Let’s Talk Witch – Magickal Books

There was a drastic increase in persecution and prosecutions for witchcraft, sorcery and paganism in late antiquity. Among the charges, besides astrology, divination, the making of love potions and the presentation of petitions at pagan shrines, was possession of magick books.

Books serve many purposes in magick beyond serving as a source for spells. The book may itself be a form of a spell, serving as an amulet. Certain books don’t have to be read; their very presence in the home provides protection from a host of ills. Besides the Bible and Koran, other books of this ilk include “The Book of Raziel, Book of Pow-Wow: The Long Lost Friend” and “The Russian Dreams of a Virgin.”

Books serve as magickal tools. Specific books are often used as sources of divination. These especially include the Bible, the Koran, Homeric verses, works of Virgil and your own Book of Shadows.

The Books of Psalms possesses an alter ego as a magickal book. Psalms are used to cast a host of spells for a variety of reasons. Many assume that this originated with Hoodoo, where recitation of psalms is a common practice, but this is based on the false assumption that the Hoodoo doctors were uneducated and thus must have “made stuff up.” If fact, it is quite the contrary-incorporation of psalms into magick stems back centuries. The practice was popular enough to stimulate publication of a medieval compilation of the uses to which psalms and their individual verse might be put. The Magical Use of the Psalms, a popular work of its time, was frequently reprinted in pocket-sized editions and was translated from Latin into several European languages. It was eventually placed on the Indes Librorum Prohibitorum of the Roman Catholic Church.

Similarly spells from the Islamic world may incorporate recitation of appropriate verses from the Koran.