Magic Shadow Book

„All you need is to possess a few keys, a little bit of persistance and if destiny smiles at you and the right door opens, there’s the knowledge which has been gathered for thousands of years.”

The Book of Shadows arose with the intention to explain the delusions associated to the still controvers subject of witchcraft, and to up bring this art in the right light. Its image is very distorted. Many occultists and authors are trying to prove the historical roots of a certain system in their works, so thanks to them, many systems today stand on firm grounds. That is why the history of witchcraft is important to us as well.

So, what is witchcraft? Witchcraft is a complex magical system, it’s not a religion nor a cult, nor did it ever have the intention do develop in that way. Witchcraft is mostly being practiced independently , or in rare cases, inside family bloodlines. Roughly, witchcraft can be split in two groups. The first one is the Wicca and the second one is the Traditional witchcraft. The segmentation is much more complicated, and that doesn’t mean that the first one has more quality than the other, but at the moment it’s helping us to show the basic difference between them.

Wicca is the witchcraft of the newer age, began in the 50′s, but it draws it’s roots from traditional witchcraft. Wicca, unlike traditional, has many additions like ceremonial, ritual magic, kabala, heathen mysteries, eastern philosophies etc. Wicca experienced a full symbiosis with ceremonial magic and kabala, which in her history – the history of witchcraft, wasn’t the case. The word wicca comes from the anglo-saxon word wicce (wise) – to shape, to form, to possess wisdom.

Wicca is a modern tradition, a neo-pagan reconstruction of the ancient witchcraft, based upon old earth oriented prechristian religions of Europe, antic heathen cultures like Greece and Rome. The maker of Wicca is the british Dr. Gerald Brousseau Gardner (1884-1964), who was interested in various systems, which is one of the reasons why the elements are mixed inside the Wicca. It is assumed that wicca started to form in 1920, but for certain, we can say that it started in 1954 with the publishing of Gardner’s book: „Witchcraft Today“. The system of wiccan beliefs and the way of life is based on the reconstruction of prechristian traditions founded in Ireland, Scotland and Wales, which still take effect in its traditional shape.

Traditional witchcraft, more or less, managed to survive in its true form with minor adjustments. It kept the clarity, the originality and the old historical roots. Traditional witchcraft has no additions, it doesn’t use candles, ritual knives, vestments it doesn’t use astrology, nor the correspondance tables. In ancient history, people didn’t have access to a lot of todays things, they were using things that were accessible to them at that time, mostly herbs, a fireplace and some plates and dishes. They were also illiterate, so everything was reduced to oral delivery.

Witchcraft roots have roots from shamanism. A proof for it is the basis that is being used – ritual trans and controlling the spirits (nature spirits or entities). Unlike witchcraft, shamanism didn’t know any deities, they come considerably later, and with them, paganism as well. Originally, the most worshiped deities were the goddess of Moon, the Big Mother and the antlered god Cernunnos. Although there are many proofs which track the use of witchcraft even to paleolith, it is completely being formed in the Medieval, in the area of southern France.