I haven't heard the term commonplace book until today. It sounds like an art journal, a diary which includes drawings, maybe a scrapbook which includes things cut and pasted in from magazines and other sources. It is a curated collection of thoughts, ideas, and interests. The idea isn't so new but the phrase is new to me.

This description comes from a site which hosted commonplace journals. Its gone now.

A commonplace book is a collection of remarkable quotations, reflections, and oddities gathered from one's reading, thoughts, or experience--in short, a reading and writing journal.

A private commonplace book is also a great way to organize your research by author, source, and subject, and gives you the ability to display and search your notes by each category and by keyword.

Ontario Rural Diary Archive

Working with the University of Guelph.

Our archive showcases over 200 Ontario diarists from 1800 to 1960. Discover and Meet the Diarists are good places to get acquainted with these people from the past. Learn how to unlock the riches within their daily entries and escape into the past. You can read and Search through typed nineteenth-century diaries. Help us Transcribe other handwritten ones online to make these valuable sources accessible to all.

I began writing my own journals/ diaries as a kid in the early 1970's. There are at least eight books, most of them full of my thoughts, blabs, and so on. As I have moved from place to place along my life the books became collected in a plastic container with a lot of photos I'd taken from trips to BC, visiting my Aunt Emma and wandering around Vancouver, staying at hostels and hotels. Travelling on the Greyhound bus, which doesn't have that cross Canada route any longer. Family and cat photos too. the odd hand written page about this and that. Ephemera collected from my adventures.

I had seen the box, less than a year ago, stuck in the garage where my brother had put it. I didn't move it into the house, mostly because I live in one room and didn't have space for it. Of course, not every decision made due to laziness, indecision, etc. is not always the best choice. Earlier this year my brother began clearing out everything from the garage. He found the garage was infested with mice and rats from the past tenants leaving a lot of garbage in it, outside of the garbage put out in the regular pick up. I noticed the lid of my container was cracked, it wasn't before. But, again I put off doing much about it because I didn't want to figure out what to do with it. I looked at getting a new container for it, but didn't get one. So it sat outside in rain and I thought it was safe with another box on top of it to block water and it was under the roof of the garage, outside.

Today, my Mom opened it and found the water has gotten in. Mostly everything is damaged, some of it is ruined and it really stinks! I can see fungus/ mold on it. I can still smell it, even though I've washed my hands several times, changed clothes and left all of it out in the laundry room.

The plan is to sort through the photos and pick out what to keep. Most are ruined, all the ink/colour washed away from the paper. Some of them still have an image left in the centre. So, a few I have saved so far. Some (not many) are untouched by water. Ironically, most of them are from my wedding and I don't really care about them as much. There are a lot of them which were dripping wet still and hugely stink. I will try to sort them today. But, I have little hope for them.

I think I will bring my scanner out, hook it up to my laptop and scan all the old journals. Better than retyping them, I would have my original hand written pages, just made digital and less mildew and moldy. Then, sadly, I will throw away all those pages and books I've kept for so long.

The next thing is what to do with all those scanned pages. I guess I can post them here, as images with dates. That will make this a really long/ old blog. I think the earlies pages are from before the 1970's. One nice thing about scanning them is being able to see my penmanship over the years too. Retyping them can't do that. Plus, retyping them would mean guessing what some of them are. Instead of leaving it as original to figure out more than just once. Handwriting isn't as reliable as type, but its far more personal and artsy.

Anyway, that's what I will be doing over the next few weeks. I think it will be sad to dispose of the old journals themselves. All those originals. Some of them I still remember who gave me the blank journal or where I bought them from. I guess I can add that to the notes as I scan and post them.

Your Book of Shadows (BoS) is personal. You can make the entire book yourself or buy a book, decorate it and then begin creating the contents of your own Book of Shadows. However you start the physical, actual book and however you decorate it - it's what's inside that counts.

A Book of Shadows can be for a coven, keeping the rules, rituals and history of the coven. Members of the coven will use the coven's BoS to copy the rituals into their own Books and keep a running history of changes and new ideas.

A Book of Shadows can be Hand-Written, Typed or on the Internet

You can find great examples of online BoS as blogs. Many of them are abandoned, left online as an archive, not active but not deleted. Most likely they are forgotten, some may have moved on to another site or their own domain. Some just lost interest or the passion waned or they finished high school and had less time to keep the Book of Shadows going.

If you keep your BoS on your computer you can easily arrange it and back it up to an external hard drive, or whatever works for you.

You might use a journal program which keeps a back up.

Some software will give you a password to keep it locked from any spying eyes or just make it feel private so you can write more of your thoughts without thinking about who might read them.

I like a paper/print Book of Shadows because it isn't virtual.

A paper BoS is nice because you can keep all your scribbled notes and rough drafts. They are nice to look through at times. You see your first and original thoughts rather than only your polished version of each ritual, idea and thought.

Consider a binder for a paper/print Book of Shadows - you can move pages around and keep everything in order by topic. Or, stick with the more traditional journal where you write things as they happen and keep your thoughts as they occur to you. In that case you can create coloured tabs to stick to pages which are most important or referred to often. You might even put them in protective sleeves, but they are usually plastic so I'm not keen on them.

Add as many items from nature as you can. A few leaves in the Autumn, pressed flowers in the Spring and Summer. Squish a berry between pages and write around the resulting colour. Try a few ideas but watch out for the pages of your Book, keep them safe from harm too.

Your Book of Shadows style will depend on you and whether you see your BoS as a reflection of your personal journey or more like a text book of facts and information.

Extra Touches to Personalize Your Book of Shadows

Of course you can decorate your Book with clip art, your own art or drawings, things you've clipped out of magazines and apply like a collage. Add all the art you like to make the Book your own.

Use the title page to write your name, give the book a special title and write the date you started the book. Add details about the day: the weather, your mood, something good that happened, anything interesting.

As you begin to start your fresh Book of Shadows, write a Book Blessing. Make the blessing a dedication to your spiritual growth, your path of learning and protection for the information within the covers of your book.

If it suits you, write an invocation to the Goddess or Gods. (I don't do this, my beliefs are different).

Write about your choice to follow the Pagan path. How did you get here and why did you choose Wicca or Witchcraft, Solitary, Eclectic, or Coven?

Write about your ethics and beliefs as they are now. (Expect these to change, grow and waiver as you learn and discover more).

Write your own initiation, or an initiation for your Book of Shadows.

Make it personal, for you.

I'll admit right off the bat that when I first heard of the concept of a submissive journal I wasn't thrilled. It seemed too ritualistic-like (for lack of a better word) and it seemed like something that HOH's used to force on their submissive partners (example: you must write in your journal after every punishment) which I highly disagreed with. Needless to say, I wasn't a fan.

But the more I looked into the idea, the more okay with it I became. I started looking at the concept of submissive journals more as a way to help the submissive partner and less as a ritualistic punishment, and I started to see the benefits. I've also talked to several who keep a journal (by their own personal choice, not their HOH's) and after they let me know of some of the results they experienced I was beginning to become more on board with the idea. …more