Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Book of Shadows

The air was cold, the lighting dim, fear super high. There I was, staring at the true Book of Shadows. Terror swept down my spine in a fit of rage to leave my body. Witches came out of the wood work, trying to devour my very existence in order to live forever. Chanting aramaic, as they tore me from limb to limb. My organs spilled out all over their alter, but that didnt seem to faze the woman in charge. No. She instead, peered into my existence. Making me feel like it was ok to be their lamb. And then I woke up, and found a book of shadows on android.

A Book of Shadows is a book containing religious texts and instructions for magical rituals found within the Neopagan religion of Wicca. Originating within the Gardnerian tradition of the Craft, the first Book of Shadows was created by the pioneering Wiccan Gerald Gardner sometime in the late 1940s or early 1950s, and which he utilised first in his Bricket Wood coven and then in other covens which he founded in following decades. The concept of the Book of Shadows was then adopted by other Wiccan traditions, such as Alexandrianism and Mohsianism, and with the rise of books teaching people how to begin following Wicca in the 1970s onward, the idea of the Book of Shadows was then further propagated amongst solitary practitioners unconnected to earlier traditions.