Wildcraft in Maine

Over the past week or so I have been reorganizing my Book of Shadows. I love looking back on the rites and spellwork that I have crafted over the years. Although I have been a practicing witch for over a decade now, but I have very little of my own writings in the early years of my practice. I celebrated the Sabbats and the Esbats the best I could from my dorm room, but I can’t see to find any of my old rituals. I have plenty of journal entires and some altar pictures, but no ritual outlines. Perhaps they were lost with my old disks somewhere. Note to self – I need to dig them up! There around here somewhere…

I have quite a lot of my own material since I became active in my Pagan community, about 6-7 years ago. At first I did a lot of group rituals, but over the last couple of years I have been writing primarily solitary workings. As I look back on these rituals, I love to notice the differences in my practices as I have grown over time. Sure, I cringe when I look at some of my old ritual scripts, but at the time they were exactly what I needed them to be, so they served their purpose well. In some ways my rituals have become more complex, but also more simple. The energy work is more complex, but the physical aspects of the ritual (the accoutrements) is more simple. Of course, I think that this is a natural progression for Pagans as we grow more comfortable working with the unseen energies. For me, getting older and wiser helped a lot too. LOL!

I think that the biggest hurdle that I have recently leaped over is one of my own making. I am a super organized person, so I tend to want everything in my BOS to fit into a neat little category. I kept my Sabbat rituals separate from my Esbat rituals, etc., etc.  Last weekend, when I was pouring through my BOS, which is separated out into a lot of binders, I came to the conclusion that if I keep things separate, then I can’t really see my development of practice over time. So, I decided to just do away with keeping things separate, and instead put things in chronological order. As soon as I did that I was able to notice some really interesting patterns in my writings. Eureka! I could point out areas of growth in my practices and the expansion of my magickal workings, just by flipping through the pages!

So now I have all my own writings (or at least the ones I could find so far) in one binder arranged in date order, with the newest rites at the beginning. Next, I am going to integrate in all the rituals that I have written over the years with other people (giving them credit, of course). I think I am going to need a bigger binder

For now, I’ve decided to keep a few things separate from this new BOS. I am going to keep my dream journal and divination work separate for now anyway, but I might change my mind later.  We’ll see!

Okay, enough blogging for now. Back to work pulling all my writings together…