Tell me about your book of shadows

Well..I've had a few before it, but they didnt turn out too well. This new one of mine is this nice leather-bound book with ribbon attached to the spine for a page marker which I found at a store one rainy day when my Mom had dragged me into shopping with her. So far it's okay, there's no table of contents or anything, just my horrid writing (lol), with notes tucked in here and there. There's not terribly much in it yet..'cause I'm terribly disorganized, and it never falls first on my list of priorities, but I do add new stuff every now and again. Mine's not really decorated either..I might draw something in it if I add different symbols or talk about runes in it..but otherwise I just want to keep it as neat as possible. Yours must be alot neat-er and probably alot more organized than my BOS though ^_^.

I bought mine from the Witchcraft Museum in Boscastle when they re-opened after the floods. I adore Boscastle, the North Coast of Cornwall is very important to me, and Boscastle is dearer to me than it's neighbour by a few miles, Tintagel, which is more famous. the museum is very special, and when they re-opened I decided to splash out and buy myself an expensive book, and start doing things properly in it, in addition to my computer files and small notebooks. I like to think that by buying it I helped them get back on their feet after what happened. it is very beautiful. hardback, leather bound, handmade locally. the paper is sort of ivory coloured and very heavy. it's a real heirloom peice, and it delights me. I use a cartridge calligraphy pen and black ink, and my writing is rather odd, to say the least. it looks very old fashioned, so looks sort of right in my book. it's not even slightly organised, and to me this is right. it's very organic. I write things in as and when I decide to, so there is no real order. I always worried that if I had an order for it, bits would fill up, I'd run out of space, and it would spoil it for me. by letting it develop this way, nothing is in the wrong place, because there is no right place. I put in Spells, recipes (yes, just bog standard recipes) poems, quotations, pictures, folklore, remedies, and on and on. it's very old fashioned though. I'm not very new age in my practice.

I know a lot of people say we should have only one. I out grew my one. It is huge. About three hundred pages. All organized and cross referenced with a hand carved wooden covers. I love it. It is a mixture of handwritten and typed pages. It also has artwork and sketches in it. I love my BOS. I have a new one as a follow-up to that one. As I said. The first one got full.

My BOS... it's very close to my heart... Mine is thick hardcover book with slightly lined a4 sized pages. It's got a leather cover with a beautiful border and pentacle design. its a petty common cover for a BOS, but it suits me fine. My writing isn't very neat and i can't help that, but i do the best I can and always use a black felt tip pen...having the writing all uniform helps hide the not-neatness of my writing lol! The titles of all the pages i do in colour and fancy, nice, pretty writing, and i use a variety of pens to do elaborate and prettiful borders on every page. I've had it for four years now, and i'm pretty proud of it.

Mine is sort of a work in progress as I'm thinking about getting a new book. It is an old HUGE hard cover sketchbook I got in high school, but only used a few pages. I have a pentacl in silver drawn onto the front and the first page is done up with my magickal name and the elemental symbols. I've only copied Sabbat/Esbat rituals into this so far, but also have a mini BOS I will use if doing group..it';s just a hard cover notebook.

To tell you the truth I really don't have just one book of Shadows but many--they are loose leaf binder types but the kind that are encased.with cloth and zipper shut....hard to explain..the first two volumes are the correspondances, spells, various "meanings' etc. etc...I get special type paper to write on...not just loose leaf paper..and have to punch holes in them...And yes...LOL..my handwriting is atrocious also...but from what I heard it's supposed to have more meaning if you handwrite everything.