The Book of Shadows in Ritual
Writing this book presented several challenges, the biggest one of all being that we Witches don’t really do all that much with a Book of Shadows in ritual. Unlike an athame or a chalice, a BoS is not an active ritual tool. I don’t use my BoS to cast a circle or call the quarters, and it’s not a part of the Great Rite or cakes and ale. It’s not something I wave around to direct magical energy, like a wand, nor is it a magical focus, like a mirror or pentacle.
All that I really do with my BoS in ritual is read from it, and sometimes even that is looked down upon by some people. Ritualist and blogger Steven Posch suggests that if something is worth saying in ritual, it’s worth memorizing. While Posch is not wrong here, it’s also easier said than done.58 My rituals are all in my BoS precisely because I don’t have them memorized, and probably never will. I’m just not good at memorizing things, especially specifics.
There’s certainly a place for memorization in ritual. If your coven uses the same quarter calls, you should probably memorize them (and most likely will end up doing so by default). My coven uses the same blessing prayer at the start of every ritual, and over the course of a year, thanks to repeating it again and again, we all memorized it. After a few months, some of us were reciting it from memory and some of us were reading it out of our BoS’s, but that didn’t have any effect on the ritual or the meaning of the prayer.
Some groups use their BoS (and simply written rituals) as a kind of outline. They throw out specific line readings and let intuition guide their quarter calls and ritual workings. The Reclaiming tradition of Witchcraft, for example, works this way. They know what they will do during ritual, but they leave the exact words up to whoever is leading the rite.
I tend to like working from a fully written ritual, with every i dotted and every t crossed, but it’s often more of a safety blanket than a ritual script. The fully written rite is something to get me back on track if the ritual starts going down the wrong path. Also, sometimes it’s easy to space out and lose focus, so having a fully written ritual is a great fallback.
There are some traditions that require a mostly precise reading from a BoS or a ritual script. To be an initiated Gardnerian Witch, there are certain steps that have to be done in the process of initiation. Leaving things up to chance and “I thought I remembered how to do it” doesn’t work in such instances. Witchcraft traditions are called that because they contain traditions, and often those traditions have to be followed rather close to the letter.
The Advantages of Reading from
Your BoS During Ritual
Several years ago I was part of a big ritual whose overriding theme was “finding yourself.” The moral of the story was that ultimately we are all responsible for finding our own destiny. The ritual itself was a lot of fun and was based on The Wizard of Oz. (I got to play the Cowardly Lion because of my great mane of blonde hair!)
The climax of the ritual had the Mayor of Munchkinland chatting with Glinda the Good Witch about each of us finding our own way home from Oz. It should have been the grand and glorious climax of an enjoyable rite, but Glinda the Good Witch forgot her lines and the ultimate point of the ritual got completely lost. I don’t blame Glinda. These things happen. She thought she had her lines memorized and then just didn’t. The last bit of ritual ended up going wildly off track and we never quite recovered, despite the best efforts of Munchkinland’s Mayor (who did have a script in his hand).
Incidents like this are why I keep my BoS close to me during ritual. I don’t have to read everything from it line for line and word for word, but it’s nice to have a bit of guidance at hand just in case (or, most likely, when) I need it. Why bother to write out a ritual if you can’t use that writing?
Like most of you reading this, I’m not an actor. I don’t have much experience with having to remember lines or blocking scenes. Enacting rituals is also not my job. Granted I get paid a little bit of money to write books and write about Pagan stuff, but doing those things takes me away from preparing for ritual—and memorizing all of it. Most of us work full-time jobs, take care of our families, and need time to read and perhaps watch TV. There’s no shame in admitting that you simply don’t have ten hours a week to set aside to memorize an Imbolc ritual that might be shared only once or twice.
Reading out of a BoS has a lot of precedent too. Witchcraft’s greatest poet and liturgist Doreen Valiente referenced Gerald Gardner reading from his BoS during their first ritual together: “In one hand he brandished ‘Old Dorothy’s’ sword while in the other he held the handwritten ‘Book of Shadows’ as he read the ritual by which I was formally made a priestess and witch.” 59 If Doreen didn’t mind Gerald reading from his BoS, I think everyone can forgive me for reading from mine!
My ability to memorize things is so poor that I generally can’t even remember my own rituals most of the time. Nearly eighteen years ago I wrote my own Charge of the God for a large Beltane ritual my local college group was putting together. I’ve used that Charge probably over a hundred times now in ritual, yet I have completely failed to memorize it over all these years. Could it be because it’s just too long? Maybe memorization of long passages is just something some of us are incapable of.
Reading in Ritual
For those who believe that every line said in ritual should be memorized or spontaneous, I say, “That’s great!” I admire your dedication and respect the way you do ritual. For those of us incapable of doing things that way, here are some hints on how to read from your BoS during ritual. And the how here is really important, because there are right and wrong ways to do it.
