Hemerologies list favorable and unfavorable days within each month; positive and negative actions for each day are also listed. Hemerologies existed in places as far apart as China, Egypt, India, Mesopotamia, Mexico, and Rome.
The earliest known hemerology dates back to at least the second millennium BCE in Mesopotamia. Hemerologies typically include predictions like this:
On the seventh day of the month he should not take a wife; distress will befall him
On the eighth day of the month he may take a wife, his heart will be happy
Daily horoscopes published in newspapers derive from this concept. Among the Aztecs and Mayans, when a baby was born, the hemerological table was consulted in order to reveal the new child’s nahual, patron deity and perhaps name (see ANIMALS: Nahual).
With the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century, almanacs, which were cheap to produce, became widely circulated and influential. Many people had only two books in their home, the Bible and an almanac. Scholars began producing their own almanacs, among the most renowned being Michel de Nostre Dame, better known now as Nostradamus. His predictions were first published as a feature within the almanacs he wrote, compiled, and published annually beginning in 1550. English astrologer William Lilly published his own almanacs in the seventeenth century.
By the eighteenth century, almanacs had become an extremely popular literary genre; many were bestsellers. Benjamin Franklin published his Poor Richard’s Almanac from 1732 to 1758. Benjamin Banneker, the African-American astronomer and mathematician also published a series of best-selling almanacs. The Old Farmer’s Almanac, first published in 1792, is North America’s oldest continually published periodical. The Old Farmer’s Almanac was originally a guide for farmers and remains so, although many readers who have nothing to do with agriculture, simply enjoy reading it or depend upon its renowned weather predictions. The Old Farmer’s Almanac’s weather and farming advice are based on astrological wisdom, particularly moon phases. For many, these books are their only exposure to true astrology.
The Witches’ Almanac
Another popular publication, The Witches’ Almanac, falls squarely within the tradition of almanacs as books of magic. In addition to the standard practical information one expects to find within an almanac (moon phases, planting tables, and so forth) The Witches’ Almanac is filled with information regarding spells, spirits, and practical magic. The Witches’ Almanac was created by Elizabeth Pepper and John Wilcock and was first published as a labor of love in 1971. It is published annually coinciding with the vernal equinox. In 1980, when their publisher went out of business, The Witches Almanac went on hiatus until 1991 when Pepper and Wilcock revived it as an independent publication. It continues to serve all facets of the witchcraft community.
Books of Shadows
According to its most basic definition, a Book of Shadows is a book of spells or rituals copied by hand. That’s crucial; by definition, a Book of Shadows is a personalized, hand-written book. No two are identical, if only because the handwriting is different. Although various authors have published their personal Books of Shadows, these are usually intended as guidelines or methods of preserving traditions. If you use a printed, published Book of Shadows for spellcasting, which many do, then by definition it is being used in the manner of a grimoire. In order to possess an authentic Book of Shadows it must be hand-written, even if all you do is copy it word for word. A not insubstantial portion of the tradition’s power and beauty derives from the magical art of putting pen to paper.
Books of Shadows derive from the notion that because magical practices and/or pagan religion were persecuted with total eradication as the goal, witches (variously defined) kept secret books. Secrecy was crucial because possession of a magical or pagan text (and that’s a distinction the Inquisition would not have made) was grounds for arrest and conviction for witchcraft. The title of the genre, which may or may not have been coined by Gerald Gardner, father of modern Wicca, refers to the necessity of keeping these books hidden or “in the shadows.”
If one uses the purest, narrowest definition of a Book of Shadows as a hand-written, personalized book of rituals and magic, then in essence, all magical manuscripts created prior to the invention of the printing press, not least the medieval grimoires, are Books of Shadows. They were, by necessity, hand-copied. There was no other way to make a book.
However, that pure, narrow definition of Books of Shadows is rarely used, and the equation of them with medieval grimoires would horrify, appall and anger many Wiccans, because a Book of Shadows is more than just a handwritten ritual guide.
Many would object to considering medieval grimoires as Books of Shadows because these grimoires are virtually all associated with a type of selfish, frequently malevolent, male-oriented sorcery, heavily steeped in Christianity (many who used and perhaps wrote them were theologians) and with a type of magic that is diametrically opposed to traditional Earth-centered witchcraft.
Historic Books of Shadows, as opposed to those created in the wake of Gerald Gardner, are understood to have been books written by individual female witches or by covens in a desperate attempt to keep traditions alive. They are shadowy because normally this material would never have been written down but transmitted orally—but desperate times require desperate action.
This is the definition of Books of Shadows as taught by Gerald Gardner, who claimed to have learned of the tradition when he was initiated into a long-secret coven. Gardner wrote his own Book of Shadows together with Doreen Valiente and Aleister Crowley, and this book is among the bedrock on which Gardnerian Wicca is formed.
