A Little Book

We all know what the Stones say, but sometimes you can get what you want!

One of the kinds of geek I am is the sort who digs small books. I don't know whence it comes, perhaps from John Bellairs' "The Face in the Frost", or perhaps from "The Mephisto Waltz" (the novel, not the movie...) but the image of the small, hide-able book of spells and magicks is at least as juicy for me as the Gigantic Tome of Eldritch Whatever - which I dig too, but which is harder to carry around.

It was portability I was after when I did my first pocket grimoire, using a small common sketchbook. I started that book in the mid-80s, and was finishing the filling of it in the early 90s, as I moved into the Druidic ritual forms. It got a lot of real use, and wear. Note that it's been cunningly rebound in black duct-tape...

My days of filling blank books with handwritten script are probably over. The capacity to create attractive, readable, editable pages on a computer, and then use on-demand publishing to produce hardbound custom spellbooks is just too cool not to use. That's what I've been doing - creating individual compilations of ritual-only material that can serve as direct resources in ritual. Not a book about magic, as Jonathan Strange might say, but a book of magic.

But I've been unable to find a place to do a one-off in the real pocket-size I like. Even paperback novel size is rather too large. I want a book I can tuck in my waist-bag with my totems and divining stuff, or into a breast-pocket where it can stop a bullet for me. ; )

That all changed around Yuletide when my incessant web-searches paid off in a joint that will do one-off hardbound books in any size at all, for a manageable, if not comfortable price. So, I now have pretty nearly just what I wanted. That doesn't happen every day, ya know... You can ask the wife just how geeky-squealey I was to get it in the mail.

Next comes its formal consecration, now that the moon has turned. Then it will be, as it was designed to be, truly a 'talismanic book'.

I'll ask you all to forgive the lack of a new Imbolc post. (See here.) Blessings of Brigid of the Hearth on us all, and increase in our Wisdom, Love and Power in the coming seasons. And to Other-Enders, a blessed Lughnassadh : )