BellaOnline Forums Religion and Spirituality Wicca Book of Shadows

I don't, my tradition don't beleive in writing anything down by hand instead we are taught to memorise everything. It takes a long long time to get through first degree as there is a lot of things we have to learn from our elders word for word - for example my tradtions creation story is about 2 and a half hours spoken we have to know this by heart by the time we take out first degree. It is hard not writing things down but i prefer this way as it is all in my mind to access any time I need it. About the only things we do write down are herb/crystal propertys assosiations etc but herbs are something we tend to use more for healing which falls to one of our specific orders - the order of the mother.

Fairykat

holy smokes! that's a lot of memorization! I admire that - and am glad my trad doesn't require it! hehe

I'm curious - what tradition are you, Fairykat?

I'm a member of a tradition known as the path of light - it is the middle path of druidry in between the common people and the druid preists. It was the job of the path of light to be teachers, judges, mediators etc between the differnet paths.

It is a LOT of hard work it took me four years to complete my first degree.

Fairykat

I need to add more gentle spells to my BOS!! but I do have a nice small book with a Monet print on the cover


Sacred Jude, My Spirit Guide!!

I bought a photo album at a craft store for mine. That way, I can move around the pages and organize it a bit... I try to be as "scrap-booky" as I can with it, to make sure that it looks somewhat nice too...

A scrapbook one, that's unique. It may be something I look into in the future, I think! Right now mine is plain ole spiral, so I'm not tempted to move/turf something that I don't like. I wrote it for a reason, so it should stay there!

That is sort of the philosophy in my tradition too. Your BoS is a bound book so you cant tear things out or move them around. We put our energy into those books and it is a committment to be mindful of what we are writing and to be careful. Yes we make mistakes but we are human and it is a reminder that we are not perfect. Also it is a way to see how much we have grown as we add to the book

I tend to use bound books, and I only write on the right hand pages. The left hand sides are where I put notes of stuff I want to add later, or where I glue in things from elsewhere that really belong in there too.

That's another good thing about the scrapbook. There's a lot of room to put miscellaneous stuff. The pages I bought are 12x12.

So far I haven't had the temptation to take any pages out, but I just started my book not to long ago. I do use another book for notes and things prior to actually putting things into my BoS. That way I can organize how I want things to look prior to inserting them...

I started mine with a journal entry outlining why I was starting the book, my hopes through adopting Wiccan ways in my life, and some methods I planned on using to accomplish some of those hopes/goals. It is written in a poetic prose, so that it sounds good. I guess I have in my mind a certain idea about what a BoS should be. I'm a romantic at heart... <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />