While your Book of Shadows is like a cookbook where you keep spells and instructions related to Wicca, your Book of Mirrors is your personal journal. It is where you clarify your feelings about your spiritual path. As you continue to learn, you will discover aspects of Wicca that inspire you, bore you, repel you, and leave you indifferent. Writing in your Book of Mirrors is an invaluable way to document your intuitive reactions to everything you encounter. This is how you determine if Wicca is right for you. It is the way that you develop your spiritual path. Rather than forcing yourself to swallow each new bit of doctrine, you weigh how it makes you feel. Is it useful? Does it resonate with you? If not, discard what “insults your soul” (as Walt Whitman would say). Writing in your Book of Mirrors helps you clarify your spiritual practice.

Starting your Book of Mirrors: You want something easy to maintain, portable so you can write wherever you want, and fast as in typing rather than handwriting. I’d recommend a laptop or tablet with keyboard that you can carry in a padded case and password-protect for privacy. As a second choice, use a blank book or spiral notebook. Make time to write every day, perhaps by waking up thirty minutes earlier each morning before the events of your day can take over. Commit only to a short period of writing so you don’t find yourself reluctant to begin. Anyone can do ten minutes or twenty minutes without feeling too intimidated.

What to Write: You can write whatever you want because this is your personal journal. To stay focused and get the most out of the experience, you should try to relate everything to your spiritual practice. Describe and interpret your nightly dreams. Experiment with receiving messages through automatic writing or typing. Record the results of your divination with Tarot cards, runes, ogham, or pendulum, and check back later for accuracy. Document how your everyday life and your spiritual life intersect. Ideally, they should be interwoven. Most insightful of all is to learn new things about Wicca or paganism through books or interacting with other pagans, and document how it makes you feel. Do you find the Wiccan Rede (“harm none”) impractical or essential? Is the Threefold Law the silliest thing ever, or a useful way of reminding ourselves of the interconnectedness of all life? Or neither of these things?

How I can help you: To jump-start your momentum, I’d like to give you a Wiccan- or pagan-related writing prompt each Wednesday (which I will put at the end of this article) so you can think about these things and write your reactions in your Book of Mirrors. You can also feel free to comment in the forum where I will post my own brief reaction to each prompt. This is not so we can argue with each other, but more to provide further stimulus to get all of us thinking, writing, and clarifying it for ourselves. All forum posts should be respectful of people’s inevitable differences. (That is, no one should say, “There is only one right way to do things,” or come back with a comment like, “That’s stupid.”) You will have to register to post in the forum, but it is quick, easy, free, painless, anonymous, and private. You will never get spammed, and you can delete your account whenever you want.

This week's Wednesday Writing Prompt: What part of the 24-hour day do you like the best and why? Write it down in your Book of Mirrors. Your answer could depend on your circadian rhythms or it might be more of an emotional thing such as that you find the early morning to be peaceful. Your answer may also reveal what aspects of the God or Goddess you feel closest to right now. Feel free to share your answer and see mine in the forum.

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