Since Gardner, Books of Shadows are an integral part ofWiccan religion, manifesting in various ways.
Solitary witches may create their own book to suit personal needs.
Some traditions maintain one copy, entrusted to the High Priest or High Priestess; initiated individuals may copy from the book as needed.
In some traditions, initiation involves copying and understanding the Book of Shadows over an extended period of time.
Not all traditions create Books of Shadows; some prefer not to put everything in writing.
In this sense Books of Shadows transcend spells. They are books of ritual. If one belongs to a specific spiritual or witchcraft tradition, this sacred book is where the laws, rituals, spells, and crucial information of that tradition are written.
This notion of the historical Book of Shadows grounded in the witch-hunts is controversial. Academics specializing in witchcraft often object to it, convinced it didn’t exist. Many believe Gerald Gardner created the concept himself and only claimed that the tradition was old, similar in fashion to the way grimoires authored in the eighteenth century claim to be based on ancient manuscripts. Because so few ancient magical or Pagan texts survived, it’s impossible to verify—or disprove—these claims.
Scholarly objection stems mainly from the fact that the type of witch Gardner describes tends to be female and is generally believed to be at best functionally illiterate. However, this is assumption and incredibly difficult to prove, one way or another.
Witch-trial records do show that when witches were burned, books were burned with them. However because the books were burned there is little if any evidence of what was burned. It’s an old political trick: first burn the evidence, then say the evidence didn’t exist. And maybe it didn’t. Maybe the scholars are right. But maybe they’re wrong—at least some of the time. Secrets have a way of emerging from the shadows: one historical reference survives. According to seventeenth-century Venetian Inquisition records, charges of witchcraft were levied against a woman named Laura Malipero. When the agents of the Inquisition searched her home they discovered a copy of the banned grimoire The Key of Solomon, together with a private, hand-written book of spells and rituals into which Laura had copied portions of that classical grimoire. Laura Malipero was obviously not illiterate. Her handwritten book fulfills Gerald Gardner’s concept of the individual witch’s Book of Shadows and straddles the fine line between them and medieval grimoires.
And whether Gerald Gardner or someone else made up the notion of Books of Shadows may be irrelevant; it is a beautiful tradition. The completed books (and some are never complete, perpetual works in progress) are beautifully embellished works of art, power, magic, and spirituality. Some are written in magical scripts; some are illustrated. No two are exactly alike.
Wiccan Books of Shadows are traditionally kept secret. Many covens administer an oath of secrecy to initiates. You have to enter and commit yourself to that twilight world of shadows to gain access.
In 1971, the American Wiccan Lady Sheba (Jessie Wicker Bell, died March 25, 2002) was the first to publish an entire Book of Shadows, under the title Lady Sheba’s Book of Shadows. Lady Sheba was a pioneer of Wicca as a public religion. She was among the first to officially register her religion as Wicca at a time when many people were ignorant of Wicca and associated it with Satanism. (The United States armed forces now acknowledges Wicca as a religious option, something not afforded to various Native American or African-derived spiritual traditions.)
Lady Sheba’s Book of Shadows was published to tremendous interest but also tremendous animosity. By publishing her personal Book of Shadows Lady Sheba ignited a firestorm, not from outsiders but from within the Wicca community. Many felt betrayed and believed that she had violated her oath of secrecy. She was accused of making precious spiritual secrets public. (This was a time when comparatively few metaphysical works of any sort were published.)
In addition, many misunderstood the concept of a Book of Shadows being a compilation of earlier material and traditions. Because her Book ofShadows was published under her name, many accused her of claiming to be the author of the material in her book, some of which was traditional. However, other material in her book had been composed by Doreen Valiente, Gerald Gardner’s High Priestess and co-author of Gardner’s Book of Shadows. Because it was never entirely clear exactly how much of Gardner’s material was old and traditional, and hence in the public domain, and how much was created to fulfill the needs of a new spiritual tradition, various issues of copyright infraction, on the ethical level if not also on the legal, were raised.
Lady Sheba’s response to this controversy and the hostility engendered was that the time of secrecy was over and that she had never claimed that the material was original. She was merely passing on the Gardnerian tradition as she had received it. The book remains in print. It is not a book of magic spells but of Wiccan ritual and theology.
Dream-books
Dreams are often understood to contain encoded symbolic meaning. The problem inevitably is cracking the code. Dream-books are guides that allegedly help you do just that. It is an ancient genre that retains its popularity today. The concept is found around the world.
The Artemidoros, a classical dream-book, was written in Greek in the second century CE and named for its author.
Artemidoros’ work was translated into Arabic in the ninth century and stimulated a rash of medieval Arabic dream-books, which in general are accessible only to those fluent in classical Arabic and its nuances.
