New Frontiers and the BoS
One of the weirdest parts about writing a book is that people will often ask you about it and offer comments and suggestions. When this happens, I’m often not sure how to reply. Do they want me to enthusiastically talk about the book and give them a mini-lecture on what I’ve discovered so far? Maybe they don’t really care and are simply asking to be polite. I’m never really sure.
When people offer advice on what to put in a book, I sometimes get the feeling that they don’t trust me as a writer. Perhaps they think I’m going to overlook something of major importance, or maybe they think my take on Witchcraft is wrong and they are trying to preemptively correct me. It’s easy to get turned around in these situations because it’s hard to be sure of people’s intentions.
I’ve gotten more suggestions about what to put in this book than any other written project I’ve ever attempted. Some of that is most likely because people have strong opinions on what should and shouldn’t go into a BoS. But I think in the case of this book, some of my friends are looking for validation. They want to know that what they are doing is acceptable and beyond reproach.
Witchcraft exists in a strange little pocket between cutting-edge and old-fashioned. We were one of the first spiritual communities to really utilize the Internet as a way to communicate and share information, yet we also like “old” things. Many call Witchcraft the “Old Religion” and refer to our practices as the “Old Ways.” In my own rituals I like to use archaic-sounding language on occasion, and like many of us, I often look to the ancient Pagan past for ritual inspiration.
Modern Witchcraft, in my estimation, is just that: modern; but through its power we are able to connect with magickal currents that are centuries old. The tools we tend to use in ritual (knives, brooms, cups, swords, and wands) are timeless. They also existed five hundred years ago and will continue to exist in varying forms in another five hundred years. Witches aren’t resistant to change, but we tend to like the classics, and there are few things more classic than a book.
However, technology is changing right before our eyes. Many of you are no doubt reading this on a Kindle or an iPad. Both things didn’t even exist ten years ago, and if you’re like my wife, you might well be reading this book on your phone. When I was a kid, the only thing I could do on a phone was talk to other people. As media changes, the Book of Shadows is changing right along with it, and I think some people need to know that’s okay.
In fifty years it’s possible that only the most hardcore (or old-fashioned) of us will be using a paper BoS. Technology changes and how we consume images and words is changing right along with it. We’ve already gone from cave paintings to pottery shards to scrolls to books. The evolution of written ideas has always been ongoing, and it’s only going to become more pronounced as we head into the future.
My BoS on a Flash Drive and a Tablet
Just last year a high priest in my tradition gave me a flash drive containing not only our Book of Shadows but also the BoS’s of several other groups and traditions. To say that I treated those two inches of plastic and metal with a reverence usually reserved for my athame is an understatement. I made sure to wrap it up carefully after it was handed to me and to keep it in a place of honor once I got home.
It’s unlikely that I’ll ever set a flash drive on my working altar or lovingly place one between the antlers of a Horned God statue, but that flash drive was very much a BoS. Once I accepted it, I was making a promise that neither it or its contents would ever fall into the wrong hands (in this case, the hands of someone beyond our tradition). By accepting that flash drive, I was making a promise to care for its contents as I would for a conventional written or printed Book of Shadows.
That particular flash drive has proven to be extremely beneficial over the last year. I can now go into my tradition’s BoS and easily fix typos and other small problems. ( Just the other day I fixed the misspelling of a high priestess’s name, and now all I have to do is print a copy of that page and give it to my initiates to fix the mistake in our paper BoS.) Making edits and other changes in a text has never been easier. This has resulted in my three-ring-binder BoS’s being far more fluid than ever before.
Before my extended Witch family shared things via digital file, we basically had to retype everything from scratch. For those of us who are fast typists, that’s not so bad, but most people don’t write for a living or spend hours and hours in front of a keyboard. Now, when I see a mistake, I can fix it with just a few quick key strokes.
Even more importantly, it’s now become so much easier to compare my BoS to the many other BoS’s out there. That flash drive given to me contained thirty years of BoS’s, some from the United Kingdom and many more from the United States. It’s now super easy to simply line up all of those various BoS versions side by side and compare them all in real time. I can now reasonably pinpoint when BoS’s were added to or subtracted from and how various Witch ideas evolved over time. Before digitizing our files, there simply was no way I was ever going to get to see some of these far-flung books.
I will admit that there’s a part of me that sees a digital BoS as a source of information instead of a sacred book. Sure, I have to keep the contents of those files secret, but they don’t fill me with a sense of awe since I can’t really “use” them in ritual unless they are printed out. Of course that’s changing, and with the advent of smartphones and tablets it’s possible to use a digital BoS and never print out a copy.
Recently I used my iPad as my BoS in ritual when my printer decided not to cooperate with me, and it wasn’t as awful as I thought it would be. The words were easily seen on the screen, even before we had all of our ritual candles lit. My iPad is also just about the right size for lugging around in ritual. I probably wasted a little extra electricity that night because I had to change the settings on my tablet so it wouldn’t auto-lock and go blank after a few minutes of non-usage, but other than that things went fairly smoothly.
In the coming years I’m sure this will become more and more common. Experts have been predicting a paperless society for decades now, but I think we are finally headed that way. Entire covens might soon carry their tablets into ritual to use as BoS’s. Whether this is good or bad probably depends on how comfortable you are with technology. Traditionalists will scoff, of course, but it’s all probably inevitable.
iPad ritual
There are some downsides to working with a digital BoS. The first is the intense amount of light that comes from a cellphone or tablet. Many people find that sort of thing distracting, and in a darkened room my eyes will always dart to the shiny thing, such as a phone display. There’s also the worry that the energy released from a portable electronic device might mess up the natural energies of the circle. I’ve heard from many of my friends that digital things just don’t work very well around magick and have a tendency to “mess up” in such circumstances. This is not something that I’ve ever encountered, but I certainly believe it’s possible.
