Originally written (by me) for The Crying Clown Zine (c. 1998)

The Book of Shadows could be called The Book of Life. Just the opposite of the Egyptian Book of the Dead (A series of spells to help the dead travel to and exist in the afterlife.) The Book of Shadows (BOS, for short) contains notes Wiccans have made along their journey of life and learning. Grimoire (A book of magickal spells and techniques) is more Medieval than Book of Shadows but they serve the same basic purpose.

Essentially, the Book of Shadows is a workbook containing ritual patterns, rules governing magick, instructions for circle casting and banishing, religious rituals, the consecration of tools, herbal lore, herbal recipes, dreams, divination results and personal thoughts and experiences. It is the Book of Shadows, which keeps the traditions of a solitary or coven alive. Without the Book, everything would be passed on from word of mouth with the chance of being forgotten, lost or misinterpreted.

A coven will keep a Book of Shadows so members can record and memorize the coven's rituals in their own Books of Shadows. Some contain lists of the pantheon, training exercises and initiation ceremonies. Books can be passed from one Wiccan to another, usually on initiation. Often each individual Wiccan creates their Book and keeps it to themselves.

Until recently, a Book of Shadows was always hand written. With all the advances in multi-media today a Book of Shadows can be a Disk of Shadows. Some Books (or parts of them) are published on the Internet. Typed and photocopied Books are also common. You may choose to have more than one copy or form of your Book. One can be hand written, the other can be preserved on a disk or photocopied for safe keeping.

To make your own Book of Shadows begin with any blank book. It does not have to be something antique or beautiful, a notebook from the dollar store will do. The Book of Shadows gains its value from the amount of energy and effort used to create it and the positive energy surrounding it each time the book is used for magick and rituals. A binder with loose sheets will let you move your pages around and add new ones in the middle if you need to.

Simply write in this book any rituals and magickal information you have worked on, learned about or just read somewhere and want to remember. Keep it organized into sections for rituals, divination, herbs, and etc. Add your own personal touch with some poetry, a few pressed leaves from your first ritual, a drawing which inspired you, or anything else bookable (able to fit into a book, one way or another). Also, because this is your Book you can write any thoughts you are having at the time. You don't have to write to impress anyone. Keep track of your feelings (both negative and positive), questions you want to find answers to, and any other personal information you would write into a journal or diary.

Keep your Book of Shadows in good repair. Some rituals may call for placing herbs in or on your Book of Shadows. Prepare for this by giving your book a fabric cover or tissue paper between its pages. Keep this in mind when or if you want to decorate your Book of Shadows. Watch for decorations that might damage your pages or make your ink run. Put some thought into your decorations of choice. Though macaroni art may have seemed "funky" at the time, it might not feel the same when the lumpy noodles won't let you keep your book open on your altar. Remember, your Book of Shadows serves a purpose. Make sure its usable when you are trying to read it half way into a ritual and you just can't remember the line you wanted to say as you sprinkle eye of newt into your cauldron.

Originally written (by me) for The Crying Clown Zine (c. 1998)

In whatever stray corner of the world you find yourself in you may have just found a Pagan or Wiccan if they are wearing a five pointed star with a solitary point up inside a circle. Being a solitary (Wiccan) myself I am partial to this view of the pentacle, I'm sure it has absolutely nothing to do with those nasty rumours of Satanism. Some Wiccans hang pentacles from their necks, some stab them through coats and sweaters and shirts and others go for something more permanent and painful and get it tattoed.

Pentacles should be worn on the front just before the heart, according the mystical tradition. Go all out and make your own but it should be prepared when the moon is rising in Virgo and only on a Saturday or Tuesday night in an atmosphere scented with alum, cedar wood, aloes and resinous gum.

Whatever your choice a pentacle is still a pentagram inside a circle. If it is genuine and not some factory-bred knockoff it should be one continuous line. No seams, stops and starts just one unending line. Though endless knot sounds like a great way to refer to your hair on those dreaded "hand me a hat" days it is also another name for the pentagram. Goblin's Cross, witch's foot, Blazing Star of White Magic are other fancy labels that could fool your friends and pester your enemies. Because I am really just a simple Dragon let's stick with pentacle, I'm getting used to typing it now anyway.

There are endless theories and ideas of what the five points represent. Of course this is a biased article and all the following are appealing to me, there are dozens more out there in libraries and web pages. First, the elemental theory seems to be the most popular with Wiccans. Four points represent the elements: earth, air, fire and water and the fifth is the spirit. These are the basic necessities of life beyond food, clothing, shelter and taxes. The most romantic sounding idea is: a man standing upright with arms out stretched and the world behind him, a man in tune with the world around him. Some feel the pentacle represents the stages of humainty or life: babyhood, adolsence, adulthood, middle age and old age. Or birth, initiation, love, repose and death. Just about any other five things can be tossed in for consideration such as the five senses, the five fingers on the human hand...

