Welcome to my online Book of Shadows.

3rd June, 2024

A revised page for Heathen Holidays is up. I will be going into more detail on the mini sites for them. I have a binder where I am recording such things and will write a more condencsed version for the site regarding the aspects that are important to me.

11th May, 2024

Diana Paxson's books are now on the list of those to avoid as she is no longer a member of the Troth. (There is an article on Wild Hunt.org that goes more into the details why.) I bought one of her books at the start of the year because I was going to start the Troth's free course and her books were mentioned as a source. I can't say that I was impressed with her book as there were a lot of Nazi-red flags in it and then I discovered the problems with Marion Zimmer Bradley's husband (and as an extension, her, and Paxson.) I don't trust the Troth because Paxson's material is so much a part of the lore program that they do, including their publications, and the Troth already had issues with being founded by Stephen Flowers so I had always been cautious about dealing with the org. It's tainted.

28th October, 2023

I hope to start working on this again, soon. I have a lot of information to process and it has not been easy to find the time to work on it because back in Feburary, my computer had to go in for repair and the summer was very chaotic. We have moved home and I am still going through the process of sorting everything out from that. Once I am more organized, I will resuming work.

21st January, 2023

If there is one thing that is cringe worthy and embarrassing, it's a pagan of any path promoting the use of swastikas or saying that it's a good symbol. It isn't, at least not any more. It's a symbol that has been corrupted and can no longer be used in any capacity. There are many other symbols that you can use to express yourself which don't gloryify genocide. I just came across a youtube video on Imbolc which compared Brid's cross with the symbol. It might be an honest mistake, but please go and do a course about the Holocaust or track down accounts of the Holocaust from the perspective of Jews, and learn why you can't wave it around. (I don't have a problem with Brid's cross, just the idea that it's in anyway a swastika. Comparing it as though it is is an endorsement of using swastikas.)

15th January, 2023

I am going to have to take a break from working on my book of shadows (part 2, as I've filled the first one now - I just need to do some decorating with it) as I run the risk of hurting my thumb and fingers on the pens and pencils I use. They are quite sore! I'll probably need a few more A5 books to complete everything but thanks to my studying of the goddesses (so far), I have a better idea of what to do about Disablot, the Nordic Imbolc. Basically, it's a festival honouring the goddesses and female spririts and blessing the plough, though as we aren't all farmers, blessing gardening tools, espeaically if you use them for growing fruit and veg is just as good. I will put my ideas down for Disablot in that section of the site, once I've got everything together. There is also Thorrablot, which is a feast day dedicated to Thor which happens around the same time, which makes sense if you are blessing the plough.

13th January, 2023

I've practically filled the book now. There are too many empty pages at the front of the book which I'd kept aside for contents as I didn't know how many contents pages I would need so I am putting Idun in there, as her info fits. I would have liked to have the first god being Odin, but I just couldn't have eight pages of blank space there, and there wasn't room at all for longer pieces. The joy of hand-written books! It makes me wonder just how many medieval manuscripts had random stuff put in them just to fill up gaps (and how many mis-spelled words became the mainstream way of spelling it just because the manuscript survived, scholars discovered it first, and other random events that favoured it over others.)

11th January, 2023

I've almost filled the first Book of Shadows now... Only got Odin, Frigga and Frigga's handmaidens in it. (There are 13 of them...) A 140 page book almost filled! Looking through Youtube videos I wondered why people need so many notebooks for it, and now I know... Because you can fill them really quickly. Of course, I've had the notebook for over 10 years because I stopped writing in it so it's not exactly true. I've got some new notebooks that are waiting to be filled so I can at least continue he project. I just didn't anticpate that there would be so much to write about for just a small number of gods and goddesses and that the book would be filled so quickly.

2nd January, 2023

I've been doing quite a lot of work in my Book of Shadows over the past few days. It looks like that I will need another to complete my listing of the gods and goddesses. I will be using paperblanks journals for this so that they match. I don't feel that all of the information is relevant, espeaically the personal gnosis of other people as it seems forced, or vague and seems to be made to fit the individual's political beliefs. On the other hand, it is helpful as it allows me to filter out what I don't need, and what I think is most likely to be correct.

31st December, 2022

I have added some pages for the different holidays for the Wheel of the Year in Norse paganism. One problem I have encountered is that aside from Yule, which seems to have inforamtion and articles all over the place, there is very little on the others. As I practice alone, I have to find ways of marking them which doesn't include others. I may even have to borrow things from Druidry. Although there is mention of some of these in the Sagas, we don't always know what happened in them and there are some practices that can't/should not be carried out today.

10th December, 2022

My Book of Shadows is almost cleaned up, now. I just have some stuff on Runes to transfer, and then I'll be able to get down to starting it properly. The contents pages are marked out and ready for action.

15th November 2022

The Little Book of Runes is just about finished. I still need to glue some items in it, but it's fair to say that it is done. I'll take some photos of it and post them on The Little Book of Runes page once I get some decent lighting to take good photos. At the moment, it is too dark.

