The Book Stayed Empty

Courtesy bohdanchreptak at Pixabay 

A while ago I woke from a dream very suddenly, distressed and upset even as sleep shed off of me. I had been at an intimate coven gathering in the dream. We sat in the circle, perhaps before or after ritual, enjoying what looked to be a very fine charcuterie board, and sundry nibbles. Each of us tending to tasks one usually does “in circle”. Someone off beside me was grinding herbs slowly and methodically, chanting as they worked. Another was plaiting cords, the tail end hooked over their outstretched big toe. I was copying into my Book. It was the sight of the book that woke me, actually. The realization - in my semi-lucid, go-with-the-flow, state - that I knew what that little book was. It exists in the real world, y’see.

I’ve been hanging onto this book for… well… we’ll say 20 years at this point. Honestly, it could be a little more. The book itself went out of print a while ago, which is weird but also understandable since it’s a blank, lined, journal. I remember buying two of them. One was cannibalized, covered in leather, filled with handmade paper and gifted to a friend. The other, plus the original “text block” of the first, were squirrelled away, wrapped in paper, beneath my altar.

I knew the moment I saw this book that it was supposed to be with me and I even knew what it was for. It was for the book of shadows. Not “a” book of shadows, nor “my” book of shadows. Nah… it was for THE book of shadows. One of the properly-received Wiccan ones.

When I knelt at my altar and did one of the early “solo initiations” from a mass-market paperback it was done with the hope that one day I’d experience a ‘proper’ one, and fill that little book.

In that moment, saying my very heartfelt words about the whole thing (speaking directly to the gods and to those who have gone before), I felt very strongly that I needed to bring something to the table should I ever approach a prospective coven - I took this as spirit-guidance, something to do with being some specific and subtle connotation of that “Proper person, properly prepared” phrase. That went into the words I spoke - to bring to a coven no less than I would ask of a coven. I felt that if I did not have something unique, novel, and most importantly useful, to offer… then why seek it out? Why take more than I would offer in return? In hindsight such an Oath may have been something of a mistake, but… what’s done is done.

So, I learned. 

Well, then of course I got burned, badly, by many different subsets of the witchcraft and occult communities. The voices of authority never really spoke in a way that sang to my heart, and so I wondered if I belonged there at all. I was filled with knowledge that I sought on my own, trials I endured solo, and initiations between myself and rather dubious sorts.

I studied every sort of thing I could afford to have access to. Basics, sure, but also some rather out-there bits of theatrics. I learned to better sew and to draft simple patterns for robes and the like, I learned leatherworking and bookbinding a little more properly, I studied but never really properly practiced smithing, I learned simple woodworking, I already knew pottery, etc. I learned how to make masks and other costumery, how to make flash powder and pyrotechnics, different kinds of puppetry, shadow-theater, phantasmagoria, stage magic, and on and on and on.

The book, however, stayed empty.

I still have a deep respect for Wicca itself. It moves in it’s own world, orbits its own courses. There is something in that unknown country that calls out, even to this day.

It’s sitting in front of me on my desk. It’s gold filigree border striking dozens of memories so deep in my heart that they ring rather than recall. To bring nothing less than I would ask. Well, by then would I not already be my own, sovereign, priest? Would I not have already learned Mysteries? Would I not already have met Them, and known Them, and adored Them in my own way?

So, I write my own book. I fill it with the knowledge I have received, details I might otherwise forget (or already partially have), and things that I might want to preserve, should I ever pass this information onward - and I can’t think of a way more proper (for me) than through blood, sweat, and tears. Tucked into the back, behind the text block of dyed paper paper, nestled into the leather flap that wraps the whole thing shut, is the home of that empty book. Maybe still waiting, maybe a reminder.