The pentacle or pentagram is older than written characters. The five pointed star can be traced back to the Pharohs when it symbolized the rising up of the spirit to the heavens and the power of the Earth. Commonly associated with creation and spirituality, it is used as a symbol of protection and healing, considered to carry power for good and protecting not only the physical well being but the mental and spiritual too.

So much talk of the star but the circle is what makes a pentagram into a pentacle. The circle of the pentacle represents protection and is used often in magic. Inside the magic circle there is safety. The pentacle is an emblem of a happy homecoming and was and still is worn as an amulet.

The pentagram is a unicursal figure. Always drawn in one continuous unbroken line. Each of the five things represented are connected to one another, unless the line is broken. No one thing is any stronger or better or more important than the other, they are all dependent on each other. This is what the pentacle really symbolizes whatever variables are assigned to the five points. In magic the number five stands for the power of nature.

Pentacles ward off evil and you never know when you may need to do a little warding! It seems Eliphas Levi (1810 - 1875) was responisble for starting the whole upside down thing. Eliphas, drew the pentacle with two points up and added the goat's head design denoting evil the devil and all the rest. Some Pagans believe this is the Horned God, the male God who is the counterpart of the Goddess. However all of that is kind of muddled by the Christian belief in the devil with his interesting set of horns and goatee. Wiccans do not believe in hell or the devil, though some would say we worship it. Just goes to show more people need to get to the library or at least watch less TV.

I have found a ritual called the Sign of the Pentacle, though how old this is I could not discover. Still, any ritual should not be taken at face value. Each should be screened by the user and judged according to their individual beliefs and feelings. Here is the ritual: Starting at the left breast move to the top of your head or third eye, down to right breast then up to left shoulder and acoross to right shoulder and back down to left breast again. This could have been designed as a Pagan/ Wiccan version of the Catholic signing of the cross. It is meant to be used to ward off danger, evil or whatever you feel you need to ward off.

Happy New Years to all my fellow Wiccans and everyone else who stopped to read here.

Is this a hoax, or real?

Supposedly written by Roger Fontaine (who doesn't appear to exist) more likely written by David Legros, Algonquin Provincial Park chief park naturalist, who’s originally from Lafontaine, now lives in Huntsville, Ontario.

As far as I know, these holes (tunnels) in the photograph below, were created from blasting through the rocks of the Canadian Shield to make way for building the highways/ byways in Ontario. Other provinces and territories likely have them too. I really doubt the worm story, as far as these photos being any kind of real evidence. But, the whole post shows how something can be turned into a great hoax, or a great story. Is there enough here to make you a believer?

Holes in the shield: the Algonquin Rock Worm

Roger LaFontaine originally came to Algonquin Provincial Park looking for creepy creatures like leeches, snails, crayfish and rotifers in the early 2000s.

During that first season in the park, he became fascinated by the huge and strange marks seen all over Algonquin’s Highway 60 corridor left by a prehistoric worm. Since then, he’s devoted at least a day per year to documenting and studying some of Algonquin’s forgotten creatures.

Many visitors to Algonquin are in awe of the rocky shorelines and exposed rock outcrops throughout the park.

What only keen-eyed visitors may pick up on are the telltale marks left behind by a fantastic creature that sadly isn’t around anymore.

Findings from a lost journal Back in the 1930s, strange marks appearing as vertical tunnels were seen in rocks along what would later become Highway 60.

Naturalist Walter Lepinski working with the road crew would eventually go on to describe the creature that made these precise tunnels: the Algonquin Rock Worm (Petrolumbricus algonquinensis).

This was a species of large burrowing worm that specialized in boring tunnels through rock using hardened mouthparts.

Walter estimated that Algonquin Rock Worms were approximately 10 cm wide by 6 m long, featuring segmented bodies and head-ends covered with scales.

Lepinski’s observations were corroborated by strange notes and illustrations found in the journals of timber cruisers and timber chute operators before the turn of the century (pers comms, Norton Smithers, 2024).

Lepinski’s notes from this time are scant, but he did write in his journal

“Algonquin Rock Worm, Petrolumbricus algonquinensis.

“Fossil burrows found along proposed highway through Algonquin. Only burrows found through Canadian Shield. I estimate the worms to be up to 20 feet in length. It must have hardened mouthparts to bore through rock.”

