Why is the Book of Shadows called a "Book of Shadows"

Gerald Gardner created the first book of shadows, roughly at the end of the 1940's or early beginnings of the 1950's. During that time, the last of the laws against Witchcraft were just being repealed or made no longer illegal.

However, just because it was no longer illegal for someone to practice Witchcraft, that didn't mean that one was immediately safe to begin openly practicing Witchcraft. There were still people who greatly feared Witches, believing them to be the malevolent, evil people who bring nothing but harm and demise to anyone they encounter, as they were portrayed to be. Should information or documentation relating to Witchcraft fall into the wrong hands, one was STILL in great danger...no not from the law, but from private citizens who may not have agreed that Witchcraft was no longer illegal, and may take matters into their own hands.

If one were to look at Gardner's "161 Ardanes", one could see that (because it was written in the early days of Wicca) privacy and safety were a great concern to him. Keeping information private was a main goal for ANYONE in Gardner's tradition.

So, because the information and records were to be kept secret...Gardner (discovering the phrase in an article somewhere) designed a "Book of Shadows" in which to store information. Whether he wrote it in his native language, or in another type of script, that's unknown...but keeping the information secret or "in the shadows" was a big thing.

Looking at the Ardanes, number's 50-60 discuss the importance of keeping your book 1) yours and 2) very secretive; and emphasizes what he believed would happen should the book fall into the hands of the "enemy"...to use his words.

The book of shadows is called such, simply because the information was to remain in the "shadows" and remain secretive. Today we no longer have to worry about the things Gardner had to worry about when he created his Book of Shadows...today we can openly share our books of shadows with no worry about torture or death...however a new problem arises: the naive teenager misunderstanding the true nature of a Book of Shadows...but that's a topic from a different blog-post.





Ma’iingan