#grimiore tips

Making an Herbal Grimiore

So rather than waiting to post once it’s done, I figured I’d give you guys the process I’m working on currently! You may have seen my portable plant press I posted about yesterday, well it’s part of a larger project I’m working on and one you can do too.

Especially with winter creeping away, and the spring equinox getting ready to occur, there are many plants, weeds and wild things growing that you can take advantage of, not just for your day to day Witching, but making a tangible, expansive, and personalized tool that will be just...fucking awesome, and an heirloom if done right.

The easiest way to make this is with an expandable/post bound scrap book, or if you’re adventurous, making the book yourself. I’m doing the scrap book version because easily adding and removing pages, organizing etc is going to be easier. They also tend to look a little cleaner than a binder imo.

Here’s the concept: A book that has identifiers, pictures, correspondences, spells, and plant material. A book that, if that’s the only thing you could grab for some rushed spellwork, you would be able to complete it.

Collect plants that you have around you, especially those that you may already use in your craft.

Find out their name with some fancy googling, reverse image searches, local plant and foraging guides etc.

You can visit this site, click on the search magnifying glass on the photo stream , and type in the name. It will pull up antique botanical prints. You can then print these out and save yourself the frustration of not being able to draw like an 1800’s naturalist.

Pick the one you want/what’s most accurate, and print it out!

Now comes your descision about how you want things formatted. Depending on how much information you have, or if you want to leave room to add and keep everything contained, you can tape the pages together to form fold outs.

So I used 3 sheets of paper. Enough room to hand write notes, additional spells, meditations, growing instructions etc. also tissue paper envelopes take up very little space and are cheap to make. In each entry, you can write the info of when it was harvested, how, moon phase etc.

As you go, you can hand write an index and table of contents. Make it alphabetical, organize it by when you can harvest them on a seasonal basis! Do common, secret or scientific name in the index, write what spells you can do with them. This is an easy way to create a useful, personalized grimiore with the stuff you use.

Additionally, you can really trick it out by using a font made of your handwriting! Unfortunately I was rushed and wasn’t able to do it for this example, but I may do it in the future!

I’ll probably post other examples as I go, I’ll use the tag #herbal grimiore

🦋Cheers, Barberwitch

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Hi 👋🏼 No

I’m kind of...not a great person to ask for a straight up list for anything. I’m the asshole who tells you how to figure stuff out yourself...sorry.

Fighting Fear to Make Your Own Magic

This is a post with a tip and example of how to determine personal correspondences. This is especially helpful for plants and herbs that are more local or unique and not obviously “witchy”. You could use this for trees or shrubs since not everyone has access or ability to grow the classic ingredients.

How to get comfortable with new herbs and spices

Just an easy way to mindfully and simply connect to edible plants and herbs by eating smelling cooking and tasting. Helpful for broom closet witches who may be relegated to only using kitchen herbs for craft related needs and not having purely craft usage ones.

Tips on how to google in a productive/helpful manner

So when I’m researching a new plant or herb, or even crystal or incense, this is usually the format I use to search. There’s also correspondences for pine and birch in this post.

So hopefully that can help you personalize your correspondences to what you use regularly and what you may be able to use that you didn’t consider before!

Last piece of advice, print or write that stuff down. Scrap book it, write it by hand, make a google doc or something so you can reference it easier and even offline. Even a quick paragraph printed out that you write a note scrawled in the margins will give you a better grasp of it and fill up your grimiore faster than you think. Filling it with stuff you researched to use means you’ll have a good reference of what you actually have access to instead of buying a book that 80% is stuff you will never even come across.

If you have a new grimiore and you’re having trouble actually writing in it, you’re not alone. I’ve had them in the past and struggled writing that first page, so here are two tips: 1: begin with a quote that resonates with you. Write it and concentrate on how it relates to your craft. 2: designate a pen or writing tool to write in it, I chose a fountain pen because…well, my writing is crap and this makes it look better or at least more mysterious and also, it’s more magical to me.