Covens are generally concerned about the peace of mind of every member, so no circle can comfortably go digital unless everyone is on board with it. This means that if you are tempted to use a tablet to guide your ritual, you should probably ask everyone you’re doing ritual with if it’s okay first. Many are going to resist such changes.
A Print-on-Demand Book of Shadows
As you’ve probably guessed while reading this book, I’m rather serious about what goes into my BoS. When my eclectic coven began to develop a consistent ritual structure, I thought I should document that progress in written form. Our first BoS was more pamphlet than book and was put together as a quick Yule gift for everyone in our coven.
That “book” was titled The Rites and Rituals of the Oak Court and contained all sorts of typos and poor formatting choices. On the positive side, it included our core ritual (opening/circle casting/quarters/cakes and ale) and an outline of how our rituals tended to be structured. I had it printed at a local print shop for a rather high fee considering how few pages were in it.
This book was formatted using a basic word processor and printed on standard sheets of paper. Considering that I put it together in just a few hours, it’s a pretty good-looking little booklet. We jokingly refer to it as our “BoS.5” since it wasn’t substantial enough to qualify as a full “1.” As our rituals continued to evolve over the following year, my wife suggested that I put something a bit more substantial together (which allowed me to get rid of the typos!).
The following Yule, I presented everyone in our coven with a 150-page book, complete with The Oak Court Book of Shadows printed on the spine. In that BoS I put all of our sabbat rituals, poems that had shown up in ritual, and complete explanations of everything we were doing in circle at the time. It ended up being so impressive-looking that I have friends from outside our coven who occasionally ask for a copy. I remain very proud of it. It’s not very often a person can say they created an entire BoS for a coven!
Instead of printing the material on sheets of paper and inserting them in a three-ring binder, I had actual books printed, complete with a glossy cover. Fifteen or twenty years ago the cost of such a book would have been prohibitive, but today there are all sorts of print-on-demand publishers that will produce a book for as little as seven to eight dollars a copy. I ended up with twenty copies for the coven for under one hundred fifty dollars, which is an exceedingly good deal. If you want to make your own book, just turn a document into a PDF, design a cover, hit send, and you’ll be good to go.
Over the years I’ve used the online company Lulu when self-publishing our BoS, but that isn’t the only option. Amazon’s CreateSpace is a popular alternative, as are Blurb, Wordclay, and BookBaby. Companies like Lulu and CreateSpace don’t just offer an easy way to create books; they also sell them online. If you upload your BoS to such a service, make sure to keep it private, unless you want everyone getting hold of your coven’s secrets.
I don’t expect every or even most covens to go to the trouble of printing an actual book, but if you’ve got a BoS you want to distribute to a lot of folks, it’s a pretty good alternative to copy machines. The final cost is generally less expensive, and everyone will think your book is exceedingly cool. It’s definitely one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
The Cloud and Even Further Frontiers
During most of the computer’s history, the things needed for it to work were stored on its hard drive, along with all the music, books, and other files we wanted direct access to. That’s changed dramatically over the last few years with more and more files being added to the “cloud.” The cloud is a form of online storage, and if you use Spotify or Apple Music, you are already using it. Instead of keeping a digital library on your phone or computer, your files are hosted somewhere else and then accessed via the Internet.
This is destined to have major repercussions when it comes to the BoS, because we will inevitably end up keeping copies of our books on the cloud. There will be a lot of advantages to this. Instead of having to print things out for an initiate or new coven member, we will simply point them to an Internet address and let them download (and then print or copy) the material to their heart’s content. It will also mean a world free of flash drives and email attachments. I can imagine a world not too far in the future in which I store literally dozens of BoS’s somewhere other than on my computer’s hard drive (and I’m sure at least a few other Witches are already doing this).
I love the idea of sharing my BoS with a Witch from Australia in exchange for a copy of their book, and I look forward to comparing and contrasting Witch books from across the world that are a part of my tradition. But I’m also scared of this day. Things stored online leak and leak often. While I can’t imagine anyone intentionally looking to break into a cloud-stored BoS, some will eventually be made public through no fault of their owner. Will I be violating my oaths to keep my BoS secret when the giant tech company hosting it fails in their promise to protect it?
The cloud is only the beginning of our current digital revolution. In thirty or forty years we might bypass cloud storage and our smart phones altogether and download things directly into our brains. It sounds ludicrous, but we are already implanting computer chips in people’s brains that can move robotic arms.61 If we find ourselves downloading whole books directly into our brains, at least we won’t have to worry about memorizing things anymore.
All this future technology might have a reverse effect. Perhaps it will drive many of us to write by hand and carry us straight back into the arms of pens and paper. I love being a Witch, but it’s also not supposed to be easy. Magick requires work, and rituals are not meant to be hollow words and empty gestures. In an age where privacy is becoming harder and harder to preserve, the actual written word may end up being our last solitary outpost.
There’s no easy way to copy a book by hand, and even scanning one into a computer is time-consuming. For Witches wanting to keep their mysteries secret, the Old Ways might again prove to be best. I don’t know what the future holds, but I’m confident that Witchcraft and magick will be part of it, and as long as there are Witches and magicians, there will be grimoires, spells read by candlelight, and Books of Shadows.
61 Ariana Eunjung Cha, “Future of Potential Brain Chips Is Limitless after Man Controls Robotic Arm with His Thoughts,” The Washington Post (May 22, 2015), www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2015/05/22/brain-chip-that-let-man-control-robot-arm-is-just-the-beginning-heres-a-look-at-the-future-of-implantable-chips.