What Is a Book of Shadows
A Book of Shadows is the working book of a Wiccan or witch, the place where rituals, invocations, recipes, correspondences, and personal records of the practice are kept. The phrase is Gardnerian, popularised by Gerald Gardner in the late 1940s and 1950s, but the underlying practice of keeping a magical notebook is older than the term. The grimoire tradition of ceremonial magic, from the medieval Sworn Book of Honorius to the Heptameron of Pietro d’Abano and the Lesser Key of Solomon, is the obvious antecedent; the Book of Shadows is best understood as the Wiccan adaptation of this older habit, refitted for a religion of coven and Goddess rather than of conjurer and demon.
What is striking about the Book of Shadows is how varied it is in practice. Some are private working journals, some are the official records of a coven, and some are inherited volumes handed down through a lineage.
Who keeps a Book of Shadows
The Book of Shadows is most closely associated with the British initiatory Wiccan traditions, particularly Gardnerian, Alexandrian, and their direct offshoots. In these traditions, a new initiate is given a copy of the coven’s Book, traditionally hand-copied by the initiate from the High Priestess’s book, and is expected to keep that copy up to date.
The early history of the Book has been the subject of sustained controversy. The American Wiccan scholar Aidan A. Kelly has argued, since the 1970s, that much of the early Gardnerian Book of Shadows — including passages of the “Charge of the Goddess” and the liturgical verses called the “Witches’ Rune” — was drawn directly from the published writings and rituals of Aleister Crowley and of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, sometimes without acknowledgement. The evidence centres on the Bricket Wood coven of the late 1940s and early 1950s, in which Doreen Valiente was the High Priestess and where the rewriting of the Crowley-derived material was carried out. Valiente’s own diaries (published in extracts in her biography by her husband, J. H. Brennan, Doreen Valiente: A Literary Biography, 2014) and Kelly’s archival work in The Pomegranate and in his Crafting the Art of Magic (1991) have produced a detailed picture of the borrowing. The mainstream scholarly view today is that the Gardnerian Book was, in its earliest form, substantially composed of material from older published sources, which Gardner and his circle then refashioned into the liturgy of the new religion.
Eclectic, solitary, and Hedge Witches also commonly keep a Book of Shadows, compiling it themselves from a wide range of sources. Scott Cunningham’s Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner (1988) is a common starting point. The book also turns up, in a less formal way, in many other neopagan and ceremonial-magic traditions, where it may be called a Book of Lore, a Grimoire, or a Book of Operations. For the broader context, see Wiccan beliefs and practice.
What goes in a Book of Shadows
The contents of a Book of Shadows depend on the tradition, but several kinds of material are common.
Ritual comes first. The full text of the central rites of the tradition — the casting of the circle, the invocation of the quarters, the Drawing Down of the Moon, the Great Rite, and the sabbat rites — usually goes in. In the Gardnerian tradition, the Book also contains liturgical poetry attributed to Doreen Valiente, in particular her 1950s rewrites of the “Charge of the Goddess” and the verses called the “Witches’ Rune.” The attribution of the Witches’ Rune to Valiente specifically is, however, contested: the term is used loosely in the tradition.
Invocations come second. The Charge of the Goddess, the Charge of the Horned God, and various shorter invocations to the deities and the elements are typical. The most familiar Charge of the Goddess in modern Wicca is Valiente’s 1950s reworking of an older Crowley-derived text, of which a copy in Gardner’s hand survives.
Correspondences come third: tables of planetary associations, colour correspondences, herb-lore, candle colours, and stone and crystal correspondences. These tables are largely drawn from the Golden Dawn tradition and from the medieval Picatrix.
Spells and workings come fourth. Healing rituals, protections, banishings, charms, and workings for love, prosperity, and divination fill the practical section.
Recipes come fifth. A Book is often also a working recipe book: incense recipes, oil recipes, blends for the besom or the ritual bath, and tinctures for healing.
Personal gnosis comes sixth. Dreams, signs, experiences, and working notes are kept alongside the inherited material. This category is, perhaps, the most important in practice, because it is here that the Book of Shadows becomes the practitioner’s own.
Inherited versus personal Books
A useful distinction is between an inherited Book and a personal one. An inherited Book comes from a tradition or lineage: a Gardnerian book copied from the High Priestess’s, an Alexandrian book passed on at initiation, a family book from a hereditary witch. A personal Book is the working record of an individual witch, built up over years of practice. Most Witches keep both. For more on how the inherited book came into being, see the origins of modern witchcraft.
The question of secrecy
Books of Shadows are traditionally treated as private, and in the older initiatory traditions, oath-bound to secrecy. In recent decades the practical secrecy has largely broken down. The first major published version appeared in Witchcraft magazine in 1973; further versions circulated in the 1980s via photocopied compilations, and the Farrar versions (drawn from the work of Stewart and Janet Farrar) are the most widely circulated printed editions. Traditional initiatory lineages, however, still expect a measure of discretion, and most Witches continue to treat the contents of their own books as private.
A note on the phrase itself
The phrase “Book of Shadows” appears first in Gardner’s High Magic’s Aid (1949), a novel, where it is the title of a magical notebook inherited by one of the characters. The Aidan Kelly school has argued that the phrase was borrowed from a 1949 article in True Witchcraft magazine; the question is not settled. The phrase has sometimes been glossed as a translation of an alleged Gaelic leabhar sgàile, “book of shade”, but the Gaelic is conjectural and is not supported by the early Irish or Scottish sources. The phrase is best treated as a Gardnerian coinage.
For an introduction to the wider seasonal pattern that gives the Book its annual structure, see the eight sabbats of the Wiccan year. For a look at how a Book of Shadows sits within the broader ritual-magic tradition, see ritual and ceremonial magic.