Setting up your BOS

Setting up your Book Of Shadows

This page is information for making a BOS of your own. Some people like to use Ring binders for their BOS, as they can fill it with pretty paper and move things around when they need to. Some people use exercise books with lines and cover the covers with pretty material. Some people bind their own books from parchment paper. Some people use computer disks.

There are many different ways to set up your BOS, like there are many different types of people in the world, we are all individual, and our BOS reflect this. There is no right or wrong way to set it out, and it will probably change several times as you grow and learn more things. If you do make a BOS from scratch or use an exercise book, remember to leave plenty of space for your BOS to expand. I left mine uncovered for about 6 months while I was madly gathering information, so that when I covered it I had half of it full and the other half blank to add to. You could also have several volumes to your BOS as you full up old books and make new ones.

Some people inlude all Magickal information, spells, rituals etc. in the same book, some people have separate books. Some people also have their BOS as a type of journal, and write about every ritual and spell they perform, so that they can look back on that at a later stage to get idead or work out what went wrong. I personally only write on one side of each page, this leaves the opposite side for me to write any comments or adjustments I feel I need to make as I try them out.

Making a BOS from scratch | Some ideas for printing out your BOS |Making Ink| How I set up my BOS

To make a BOS from scratch

These aren't very good instructions, but you'll get the general idea... You will need:

a pack of pretty paper (such as parchment paper, textured or coloured paper) as big as you want your BOS to be (you can buy a pack of plain photocopy paper if you want a cheaper alternative).
A piece of heavy cardboard.
Thick material to cover the book with.
Glue (I have seen instructions using a glue gun, but I guess you can use any glue).
A paintbrush.
Thin material (such as net or chiffon)
Herbs of your choice - dried
2 Phone books or other heavy books.

The cardboard will become the cover of the book, so you need to measure the paper to be able to cut the cardboard into shape. Measure the height and width of a sheet of paper you have chosen. Lay all the sheets of paper in a stack and measure how high the stack is off the ground (this will be the BOS spine). You should have 3 measurements. Mark out the cardboard so that you have the size of one piece of paper, then the height of the stack (the spine) and another piece of paper size. When you have marked it out, you should fold the cardboard along the folds and make a cover. (this is hard to explain, but basically the idea is that you if you have the card the same size as the sheets of paper on the front and back, with the spine of the book between them)

You can either have blank pages, or print things out on them first. When you are satisfied that the cover will work, cover the front of the cover with the heavy cloth (sticking it in place with glue). Once that has dried lay it out flat on a table. Glue 2 pieces of the thin material onto the inside cover, one on the front cover, and one on the back. Glue it ONLY around the top, bottom and side edges - not the centre where the spine is. When the glue is dry, full the pockets you have created with the herbs and then seal the open edges. When they are dry Place the pages on what will be the back cover, making sure they are all aligned properly. Apply the glue to the spine of the book, and using a paintbrush, make sure you apply glue onto the edge of each sheet of paper. Move the cover or the pages so that they are touching eachother - making sure each sheet is aligned correctly, and place a phone book behind the spine (to keep it fitting hard against the papers) and one on the top. Leave it this way until it has properly dried.

Hopefully...... your BOS is now ready, and each page should be stuck in, and every time you open your BOS a beautiful herbal scent should waft out... making a truly magickal experience!

If you are printing out information to use in your BOS, you might like to use some fancy fonts. Make sure you can clearly read them by candle light if you will be using them in rituals (or do what I do and have a separate ritual book with things printed out in plain easy to read fonts).

Using pretty paper will also make your printed out information look special, and you can either make it into a BOS (see above instructions) or put them into a nicely covered Ring Binder.

You can make some ritual inks to use in spells or to write in your BOS.

The way I make ink is to buy a big glass jar with a fliptop lid. Into that I add:

1 bottle of red wine (you could use vodka if you don't want red or the smell).
1/2 a cup of coffee grounds (not instant coffee).
The tea leaves from 10 tea bags.
1/4 cup of chipped Cinnamon quills.
1/8 cup of cloves.
2 tsp Dragon's Blood powder.
1 tsp Frankincense granules.
1 tsp Tumeric powder

I leave this sit over night, and then give it a stir. There will be a lot of silt on the bottom, stir that around every day for 2 weeks (I keep mine in the fridge). After 2 weeks, test the ink and you should get a light brown ink. Strain the mixture to remove the sludge, and you will have ink!

I then add water soluable colurings (that you buy to colour soaps and bath crystals etc.) until I get the colour I want. If you want to use a natural colourant, try using beetroot juice (it will make reddish purple)

You can also add Rose Water and other floral waters to make a fragrant ink. (It will smell like coffee and wine otherwise)

My Personal Book Of Shadows

This isn't the only or the best way to set out your BOS, it is simply the way I find works best for me. I personally have a few BOS's.... a book version, a ring binder version, a ritual version, a floppy disk version and a computer version. I am a total slob.... but some things I like to be in complete order, and my books and BOS are some things that I need to have very organised :)

I get asked for spells a lot, so I have to be able to find exactly what I am looking for quickly, so I can cut and paste it into an e-mail for someone (or type it out of my paper BOS if I don't have it on my computer). My Paper BOS is less organised than my computer one (FOS), but I can tell by how new the info is where it will be in the BOS.

Book BOS | Ring Binder BOS |Ritual BOS | Floppy Disk DOS | Computer FOS

Book version (BOS - Books of Shadows) - this is in 6 different A5 (half a normal exercise book) size books: a spell book, a ritual book, a herbal book, an information book, a symbol book and a dictionary book. I have stuck several exercise books together to make a thick book for each one. I have each ione about half filled now.

