A Book of Shadows is a book containing religious text and instructions for magical rituals found within the Neopagan religion of Wicca. Since its conception, it has made its way into many pagan practices and paths. The most famous Book of Shadows was created by the pioneering Wiccan Gerald Gardner sometime in the late 1940s or early 1950s, and which he utilised first in his Bricket Wood coven and then in other covens which he founded in following decades. The Book of Shadows is also used by other Wiccan traditions, such as Alexandrian Wicca and Mohsianism, and with the rise of books teaching people how to begin following non-initiatory Wicca in the 1970s onward, the idea of the Book of Shadows was then further propagated amongst solitary practitioners unconnected to earlier, initiatory traditions.
One of Gerald Gardner's earliest Books of Shadows.
A typescript from a page of Ye Booke of Ye Art Magical
Doreen Edith Dominy Valiente was an English Wiccan who was responsible for writing much of the early religious liturgy within the tradition of Gardnerian Wicca. An author and poet, she also published five books dealing with Wicca and related esoteric subjects.
Valiente with ritual paraphernalia
During the Second World War, Valiente worked at Bletchley Park
The Witches' Cottage, a ritual space used by Valiente's Bricket Wood coven, as it appeared in 2006.
Altar statues of the Horned God and Mother Goddess crafted by Bel Bucca and owned by Valiente