How to Start a Grimoire (And Why You Should)

A grimoire is one of the oldest things a witch can keep. Before digital tools, before printed books, there were personal records of practice: handwritten notes on herbs, copied spells, moon observations, records of what worked and what didn't. The tradition is older than the word itself.

Starting one doesn't require a leather journal, a calligraphy pen, or a ceremonial intention. It requires the same thing all practice requires: a beginning.

A Brief History of the Grimoire

The word itself is older than most people realise. Grimoire derives from the Old French grammaire, a word that originally referred to any book written in Latin, a learned text belonging to scholars and clergy. Over time, it narrowed into something more specific: a working record of magical knowledge.

The impulse to keep such records reaches back further still. The oldest examples we have are the Greek Magical Papyri (texts dating from roughly the 2nd century BCE to the 5th century CE, discovered in Hellenistic Egypt), which contain ritual instructions that scholars regard as direct precursors to the grimoire tradition. Before even those, Babylonian cuneiform tablets from the second millennium BC preserve magical texts for warding off spirits and illness. As researchers at Ancient Origins note, for these early practitioners, the act of writing was itself considered magical: putting secret knowledge into physical form was understood as a kind of power.

Historian Owen Davies, whose book Grimoires: A History of Magic Books (Oxford University Press) is one of the definitive academic accounts of the tradition, writes that grimoires exist because of "the desire to create a physical record of magical knowledge, reflecting concerns regarding the uncontrollable and oral transmission of valuable, secret, or sacred information." The grimoire, in other words, was always about preservation: keeping hard-won knowledge safe from the erosion of memory and time.

In modern Wicca, the grimoire became the Book of Shadows, popularised by Gerald Gardner in the mid-twentieth century. But a grimoire need not follow any tradition's template. It predates Wicca by millennia, and it is yours to shape.

What a Grimoire Actually Is

A grimoire is a personal record of your magical practice. Not a textbook, not a published book of spells: yours. It holds what you have learned, what you have worked, what you have noticed. Some witches keep one volume; some keep many. Some are beautifully illustrated; some are spiral-bound notebooks with coffee stains on the covers. The form is secondary. The practice of keeping one is what matters.

Unlike a Book of Shadows (which tends to be more formal and is often associated with Wiccan tradition), a grimoire can be entirely personal in structure. There is no required format, no standard arrangement. It is organised around what serves your practice.

Why Your Practice Needs One

There is a practical answer and a more honest one.

The practical answer: a grimoire makes you a better practitioner. When you record your tarot readings, you begin to notice patterns: the cards that return when you're anxious, the spreads that feel unexpectedly accurate, the symbols that seem to follow you through a season. When you log your herb work, you build a personal apothecary of what has actually worked, not what the books say should. When you track the moon, the sabbats, your sleep, your mood, you start to see how your inner world moves with the outer one.

The more honest answer: writing about your practice is your practice. Research by Dr. James W. Pennebaker at the University of Texas at Austin has consistently shown that expressive writing (putting inner experience into language) significantly reduces stress hormone levels and improves emotional wellbeing (Pennebaker & Smyth, Opening Up by Writing It Down, 2016). The act of translating a ritual into words, of asking what did this mean to me tonight, is not administrative. It is the work itself.

A grimoire is not a diary, or a to-do list, or a Pinterest board of altar aesthetics. It is a record of transformation. It is a mirror you hold up to yourself across months and years. It asks: who were you when you wrote this? Who are you now?

What to Put In It

The question most new practitioners ask is what to include. The honest answer is: whatever you'd want to find again. Consider these as starting points.

Rituals and workings. What you did, when you did it, and what you noticed afterward. Moon phase. Planetary hour. Outcome, even if the outcome was nothing.

Herb and ingredient notes. Your working knowledge of the materials you use, built from your own observation. How mugwort smells in smoke. What frankincense does to the quality of a space.

