#witch journal

< How To Cleanse The Month + Home >

This is a spell / ritual to cleanse the month that we have finished, including the cleansing and protection of the home.

INGREDIENTS / TOOLS NEEDED :

🌑 Cleaning Supplies

🌖 Incense / Cedar / Palo Santo

🌑 Bells / Chimes / Pots + Pans

🌖 Holy / Florida / Sun / Moon Water

🌑 Fire Safe Dish

🌖 Bay Leaves

🌑 ( 1 ) Blue Pen + ( 1 ) Sharpie

🌖 ( 1 ) Piece of Paper

🌑 Sealing Oil or Salt

TIMING :

🌑 First Of The Month, and-or ;

🌖 Waning Gibbous or New Moon Phase, and-or ;

🌑 Sunset

INSTRUCTIONS :

🌖 Physically clean your home + Remove any clutter. If you have items to be donated, remove them from your home and drop them off at the donation center.

🌑 As you clean each room, make and fill out this chart :

- Room Name : ( Self Explanatory )

- Date : ( Self Explanatory )

- Adjacent Rooms : ( What rooms are right next to the room you’re in? What are the areas / rooms across from the room you’re in? )

- Cardinal Position : ( Where is the room placed geographically? Is it north, northeast, south, etc? )

- Use [ Of The Room ] : ( Self Explanatory )

- Energy Observations : ( Upon walking into the room and being present in the room, what are your immediate feelings? What vibe does the room give off? Are there any lingering emotions stuck in the room? Whatever it may be, write it down here )

- Suggestions or Recommendations : ( Anything you may suggest or recommend for the room )

- Miscellaneous : ( Anything you can’t think of that would apply to any category )

🌖 Once you are down cleaning, open up [ a few ] windows to allow an exit path for the energies you’re clearing + Open up all the interior doors ( including cabinets and closets ) + Work in a counterclockwise direction, make certain to get smoke in all corners, cupboards, closets, etc. Linger and do a thorough job in the sticky spots if you felt any earlier. As you move through the space, recite this prayer: “ Smoke of fire , pure and strong . Clear this home all day long . Negative energy is not welcome here , return it , gone now , [ it has ] disappeared . ” Repeat this process counterclockwise with the bells / chimes / pots + pans , replacing ‘ smoke of fire ’ with ‘ bell / chime / sound of air ’ .

🌑 Time to bless! :D Moving clockwise, use Holy / Florida / Sun / Moon water to sprinkle around your space as you recite these words: “ Safe and happy this space shall be , for all who enter as well as me . ”

🌖 Use Sealing Oil to create a protective barrier around your home ( do this along the borders of your doors and windows, as well ; and if you don’t have Sealing Oil, use Salt! )

🌑 Once you are done, call upon the elements, deities, ancestors, and-or spirit guides for guidance in this next step: Go outside with your pen + paper + bay leaves + fire safe dish. Meditate for as long as you need, reflecting upon this past month and all its blissful moments and damning instances.

🌖 Once you have reflected upon the month, take a few deep breaths and thank the god(s) / goddess(es) / higher power(s) / elements that you believe in. Express gratitude for the moon and sun, the earth and air. Show appreciation to this past month and all of its ups and downs. While you express gratitude, make certain to include future intentions and achievements you wish to make reality.

🌑 After expressing appreciation and gratitude, write down all of the negative influences and occurrences that happened this past month. As you burn the paper, chant this until it completely burns to ash: “ Embracing new beginnings , releasing old negativity . I say goodbye to these harmful memories , and expand on my reflectivity . With the Air , I hold intellect on how to do better . With Fire , I burn these negativities and start anew . With Earth , moving forward , I become a calculated setter . With Water , I acknowledge the pains and facts with absolute truth . I release all that no longer serves me . ”

Your words are magic. A witch’s journal—whether you call it a Book of Shadows, Grimoire, or just your messy notebook—is a living record of your craft, your growth, and your soul’s whispers.

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What’s the Difference?

• Grimoire – more structured; a personal spell encyclopedia

• Book of Shadows (BOS) – spiritual journal; includes experiences, reflections, and intuition

But: You can combine both. There are no rules—only resonance.