I just write in blue pen, but the covers are fancy material and I have glued satin ribbon into the spine, so that I can bookmark up to 6 pages at a time. I chose A5 size becuase it is easy to fit on the Altar. I have them in seperate books to help me find information I am looking for. I have coloured the covers differently to avoid confusion:

Black - spells
Gold - Rituals
Green floral - Herbs
Blue - Symbols
Purple - Information
(haven't covered my dictionary one yet)

Ring Binder (BOS - Binder of Shadows) - These are normal size ring binders, holding pages of information that I have downloaded off the internet, and a few hand written rituals that are too long to put in the smaller BOS (they would take up many pages). I have covered the folder with velvet, and stuck parchment paper on the inside covers. The pages are all in plastic pockets to protect them.

Ritual version - This is a black A5 ring binder that has my basic ritual chants and things in it, in plastic pockets that I take into my rituals as a type of "cheat sheet" in case I forget something (or to give to newbies in my coven to read from). I can add pages or take some pages out as needed.

Floppy disk version (DOS - Disks of Shadows) - This is about 6 floppy disks of all my information in zipped files. I have also recently made a copy of the entire folder onto a "zip disk", which are FANTASTIC as they hold 100meg, or 200 meg if you zip the files, so I only needed 1 disk rather than half a box full. I made this as a backup in case something happened *touch wood* and I lost my computer BOS

Computer version (FOS - Folder of Shadows) - This way saves having to make a database of your info, and is just about as easy to find into. I have 1 folder marked "Book Of Shadows" which contains many other folders.

My "Book of Shadows" folder contains:

"Assorted stuff" - Anything that doesn't seem to go anywhere else. I have folders labelled "Songs" with wav files of chants, "Poems" Pagan poems and cute stories, and other stuff just in the folder.

"Coven work" - Rituals and stuff prepared for my Coven

"Individual rituals" - contains more folders such as "Sabbat", "Full moon" etc. which have all my rituals on separate word files with the title saying the name of the ritual and the author (or if it is from a mailing list I put - ml) such as Fullmoon-ScottCunningham.doc

"Individual spells" - Similar to the rituals folder, I have folders for each type of spell "Love", "healing" etc. with all the spells on seperate word files with the title saying the name of the spell and the author (or if it is from a mailing list I put - ml). Such as Togainemployment-Silverravenwolf.doc. Some folders, like "Love" and "Protection" have other folders inside, like "love" has "Self love", "Healing Heartbreak", "Attraction" etc. and "Protection" has folders like "House", "Self", "Others" etc.

"Aromatherapy" - aromatherapy information and recipes. In 3 folders "Recipes", "Oils" and "Healing"

"Magickal Information" - This is the largest folder, it contains more folders with the information on each topic in them, my folders are: "Astral Projection", "Auras", "Candles", Chakras", "Charms, amulets & talismans", "Colours", "Cord magick", "Craft names", "Days", "Divination", "Elements", "Fairy magick", "Gods and Goddesses", "Herbal information", "lessons", "Meditation", "Numerology", "Runes", "Sabbats", "Spell and Ritual info","Stones and Crystals", "Tantra", "Tools", "Totem animals", "Wiccan and Pagan info"

Most of these folders are self explanitory. Some of these folders have more folders inside them.

"Gods and Goddesses" folder contains folders called "Gods" and "Goddesses" and I have files of lists of Goddesses and Gods in the main folder, and seperate word files of individual Gods and Goddesses in either the "Gods" folder or the "Goddesses" folder. I have also named the files with the Goddess name and where they come from. eg. Bast-Egyptian.doc.

"Lessons" folder contains information that is more in the form of lessons, they are long in-depth files on subjects such as the Quabala, Strega, Magick etc.

"Sabbats" has information on the Sabbats, actual Sabbat rituals are in the "Individual ritual" folder.

"Spell and Ritual info" has information on how to write rituals and Spells.

"Stones and Crystals" has folders called "Individual stones", "Crystal healing" and "Cleansing". The "Individual stones" folder has seperate word files for each stone, giving magickal and in some cases healing properties for each stone. Any other information that doesn't fit into the 3 categories stays in the main folder.

"Tools" has information on how to craft and concecrate ritual tools.

"Herbal information" folder has the following folders "Beauty Products", "Healing with herbs", "Herbal properties lists", "Recipes", "Herbs", "Incense", "Inks", "Magickal Formulary", "Oils" and "Rosebeads". and in the main folder is anything that doesn't fit into any of the other categories. Some of these folders have more folders inside them. The "Beauty products" folder has recipes for face creams, hair tonics, bath bombs etc. all on seperate word files. "Healing with herbs" folder contains recipes and information for healing minor heath complaints like acne, headaches etc. "Herbal properties lists" folder has lists of the magickal properties of herbs...waiting for me to (one day) correlate them all into one file. I have a few files that are close to containing them all.... but I keep finding new ones... "Recipes" contains herbal teas and any other recipes I have of a Pagan nature. "Herbs" has all my information on individual herbs in seperate word files. named for each herb eg Yarrow.doc or Sageandrosemary.doc. "Incense" has several different recipes for making incense sticks, cones and loose incense recipes. "Magickal Formulary" has information posted to a mailing list from Herman Slater's book. "Oils" contains recipes for making herbal oils, and oil recipes that are for magick (Aromatherapy has it's own folder). "Rosebeads" has recipes for making beads from rose petals. a few different methods (which I haven't tried yet..).

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