Tarot and divination records. Log the date, the deck, the question or intention, the cards drawn, and your own interpretation before reaching for any reference. The cards mean what they mean to you first. Return to these entries weeks later; you will often find the reading revealed something you couldn't yet see at the time.

Moon observations. Brief notes on how each phase feels. What kinds of thoughts arise at the dark moon. What energy the full moon brings in your particular life.

Dreams. Especially recurring symbols, figures, or places. Dreams speak the same language as magic. Recording them builds fluency.

Correspondence tables. Your own, built over time through use, not copied wholesale from a reference. When you discover that amber incense works better than frankincense for your devotional work, write that down.

Deity and being work. If you work with deities, spirits, or ancestors, the grimoire is the place to document the texture of that relationship: offerings made, dreams that followed, moments of felt contact. This kind of record has a tenderness to it. It is not meant for anyone else.

Daily practice notes. The small things accumulate. A morning intention, a note on sleep, a single observation about the day, these become, over months, an intimate portrait of your practice at its most honest.

Questions. A grimoire is not only a record of answers. The questions you're sitting with are worth writing down too.

How to Begin Without Overthinking It

The most common reason a grimoire never gets started is the pressure to begin it well. The blank page feels final. The first entry sets a precedent.

It doesn't. The first entry is just an entry.

Begin with what is in front of you. Today's date, the moon phase, and one observation about your practice. That's enough. The record will grow around the practice it documents.

Write what you know tonight. There will always be more to know tomorrow.

If you're using a paper grimoire, dedicate the first page to intention rather than index; many witches mark this with a craft name or its sigil, a small act of saying this work belongs to me. If you're keeping a digital grimoire (in an app, in a notes document, wherever), the principle is the same. The first page is a beginning, not a contract.

Digital or Paper?

Both have genuine advantages. Paper offers slowness, physicality, and an intimacy that's hard to replicate. Digital offers searchability, portability, and the ability to link entries across pillars of your practice: finding every ritual you performed at the dark moon, or every time a specific herb appeared in your workings, in seconds.

Many experienced practitioners use both: paper for things that benefit from slowness and ritual, digital for the ongoing record they'll want to search and return to. For a thorough look at the trade-offs, see How to Start a Grimoire: Digital vs Paper, What Works Best?

Making It Yours

A grimoire is not a reflection of your ideals. It is a reflection of your actual practice. If your practice involves tarot and astrology but not herbs, your grimoire will look different from someone who works primarily with botanicals. If you work with specific deities, your grimoire will carry the language and imagery of those relationships.

Resist the urge to make it look like anyone else's. The witches whose beautifully photographed grimoires appear online are sharing an artifact. You are not building an artifact; you are doing the work. The record follows the practice, not the other way around.

The only thing your grimoire absolutely requires is that it be honest. Record what you did, not what you meant to do. Record what you observed, not what you expected to observe. That honesty is what makes it useful.

The Long Game

A grimoire is not finished. It is never finished.

The most valuable thing it can be is long: pages that span years, entries that capture who you were at the beginning and who you became, with the thread of practice running between them. A grimoire kept for two years (even messily) is worth infinitely more than a beautiful empty journal.

Start somewhere. Start tonight. Start with the moon phase and a single sentence about where your practice is right now. That is how every working grimoire in every tradition began.

If you're considering a digital grimoire and weighing the apps available, see Grimoire vs Labyrinthos vs Co-Star: Which App Is Actually Built for Witches?

Sources

• Owen Davies, Grimoires: A History of Magic Books, Oxford University Press (2009): overview via OUPblog
• Ancient Origins, "Spells, Invocations and Divination: The Ancient History of Magical Grimoires": ancientorigins.net
• Ethan J. Hulbert, "What's a Real Grimoire? A Scholar's Guide to Historical Magic Books", Journal of Advanced Esoteric Interdisciplinary Research, June 2025: ethanjhulbert.org
• Pennebaker, J.W. & Smyth, J.M., Opening Up by Writing It Down, Guilford Press (2016)
• Wikipedia, Grimoire: etymology and historical overview, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimoire