The magical diary

To the new Library of Birmingham (libraryofbirmingham.com) for the first time today. I wasn't convinced Birmingham needed a new library, even while the existing one's faults were glaring, but all I can say is: Well done, Birmingham. It is one sexy building. It is sheer pleasure to walk around (the old library was a chore), & in fact seemed to have drawn in all manner of men & women for a look. The building is not the issue, you may say, but the point I'm making is that the library is the route to independent thinking & liberation. Librarians, surprisingly, are often anarchists, because their profession is all about freedom of information. Books are always the first things fascists burn because they are keen to restrict access to information.

We witches have a strange relationship with books, first among them being the fabled 'Book of Shadows'. In reality you get a book of shadows handed down to you when initiated into a tradition. The pseudo-history for the complete absence of old ones is that they were traditionally burned after the owner's death; the real reason none exist is that there were none before the 1940s.

Hedge witches like me tend to write their own, but I feel their function is slightly different. In initiatory traditions, the transmission of the tradition is partly through the handed down Book of Shadows. The source for our tradition is the hedge, which may include a book or books but will always be less neat.

What is downplayed in witchcraft over ceremonial magic is the practice of the magical diary - to our disadvantage, I feel. I have kept one for a number of years now - sporadically at times, needless to say, but it has always been to my great benefit when I've been disciplined enough to stick to it:

It allows you to see the development of trains of thought & patterns - either things to give further thought to, or even things which will help towards self-knowledge.

The magical diary enables the witch to see what works & what doesn't - it forms the lab notebook of an evidence-based witchcraft.

It can be enormously encouraging to have a record of what you have done in the past. You *have* caused changed in the past & can do so again.

We magical people know that naming the problem is often enough to master it, & the simple fact of writing your magical activities down reinforces them. It provides you with a record to refer to which can almost function as a magical partner in reminding & supporting you.

It is the record of your own changing as a magical person - looking back over several years' of diaries shows how you have changed when you may not notice it day by day.

Finally it is the record of your divine interaction with the divine, bringing the divine through mind to matter & thus creating. This may sound like a tall claim, but this is the whole point of both magic & of keeping a magical diary. We are almost writing a sacred scripture as we go along.

It is this last one that for me melds the purposes of Book of Shadows & magical diary. Gardner's earlier Books of Shadows were plainly partly notebooks, diaries, which developed into fuller rituals. It is this process before the 'final version' that goes on in the magical diary. Personally if the house was burning down I would try to rescue the diaries but wouldn't be so bothered about my Book of Shadows: all the important stuff is anyway in my head. The diaries are a road map, a record of the journey, & both a picture & recipe for an outcome.

Besides, a friend has promised to publish them when I'm dead, & since then they've become much more outrageous. Would *you* want to be named in my magical diary?

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