Be Familiar with the Material Before Ritual
Just because someone has a script in their hand doesn’t mean they are ready to enact a ritual. Whether the ritual is memorized or read, anyone taking part in it should be familiar with their lines and duties before it starts. This doesn’t mean that every ritual requires two months of pre-ritual practice; what it means is that no one should sound like they are reading the ritual for the first time while it’s being performed.
With all the thees, thous, motes, and various deity names, the words spoken in Witch ritual are often very different from the everyday language we use in mundania. You can keep your ritual free of tongue twisters by saying all of the dialogue aloud a few times before ritualizing with the rest of the coven. I’ve seen even the most experienced high priestesses trip over the goddess names Melusine and Arianrhod.
In addition to knowing all the spoken words in ritual, it’s important to know the actions needed to successfully implement a rite. Rituals aren’t plays either, so sometimes it takes more than stage directions (“walk to the right of the altar”); it takes detailed instructions. Ritual is a sacred act, and often even the smallest gestures are imbued with meaning and significance.
Over the years I’ve seen and heard way too many Witches read ritual stage instructions as if they were parts of the rite to be said aloud. Hearing “High priest walks over to the north of the altar” in the middle of a moving Samhain ritual has caused a few giggles on my end over the years. There’s no excuse for it, and with just a little bit of preparation it’s something that should never happen. One of the ways I’ve managed to avoid this over the years is by placing spoken text in a different font (or color of ink) in my BoS.
You Can Read from a BoS and Hold On
to a Sword During Ritual (Maybe)
It can be hard to juggle all the moving parts of a ritual with a big fat BoS in your hands. Luckily there are a few alternatives to simply holding and reading a book in ritual. One of my Witch teachers used to keep her book on a stand during ritual. She placed it near the altar so she could easily consult it whenever she needed to; all she had to do was simply look down and the text she needed would be there.
A book stand can be elaborate or simple. My high priestess’s was probably originally designed to hold a decorative plate and not a BoS. Music stands make great book holders, and they can often be raised and lowered to fit the needs of the individual Witch.
When my wife and I find ourselves in the middle of a really big ritual, we’ll sometimes employ “assistants” to hold our books for us. When wielding a sword in ritual, it’s probably for the best that my high priestess–wife doesn’t hold her own BoS. She usually only allows a trusted coven member to hold her book. We’ll also share the same book with each other, with me holding it open to the right pages for her and vice versa. It’s just a little extra closeness with my most important magical partner!
Quarter calls on the wall
If you’ve got some dedicated ritual space, one of my favorite ritual “cheats” is to tape quarter calls and circle castings directly onto the wall. When I got tired of everyone in my coven stumbling through our calls to the Watchtowers, I printed them up on some nice-looking paper and then taped them to the wall of our temple room. I even included invoking and banishing pentagrams on my cheat sheets to make the whole process even easier.
If you prefer not to tape things to the wall, you can also use “easy on and off” hooks designed specifically not to rip the paint off your walls. Put two of them up for every cheat sheet, and you can rotate your memory aids in and out of plastic sheet protectors. This is especially useful if you’ve got a few different circles that meet in the same space.
We Can Do Better Than Reading
from a Piece of Paper in Ritual
While most of this book pertains to BoS’s and other magical books, I’m fully aware that many of the rituals we Witches perform never make it into our Books of Shadows. Oftentimes we’ll simply write a ritual for a specific event and then print it out to use in ritual. It’s something I’ve done many times before and will do again in the future, but I think ritual works better when we turn that standard piece of paper into something that better resembles a ritual tool.
Many of the things we use in ritual are about creating atmosphere. We don’t just use candles so we can see in the dark; we use them because they provide a certain sort of ambiance that electric light just can’t provide. Nothing ruins the aesthetic of a ritual faster than someone reading the ritual off of a plain piece of paper they just took out of their pocket. Not every line is worth memorizing, but every line is worth presenting in an attractive way.
If your ritual isn’t going in the BoS, at least put it in a nice folder before bringing it into the circle. Even better, tape it into your BoS (or another attractive book) before the ritual and then remove it later. It’s a small thing, but it will make you look prepared and professional.
I’ve seen a lot of people use notecards in ritual over the years, and while that’s a step up from printer paper, it’s still not ideal. Books just look magical and authoritative in ritual. I think we do ourselves a service when we at least pretend to use them. Appearance counts for a lot in the circle!
What a Book of Shadows Is Not
Christians, Muslims, and Jews are sometimes referred to as “people of the book” because of the importance they place on their holy texts. My BoS’s are important to me, but they aren’t holy books, nor are they infallible. The rites, rituals, rules, and spells contained within them were all written by women and men. Some bits were perhaps divinely inspired, but that doesn’t make them infallible.