Evidence of species past Sadly, this species was one of the victims of the last Ice Age – the enormous glacier that covered much of North America in a crushing sheet of ice.

By the start of the last Ice Age 100,000 years ago, the rock worm would be wiped from the landscape.

In fact, following the melt of the glacier about 11,000 years ago, there would be no native earthworms at all in Ontario until they were introduced by humans just a few centuries ago.

Alas, no extant fossils exist of the Algonquin Rock Worm because animals with soft bodies rarely become fossilized. On top of that, that worm-killing glacier also scraped much of Ontario clean of its soil and softer rocks, including most fossil-bearing rocks.

Today, fossils of ancient animal life are found in limestone regions of southern and extreme northern Ontario.

To see these, check out parks like Presqu’ile Provincial Park, Craigleith Provincial Park, Kakabeka Falls Provincial Park – these parks host fossils that are hundreds of millions of years old!

As for the Algonquin Rock Worm, all we have left are the huge and mysterious burrows.

When the track or sign of an animal is fossilized, it is called a “trace fossil” or “ichnofossil.”

Modern effects of the Algonquin Rock Worm

Photographs from modern Highway 60, Algonquin Provincial Park featuring the tunnels of the Algonquin Rock Worm. In many locations, a number of tunnels appear next to each other. It is possible the worms lived in groups or were excavated in similar locations over vast time periods – we won’t be able to know.

While called the Algonquin Rock Worm in tribute to the place where it was first described, this species has since been found across much of eastern Canada and parts of the northern United States, with observations made all over the Canadian Shield.

Coincidentally, this lines up well with some of Ontario’s most iconic parks and drives, such as Frontenac Provincial Park, the eastern shore of Georgian Bay, Lake Superior Provincial Park, and more.

Today, we don’t have much to go on to piece together the life and ecology of the Algonquin Rock Worm.

The vertical burrows that we can see while travelling along the highway suggest they were good at orienting themselves to get to the surface and likely fed here.

Modern worms consume vast quantities of forest debris like dead leaves, and we assume that the Rock Worm did as well.

As modern worms feed, they leave behind poop, called worm castings.

One must imagine the immense heaps left behind by a 6 m worm and the nutrients spread onto the landscape, let alone the piles of pulverized stone at the burrow opening.

While we can’t know for certain, it is thought that Rock Worms were long-lived due to their size and the difficulty of boring through rock.

We have yet to find deep subterranean chambers attributed to the Rock Worm, and we suspect they are deep underground so unlikely to find them.

It is thought that the burrows provided homes for other species of long, narrow animals to use, from smaller worms and insect larvae to snakes and weasels.

In the past, as today, water trickles through these holes, perhaps entering the ground for long-term storage.

In winter, the water may freeze and thaw, and over millennia, this has cracked many rock outcrops, eventually creating mineral soil for plants to grow in.

Become a student of nature You may be wondering, “So what? Why does this matter?”

We think the answer might come from Walter’s journal in 1936:

“Those building the road thought it was a waste of time to even ponder what made these burrows, and they teased me relentlessly for my curiosity in such matters. For the student of nature, everything is interesting and instructive to the eyes that can read it.”

If you happen to be visiting some of our stunning parks on the Canadian Shield this season, take some time to look for the burrows of the ancient Algonquin Rock Worm.

Photograph the tunnels from a safe distance, but don’t touch these sensitive fossils – researchers are still trying to glean what they can from them.

I'm not going to start calling Toronto (the capital of Ontario) another name. I like knowing the history and original meaning of the name. But, I'm not militant about Indigenous politics or decolonization.

You can't change history without a time machine, a lot of careful planning and good luck. Really, the animals were here before the native people. The plant life was here before the animals if you really want to feel obligated to honouring the past. I respect the native people, as we call them and they seem to call themselves, but not more than I respect the pioneers, settlers, traders and the current population in general. None of us were born more than 150 years ago. So who can you really feel apologetic to now? People need to live in the world now, as it is. Remembering and learning about history is wonderful. Preserving some of it is great. But, you can't live your life looking backwards, behind you. The past isn't going to change but you might walk into traffic and change your future.

This is why more people are now referring to Toronto as Tkaronto

Tkaronto is a Mohawk word meaning “where there are trees standing in the water,” according to several Mohawk speakers and aboriginal language expert John Steckley.

The marker was originally ascribed to The Narrows, between Lake Simcoe and Lake Couchiching, but later became associated with Toronto because it was there that the passage between Lakes Ontario and Simcoe existed.