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What to Include:

• Spells (written by you or collected)

• Moon phase logs and rituals

• Crystal, herb, and color correspondences

• Tarot pulls and interpretations

• Dream journals and signs from spirit

• Shadow work prompts and emotional revelations

• Deity or ancestor connections

• Daily energy readings or mood trackers

• Affirmations, sigils, and magical sketches

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Tips for Keeping a Magical Journal:

• Write after rituals or spells—even just one sentence

• Decorate it, or don’t—whatever feels real to you

• Don’t worry about being neat—magic is messy

• Use symbols, stickers, dried flowers, wax seals, or ink spells

• Your handwriting is a spell—it holds energy

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Whether it’s bound in leather, glitter, or scribbled in the margins of your grocery list—your words are sacred.

Keep them. Revisit them.

Your magic is worth remembering.

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End-of-month reflection prompts tend to fall into two categories. The first kind asks you to inventory your accomplishments — what you finished, what you started, what you can check off. The second kind asks something harder and more interesting: what actually happened to you this month, underneath the surface of everything you were doing.

These three prompts are the second kind.

May's theme at Morrigan's Crows has been growth — not the motivational poster version, but the real kind. The slow, unglamorous, occasionally humbling kind that doesn't announce itself until you look back at your journal from three months ago and realize how much has quietly shifted. We spent the month talking about lifelong learning in witchcraft, the Dunning-Kruger effect in magical practice, why long-term spellwork compounds in ways that single workings usually don't, and how to layer intentional magic without smothering what's already in motion.

These prompts grew out of all of that.

The first one asks about the growth nobody else could see — because May tends to reward visible bloom, and the quieter kinds of tending can go unacknowledged even by yourself. The second one asks about impatience, which in a month focused on patience as a skill felt like a necessary counterpoint. Impatience isn't always anxiety. Sometimes it's pointing at something true about where you don't trust your own work yet. That's worth looking at directly. The third one asks about revision — the small, sometimes embarrassing moments where something you thought you understood turned out to be more complicated than that. Those moments are some of the most useful data your practice will ever give you, and they're easy to brush past if you're not watching for them.

There's no right way to use these. Write a paragraph, write a sentence, sit with the question while you drink your coffee and don't write anything at all. Learning what a question stirs up in you is its own kind of answer. All of it counts.

There is power in darkness. The light will always return.

My candle flickered in the breeze. I worried it would go out. A small voice: you know it won’t. Even if it does, it doesn’t matter. Took a long time to believe it. To trust it to stay lit. It flickered, went dim, but never went out. Not while I needed it.

I was closing the circle when the wind finally blew it out, just as I was finishing up thanking the Lords.

Darkness has power. Darkness is as important as the light. Trust what you cannot see; you are a Witch. Things will happen as they are meant to, as they aways have. The cycle needs both light and dark.

I find this shift to all beginner witches calling their magical notebook their grimoire interesting, but it somehow doesn’t quite sit right with me. When I was younger, we had very little information on anything but Wicca, so the term Book of Shadows was used for your book of information and Book of Mirrors for the journaling side. Many merged the two and called it one term or the other, or simply a name of their own. However, recently Grimoire is everywhere and I think my sticking point with it is that it appears quite misunderstood.

Grimoires tend to be books of ceremonial magic. Some were huge tomes available only to the aristocracy, while others, such as the Bibliotheque Bleue genre, were available to the masses - these specifically being pamphlets printed on cheap, blue paper in early modern France.

Grimoires, like all books, reflect the time they are written, but it’s now believed (and take a moment to thank the late Jake Stratton-Kent) that they link back to earlier pagan rituals and beliefs.

As far as my understanding goes, the original grimoires (expensive tomes) were published first. The choices may have been aesthetically pleasing or practical, but they also served a magical purpose. These books were magically brought to life and given purpose - and I think that is key. Equally, these books tended to have full systems to work through.

These grimoires were carefully planned, noted, researched and developed for years. As far as I’m aware, they were not notebooks that witches jotted things down in. I can’t help but feel that the use of the term applied so broadly to journals with correspondences written by someone else, not remembered, printed out and stuck in just takes something away from the reality and history of grimoires. If a witch is creating a system, building the book, bringing it to life magically, then it’s totally different and appropriate to call it a grimoire - but if it’s currently your notes, then it’s your notes.

Yes, language changes and we all evolve with time. And, yes, I do, personally, think language choice is important and that specific words change our understanding. However, it’s also much harder for new witches to research grimoires and their fascinating history online now because all that comes up is a lot of other new witches showing off their printed and pritt-sticked pages.