A Book of Shadows

In April 1976, pan.zos pagurus was accepted into a witchcraft coven in Surrey, England. At the time of his initiation he was loaned the manuscript of a "Book of Shadows" which he was told was a traditional work central to "the Craft," and which he was required to transcribe by hand for his own use. Although he didn't then know it, the text was derived from a copy belonging to the so-called "Father of modern Wicca," Gerald Gardner, who many now suggest was actually its author.

A Book of Shadows, as it is here published contains that text, as well as the "rites and structures of the seasonal ceremonies," that were given to pan.zos at a later stage. Initiates were also encouraged to personalize their book, so pan.zos added in a series of images and diary doodlings that were inspired by ceremonies and studies over a three year period. During this time he was also deeply drawn into the worlds and work of Austin Osman Spare and Aleister Crowley, whose influence show both in the Spare-inspired "embellishments," and the frequent quotations from their works.

Giordano Bruno was another important influence. In particular his treatise De Umbris Idearum (On the Shadows of Ideas), 1582, made connections between symbols, metaphors and memory that pan.zos felt to be the very stuff of the poetry and spells by which we gain some power in the world, enabling us to shape our will and direct it. Bruno's belief that nature is alive, and that all life is animated from within, and that matter and spirit are indivisible and matter is divine, also had strong similarities with the British Wiccan/Green Man tradition. For this reason pan.zos borrowed the title for his own collection of occult jottings, a fragment of which follows the text of A Book of Shadows.

This is not a "how to book" or historical study. As pan.zos says in his Introduction "I make no claims at all with regard to the profundity of my own part of this book. It is presented simply as a very personal record of the early years of an occult journey, started half-a-lifetime ago." To the publishers it is an authentic and unique example of this particular type of ritual workbook, executed with considerable artistry by a genuine practitioner, and we are delighted to present it in facsimile to a broader public.