A Book of Shadows is a guide and oftentimes a chronicle of events and ideas, but it’s not an absolute. If a BoS is representative of a tradition, it’s important that the main tenets of that tradition are preserved, but that doesn’t mean there’s no room for innovation. A wise person once said to me, “A BoS should never be subtracted from, but it can always be added to.” The only downside to such thinking is that some of my BoS’s are the size of War and Peace!
A BoS should never be the master of a Witch. Ultimate authority in a coven lies with its leaders, members, and the gods. A BoS can serve as a useful source of information and offer insight, but nothing in a BoS is truly holy writ. The Lord and Lady did not dictate the BoS, nor did a Witch prophet descend from a mountain on high clutching a small black book full of ritual.
As an initiate of a lineaged tradition, I’ll admit that some of what I’m writing here is causing a bit of internal dialogue. I believe that it’s important to practice the rituals that were given to me as they were written, but that doesn’t mean I can’t add new pieces and additions around the edges. In my experience, the various BoS’s held by people in my tradition all tend to be very different, with a very specific core preserved intact.
Initiatory covens with long family trees tend to pass their BoS’s down from teacher (high priestess or high priest) to student (initiate). During that process various coven members add material to the BoS, meaning that as each member becomes eligible to receive their BoS, they become free to add things to it. The core remains, but it’s been added to. Contrast that with books such as the Bible or the Quran, which are set in stone, with no additions allowed.
Witchcraft and magical practice have a long and distinguished history. As a Witch, I often feel like a caretaker of that history. I adore and value where we’ve come from, but a Witch is constantly on the move. Our practices need to move ever forward. That’s why it’s important to remember that we don’t exist to serve our books; our books exist to serve and assist us.
Every Trick in the Book:
Holding the Keys to Mystery
we usually read nonfiction books to gain information about a topic. A book only acts as a guide to an experience; it is like reading a menu in a restaurant, not like actually eating the food. In a Book of Shadows, we often find ritual scripts, spells, myths and lore, recipes for herbs and oils, and similar materials. The book acts as a manual for doing a certain kind of Witchcraft. But if we think of a Book of Shadows as being part of a wider tradition of magical books, it can be more than just a guide.
Scholar Arthur Versluis has a fascinating theory about particular Renaissance grimoires. He suggests that many occult traditions were passed down the generations continuously—but not in a direct initiatory transmission from teacher to student. Rather, the mysteries were communicated through literature and art, and in densely illustrated occult texts. Versluis suggests that the purpose of elaborate illustrations in Rosicrucian and alchemical literature is to emphasize and amplify the hieratic nature of these traditions. If a book is to serve an initiatory function, it can better do so if it reveals its subject in both words and images. In this way, the book becomes hieroglyphic—it is not merely an abstract discussion about some topic; it actually reveals (hiera-) the nature of its subject.60
If a book can enable a connection between the absent writer and the reader, Versluis suggests, the result can be a moment of gnosis—a revelation of divine knowledge that cannot be fully contained in words. In other words, the book can trigger an initiatory experience.
The books that Versluis has in mind are ones in which text and image are equally important. Modern occultists have continued to use combinations of art and text to convey mystical experiences. Probably the most famous example of this approach in the twentieth century is that of artist-magician Austin Osman Spare, whose haunting illustrations and writings were a major influence on chaos magic. Sigil magic—a practice in which an intention-laden phrase is reduced to a set of letters, converted to an image, and then charged with sexual energy—evolved out of Spare’s work.
More recently, several British comics creators have employed comics’ unique combination of text and image for occult purposes. Writers such as Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, and Steve Moore (no relation to Alan) have used comics both to educate the reader about magick and to convey the essence of particular magical experiences. Alan Moore and J. H. Williams’s Promethea series, for example, takes the reader on an immersive journey up the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. Each issue’s tone, colors, and artistic style reflect the nature of a unique otherworldly realm.
For the Witch who is an artist or a poet, a Book of Shadows can capture magical experiences in artistic form. Under a skilled hand, such a book becomes more than a guide to having magical experiences, or a diary of them: it contains the keys to mystery.
Christine Hoff Kraemer, PhD
Christine Hoff Kraemer, PhD, specializes
in contemporary Paganism, sexuality,
theology, and popular culture.
She is an instructor in the Theology and
Religious History department at Cherry Hill
Seminary and author of Seeking the Mystery:
An Introduction to Pagan Theologies (2012) and
Eros and Touch from a Pagan Perspective (2013).
She has also co-edited two collections:
Graven Images: Religion in Comic Books and
Graphic Novels (2010) and Pagan Consent
Culture (2016).
58 John Halstead, “Five Ritualists I’d like to Invite to Dinner, Part 2: Steven Posch,” Patheos (April 8, 2014), www.patheos.com/blogs/allergicpagan/2014/04/08/five-ritualists-id-like-to-invite-to-dinner-part-2-steven-posch.
59 Doreen Valiente, The Rebirth of Witchcraft, 47.
60 Arthur Versluis, Restoring Paradise: Western Esotericism, Literature, Art, and Consciousness (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2004), 142.