When I’m teaching the Craft to a person, I ask them to begin a Magickal Journal.  In this journal, I ask them to begin making notes about anything that is related to their spiritual path.  A 3-ring binder is standard, as are dividers.  Labels I commonly suggest for a magickal journal are:

Daily Journal — Record your daily thoughts, insights, meditations, and other information of a general nature.

Dreams — Record your dreams and your interpretations of your dreams.  Include the date, time, and moon sign and phase in your record.

Notes — Record information from your research, classes, seminars, workshops, or websites.

Tarot & Divination — Record readings, divination research and study, signs, omens, and other psychic occurrences.

Pathwork — Record information that is special to you (ie, totems, Gods or Goddesses, affinities for certain abilities, how you got your magickal name, etc).

Rituals — Record rituals done, their purposes, your experiences and results achieved.

Spells — Record spells learned or performed, your experiences and the results achieved.

Wiccan Ways — Record information primarily pertaining to the practice of Wicca, such as the Wheel of the Year, Tables of Correspondence, Invocations, The Wiccan Rede, The 13 Principles of Wiccan Belief, The Witches’ Pyramid, The Laws of the Craft, etc.

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Looking at the above list, you might think it looks a lot like a Book of Shadows.  Actually, a Magickal Journal is the foundation of a good Book of Shadows.  Your Book of Shadows is about your actual work as a Witch.  One reason I believe “Book of Shadows” is aptly named is that the things contained within the Book of Shadows are not actually the works themselves.  As we work with the powers of Light, it is only natural that the Light that shines from our work would cast shadows.  We cannot capture the Light of our works themselves — we can only capture the shape of those works, that sudden moment stilled in time that is not the actual moment itself.  What remains within the Book of Shadows remains intangible except to those who, too, know the process of creating Light.

In the list above, the Rituals and Spells sections are going to comprise a large part of your future Book of Shadows.  Study sections will eventually become less necessary as you will internalize what it necessary for you and release what is not.  Study will be ongoing for as long as you live and practice as a Witch.  Your Magickal Journal will be in a constant state of addition and subtraction, transformation and deletion.  Your Book of Shadows, however, is your legacy of your work… what you have learned… what is worth passing on to future Witches (including your children or those who will inherit your Tradition).

Don’t begin your study of the Craft writing a Book of Shadows.  You will disappoint yourself.  Your learning curve will render certain things that you believed were true as shadows themselves, and these realizations will domino into other shadows, knocking them down as well.  The Magickal Journal gives you the breathing space to experiment, to mess up, to try on for size, to be grand and bold or timid and cautious.  You will know when you have something lasting, something real, something of Power.

Save these moments for your Book of Shadows.  Let your Magickal Journal be your laboratory in the experiment of life. 

Photo by James_Michael_Hill (via Flickr).