The Arabic dream-books’ influence may be seen, however, in The Oneirocriticon of Achmet, a Byzantine work on dream interpretation, which was written in Greek in the tenth century and has greatly influenced subsequent dream-books, not only in Byzantine Greek and medieval Latin but also in modern vernacular European languages.
Dream-books aren’t psychological studies of dreams; instead they’re mainly tables of interpretations. If you dream of something, what does it really mean? They’re books of codes. For instance, if your head turns in a dream, this might indicate a change of location in your future. Eventually dream-books began to fulfill another important purpose: treasure hunting. It was believed (and still frequently is) that your dreams hold the clue to your fortune. Any dream symbol can be assigned a number; if you’ve got the right numbers, you might just win the lottery. The implication is that everyone has the right numbers although only a few can decipher them and put them to good use.
Although dream-books do not evoke the hostility of spell-books or grimoires, they were greatly discouraged by the Christian authorities during the Middle Ages. (Later on, they’d just be disparaged as foolishness and superstition.) Games of chance derive originally from sacred arts and it is a very small step from believing numbers are imbedded in your dreams to appreciating that benevolent guardian spirits placed them there. In fact, various Italian and Chinese spells invoke spirits to help provide winning numbers.
In a dream-book all components of a dream, anything envisioned or experienced, is assigned a number. For example, according to Aunt Sally’s Policy Players Dream Book and Wheel of Fortune should you encounter a woman named Clara in your dreams (or even just see or hear the name) you might want to play 13, 36 or 42. Everything may be assigned a number and the better books are quite comprehensive, inventive, and fun.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, inexpensive Hoodoo-oriented publications were marketed with romantic titles like The Mystic Oracle or The Gypsy Dream Book and Fortune-teller. Many were sold in conjunction with dream incense. The incense was burned before bedtime to stimulate clairvoyant dreams and then the book would help you figure them out. Aunt Sally’s Policy Players Dream Book, published in the 1890s and still in print, features a cover illustration of a thin gap-toothed black woman with gypsy-style earrings pointing to some lucky numbers with a knowing look. The implication is that she is a conjure woman; she wears a head wrap tied to display horns of power. Aunt Sally’s and many other modern dream-books oriented toward the hoodoo trade are believed to incorporate material from much older sources.
Grimoires
In 1277, the Archbishop of Paris issued a condemnation of “books, rolls or booklets containing necromancy or experiments of sorcery, invocation of demons or conjuration of demons, or conjurations hazardous for souls.” In other words, grimoires.
The term “grimoire” is the name given to the genre of books of magic spells and rituals. Grimoire is a French word and is most usually pronounced “grim-wahr.”
Variants exist in other languages like Latin (grimorium) or Spanish (grimorio) although an English variant does not exist, the French version being used instead. In general, the grimoires were a European phenomenon. Many of the classical grimoires weren’t translated into English until well into the nineteenth century (S. L. MacGregor Mathers, founding member of the Golden Dawn, is responsible for some of the earliest translations).
The closest English word to grimoire is “grammar,” meaning a textbook or, more specifically, an instructive manual teaching correct construction of language. At their simplest, grammars are spelling books and so are grimoires. They just teach different spelling skills.
The first thing one must understand about grimoires, if one wants to understand the genre at all, is that they were illegal. These aren’t merely textbooks of magic and magical ritual; they’re forbidden textbooks; to be precise, forbidden texts of forbidden practices. Back in the Middle Ages, if you were caught with a magical book, punishment was dire. You’d be arrested and arrest almost inevitably led to torture. Oh, you could confess voluntarily to every charge but it gained you little. It wouldn’t earn you a faster, more painless death because voluntary confession was rarely enough. Inquisitors were convinced that arrested witches and sorcerers were always hiding something; it was in the nature of witches to be cleverly evasive and secretive. So they’d torture you until they deemed that what you confessed under pain, terror, and duress was sufficient. Only then would you be burned alive with your magical book at your feet, lest you forgot what got you into this mess in the first place. The book prominently displayed and burned was also a warning to others to stay away at all costs from forbidden texts. There are very excellent reasons why until recently you couldn’t openly buy any sort of magical work in a regular bookstore.
Historically, however, no matter how many have been willing to kill for a forbidden book of magic or spirituality, many more have been willing to risk their lives and die for these books and the knowledge they contain.
Grimoires are based on awareness of how precious and endangered magical and spiritual traditions were and how difficult they were to access. Persecution of witches and the destruction of their books pre-date Christianity. Roman authority, although pagan, feared and wished to suppress magical information; they destroyed works by the thousands too.
There were always people, however, who regretted this loss and attempted to forestall and prevent it, albeit usually secretly. Fragments, pieces and individual pages of these magical texts were saved and preserved. Those who had read them sometimes attempted to recreate them. A black market for these invaluable suppressed magical texts soon sprang up, as did forgeries.