14th November 2022

I've finished transfering over my first entry into my book of shadows on to here, and just have my first impressions of Asatru to transfer... My thoughts on it have changed considerably since I wrote it, mainly because I've found better sources, come across useful academic information, done courses, etc, so there will be somethings which I don't agree with, or have changed my thinking on. When I first discovered Asatru, there wasn't a lot of resources out there and even some of the more general introduction to paganism books included information (possibly quite innocently) from the problematic, 'folkish' organisations. The book I am using now will be about the various gods and goddesses in Norse mythology. I will include other things if there is room in the book - if there isn't, then I shall do other books to cover the subjects that I want to.

12th November 2022

I have been working on my first art magic project, The Little Book of Runes. I don't know if this is how you do it, but for some reason I have developed more of an afinity with Anglo Saxon Runes, rather than the Elder Futhark, even though the Elder Futhark is more often used. It's probably because, given where I live, it is more likely to have been the rune set used locally. I don't have enough room in the book to go through all the different sets, so I might do that here.

8th November 2022

I'm hoping to get an Ikea desk shelf later on this week so that I can make more use of my desk. At the moment, it's a mess and I can't really use it as a desk at all. I'm posting here because it will (hopefully) give me more space to display my junk journals (they have nothing in them at the moment), sketchbooks, Book of Shadows, the little rune book I am making and a place to display my crystals and gemstones. I also want a better place to keep the ashes of three of my dogs that sadly passed away - Jaffa in 2018, Colin in 2019 and Misty in 2020. I'm hoping that there will be space on the top of the shelf unit for them. I will be getting some boxes for them to decorate so that the ashes can be kept inside those. It's something I've been wanting to do for a long time, but havne't got around to doing it yet because I want to do some pyrography on the boxes. I need a decent workspace to be able to work on them and I've not got that sorted out at the moment. It will be better for them. I still miss those dogs, and my old dogs, Laddie and Beauty, but I don't have anything of them. It seems a good idea to keep them with my pagan items.

30th October 2022

Many years ago, I bought some Nemesis Now notebooks that have a dragon, a werewolf and a tree on the front, but never really wrote in them. I have decided that I will turn them into pagan art journals. I could never bring myself to write in them because I didn't want to spoil them. I have started to write up some of the information in my Book of Shadows on to the website so that I have a record of it - it is sometimes useful to know your thoughts so that you can go back and reflect upon them at a later date, and I will erase what is in the book once I've done this. I will probably use the pages that have been written on as index pages when I start the book proper - some are easier to erase than others because there is less writing on it. Once I get into the book proper, I will start out by writing about the gods, then move on to cosmology, and the 9 worlds and then on to runes. Of course, I may end up filling the book with just gods, depending on how much I write on each. That doesn't matter because I can just get another Paperblanks notebook and continue on from there. There /is/ a lot to get through...

26th October 2022

I've ordered some water resistant fineliners to use in my Book of Shadows. I would have liked to have used my fountain/calligraphy pens in it, but I was concerned that the ink wasn't waterproof and would smudge if it got wet. I have some old watercolours that I am going to use to 'age' it and add colour to the pages. The fineliners are made by Uniball (one of my favourite companies for fineliners and paint pens) and the book itself is a paperblanks journal. I love their books, but they are quite pricey, but it's nice to be writing in something that is better than the usual notebooks that you get. I will be doing more in it when I've recovered from a fall last week as it's affecting my concentration.

23rd October 2022

I have been working on the old Book of Shadows that I found on Wednesday this week. I've been doing the inside cover (still have same artwork to do for it) and the Prayer to Saga, Norse Goddess of histories, books, libraries, etc... Of course, Nordic peoples didn't really have books until they started converting to Christianity, but it seems apt that a godess of histroy and knowledge would love libraries and books, etc. She is a goddess that I feel close to (and unexpectedly, because she isn't well known) because I love books, history, knowledge and learning too, so it seemed appropirate to dedicate it to her. I will write a dedication to Odin in there once I have figured out what I want to do with the writings that are already in there - I might type them out, up date them a little and post them here, and write my notes in the book I am using to write my ideas down for my Book of Shadows. I would love to start a completely new book but I am impatient and money is a problem at the moment (when is it not, though?) and I don't see the point in writing in a scruffy notebook as my 'formal' Book of Shadows. I suppose this website is also OK to record ideas for it, too, and I will be sharing the less personal stuff on here from the book, I guess. There are many videos on Youtube where people show case their books and these have been helpful. Mine will be Norse themed, because Norse paganism is my main interest. I am also interested in druidry and folklore that is more British in nature because it is where I live and there is some over lap between Celtic/British and Norse paganism. Go back far enough and there is also some Roman influneces too, but I won't be doing s great deal on that - I've never liked Roman culture because of their tendency to be invaders and conquerors of the ancient world. In my late teens, I was interested in the Aztec, Mayan and Egyptian pantehons but I won't be including them in any of practices as they are gods of a different landscape and climate though I still enjoy the myths and stories about them.