110 Grimoire for the Apprentice Wizard
wide opening, like turbans, moons, or whelks—make
lovely containers for water. Nice little matching cups
can be readily found that were designed for, say, sweet
and sour sauce for Chinese meals.Bell
The bell is a ritual instrument of great
antiquity. Ringing a bell unleashes vibra-
tions that have powerful effects according
to its volume, tone, and material of con-
struction. Any type of bell may be used,
including a Tibetan bell bowl, but the
most favored design for magickal
work is a brass bell with a wooden
handle, as shown here.
The bell is a feminine symbol
and so is often used to invoke the
Goddess in ritual. It is also rung to
ward off evil spells and spirits, to halt
storms, or to evoke good energies. Placed in cupboards
or hung on the door, it guards the home. Bells are
sometimes rung in ritual to mark various sections and
to signal a spell’s beginning or end. There are no par-
ticular runes associated with the bell, but if you like,
and there’s room, you can inscribe “Blessed be thou
Bell of Art” and your magickal name in Theban runes.Lesson 7: Books of Magick
Right at the beginning of these lessons, I set you your
first Task—to acquire a magickal journal and begin
writing in it. I trust you have been doing so. When
you fill the first one up, go out and get another. Even-
tually you will have a whole shelf full of your jour-
nals over the years! There are three other types of
magickal books you should write yourself. Each one
is your own personal record, and so should also be
written in your own hand—or at least typed on your
own keyboard! In the old days, we Wizards had to
make our own paper and bind our books as well—
usually with leather. Even pens and inks were hand-
made, of goose quills and chimney soot. Not too many
of us go to that much trouble these days, although
you can still buy such beautiful handmade books at
Renaissance Faires and metaphysical stores—which
are good places to buy lots of magickal stuff! (More
about these places in Class V of this Course: “Enter-
ing the Magickal World.”) Above all, keep your own
hand-written magickal books to yourself and only
share them withpeople you trust completely.
Every Wizard should keep a Book of Shadows
and a Grimoire. Traditionally, such magickal work-
books had black covers and were often referred to
simply as “black books,” but yours can be any color
you feel is right. Most modern Wizards now use loose-
leaf notebooks or binders so we can insert or rear-
range pages, and now many of us who have comput-
ers also keep a “Disk of Shadows.” I have a whole
shelf of such fat binders containing Grimoires and
Books of Shadows from a number of different
magickal traditions with which I’ve studied.
Your Book of Shadows (or BoS, as it is com-
monly abbreviated) is for writing down lesson notes
from your teachers, rituals, songs, poems, chants,
prayers, magickal lore, and all the other records and
teachings of your particular magickal tradition. You
will keep adding to your BoS throughout your life. If
you study with a teacher, you will copy material from
his or her BoS into your own. And if you someday
become a teacher yourself, your students and appren-
tices will copy your BoS into theirs.
Your Grimoire is sort of like a cookbook con-
taining spells, charms, recipes, herb lore, incense for-
mulae, tables of correspondence, magickal alphabets,
and other reference material. Like any other book of
recipes, you will also keep adding to your personal
Grimoire all your life. Many Grimoires—like this
one—have been written by Wizards who have come
before you, and some of these have been published
and can be purchased at your local occult or meta-
physical bookstore. But avoid the Necronomicon—
the spells it contains are for conjuring up really nasty
imaginary monsters and demons, which are a damned
nuisance, as they’re never properly housetrained, and
they leave a terrible mess....
Finally, there is your dream diary, which you
should keep right beside your bed, and in which you
record, every morning upon awakening, as much as
you can remember of the dreams you had the night
before (See 1:VI: “Perchance to Dream”). This will
serve a twofold purpose: first, to help you learn to be
conscious in The Dreaming; and second, to provide a
record of your own spiritual growth and evolution that
you can look back upon over coming years. Perhaps
you will discover that some of your dreams are psy-
chic or prophetic, and have come true. If so, your
dream diary will help you learn how to tell which ones
are the true dreams.Lesson 8: The Speculum,
or Magick Mirror
(by Raven Grimassi)The speculum, or magick scrying mirror, is one of
the oldest tools of divination. The classic speculum- Practice.p65 110 1/14/2004, 4:20 PM