fit this size in later lessons for you to print.

You may also wish to purchase some plastic top-loading sheet protectors.  These are thin plastic envelopes which are punched to fit in your binder.  Each plastic envelope can hold one or two pages and will prevent candle wax, ritual beverages, incense, dew, rain, and other mishaps from destroying your work.  These protectors are very useful for recipe pages in your book.  I recommend the matte or satin finish protectors rather than the shiny ones because it is easier to read the glare-free pages in candlelight and moonlight.

You may also wish to obtain some organizational tab dividers.  These are available in clear or color-coded and will help you to divide your Spellbinder into easy-to-reference sections.

Create a table of contents for your Spellbinder.  Remember that the main benefit of your Spellbinder is the flexibility and forgiveness of mistakes.  Your first table of contents will change over time so plan for this.  Here are a few sample tables of contents for you to use or adapt.

Simple Organization:
Recipes & Spells
Rituals
Journal & Poetry
Art & Symbols
Classes & Assignments
The Wheel of the Year
Correspondences

Detailed Table of Contents:
Introduction
…..My Beliefs
…..The Rede
…..Charge of the Goddess
…..Thirteen Principles
…..God & Goddess
…..Magic Ethics
…..Casting a Circle
…..Ritual Design
The Wheel of the Year
…..Sabbat Rituals
…..Esbat Rituals
…..Rites of Passage (dedications, initiations, wiccanings, cronings, handfastings, etc.)
…..Party Ideas
Magic & Spells
…..Magical Theory
…..Ethics
…..Prosperity
…..Love
…..Healing
…..Protection
…..Blessings
…..Banishing
…..Fertility
Divination
…..Astrology
…..Runes
…..I Ching
…..Tarot
…..Shells
…..Scrying
Recipes
…..Sabbat & Esbat Feasts
…..Potions
…..Unguents
…..Sachets, Pouches & “Mojos”
…..Soaps & Shampoos
…..Perfumes, Altar Oils & Candle Dressing
Learning
…..Classes
…..Assignments
Correspondences
…..Color
…..Stones
…..Incense, Oils & Herbs
Music
…..Lyrics
…..Sheet Music
…..My Favorite Ritual Tunes
Family
…..Crafts & Kids Projects
…..Stories, Myths & Folklore
Journal
…..Musings
…..Poetry
…..Art

You can either transfer your previous Book of Shadows or notebook to this new binder or simply start out fresh with the Spellbinder.  You may also wish to reserve your Spellbinder just for this class, in which case your Table of Contents might look like the table of contents for this class.