A Guide For Witches and Writers: "The Magical Writing Grimoire"

What Is The Magical Writing Grimoire? Is it for witches or writers — or both?

The Magical Writing Grimoire is a book of inclusive and accessible rituals and writing prompts for anyone who feels called to using words as a source of healing, empowerment, joy, generativity, and self-exploration. It is designed to integrate ritualistic living and to incorporate sacredness into our lives in meaningful and easy ways.

It’s for witches and non-witches (including people with secular beliefs, like myself), although of course it’s heavily based off the archetype of the witch: The witch, to me, is strong, rebellious, empowered, empathic, and bold as fuck. The witch is also conscious — of the self and others and the earth. So, it works heavily with archetypes and symbols, but it invites people who have specific beliefs to incorporate their beliefs into the work.

Really, the book is about tapping into and using your own power, your own voice, your own ideas.

It’s for writers and non-writers — anyone who is interested in the sacred, beautiful power of poetry or journaling or letter-writing, or timing writing practices to nature’s ebb and flow.

It also focuses heavily on shadow work — or unearthing the silenced, dark, shadowy parts of the self.

What will readers find within its pages?

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Lots of rituals, lots of writing prompts, meditations, quotes from the most inspirational and wonderful people and writers, poems I wrote myself, glimpses into my personal life, and so much more. Plus, it’s really beautifully illustrated.

What is the inspiration behind The Magical Writing Grimoire?

The book was gestating in my mind for several years, but I didn’t know what its shape until the past year or so; I knew I wanted to write a writing guide — one that balanced the ritualistic with the pragmatic and every day, one that used writing as a form of magic. More than using the occult in order to generate writing, it’s about using writing to make your life more magical.

It starts with the word and ends with the word.

It’s deeply rooted in recovering from pain and trauma. When I was younger, the number one thing that got me through times of extreme trauma (family separation, foster care, CPTSD, financial instability, chronic illness) was writing. Writing gave me my voice back. It was a tool for reclamation. But more so, it was a tool for joy, creativity, and empowerment.

The ability to write is a privilege for many of us, but it’s also a free tool that can help save us. I’ve seen writing help women in domestic shelters, college students move through self-esteem issues, and incarcerated individuals tell their story. It is something sacred in itself because with our words we are taking nothing and making it into something.

So I wanted to design a gentle but effective book that people — especially any marginalized community — could use to tap into their truth and self, in a way that felt right for them. It’s guided, but it allows space for reinterpretation and individuality so that anyone can tap in.

Is it similar to Light Magic for Dark Times?

It is, and it’s not. Like Light Magic for Dark Times, it is grounded in accessibility and inclusivity. It also offers different (but looser) chapter focuses, like manifestation, mindfulness, healing, conjuring your voice, creating a grimoire, and more.

Unlike Light Magic for Dark Times, it provides a much deeper dive in terms of the rituals and the writing prompts, and it’s filled with poetry and quotes to meditate on. It’s also much more about the process of long-term self-exploration (and excavation!) than about quick, one-off rituals for different purposes. I think the two actually pair super well together!

What are your beliefs?

I’m secular (for lack of a better, more nuanced word), so I don’t work with or believe in gods, goddesses, angles or other deities. However, I work closely with the natural world (especially the power and energy of water), shadow work, energy, archetypes, and symbols. For example, I see the elements as powerful tools, offering lessons and glimpses of the purity of aliveness — and I see the astrological signs as symbols of the human condition.

When does the book come out?

It’s born on April 21, so it’s a Taurus! But let’s be honest — it was finalized and sent to the printer during Scorpio season. It’s very much a Scorpio book — it’s dark, intense, powerful, and transformative. But, like a Taurus, it wants to find beauty, comfort, and artistry. And because it comes out in the Spring, it’s a great way to kick off the new year with energy, creation, and rebirth.

People are already saying some really kind things about it, and it’s included in a few Most Anticipated lists, like in Cunning Folk and over at Patheos by Mat Auryn.

PREORDER THE MAGICAL WRITING GRIMOIRE NOW!

If you do, send preorder proof of purchase to magicalwriting@quarto.com and you’ll receive downloadable prompts and magical poetry to power up your magic.

PS: Follow the book’s journey on Instagram at @Ritual_Poetica.

Bibliomancy Horoscopes: Divination With Etel Adnan's Poetry

BY LISA MARIE BASILE

Books speak to us, create worlds for us, and conjure both the questions and answers that reside within us. When we turn to books and written texts for some greater message, a message from beyond the page, we become literary witches — or bibliomancers. Bibliomancy (which goes by many other names) is the use of books in acts of divination. The goal here is to find greater wisdom, to lean into that Force or Spirit beyond and yet within the page.

Like the ancient practice of sortes (also a form of cleromancy, the use of lots for divination), the practice of divination from drawing a card or other object, bibliomancy has long had a place across cultures and in many folk traditions. Bibliomancers traditionally used the bible for divination, although grimoires and other sacred texts were also used.

According to the University of Michigan’s Romance Languages and Literatures, poetry — how delicious! — was consulted as well. The Dīvān of Ḥāfeẓ, a collection of ghazals written by the great Persian poet Hafiz, was used to seek “Tongue of the Unseen,” or messages via the poet after his death. Today, it’s still common for people to use sacred texts, like the I-Ching or the Bible to divine wisdom.

When we use poetry, of course, there is a technical term for that: Rhapsodomancy. However, bibliomancy seems to cover it for most people.

There’s even a fun intersection of the modern and the ancient over at the Bibliomancy Oracle, a simple webpage that offers up lines of poetry after concentrating and opening a “book” by clicking a button on the site. My poetry has even been included! The site says, “This Oracle selects passages from its database using a random generator. The idea being that meaningful texts are offered via synchronicity. The relevant message finds you. You only need to be open to receiving it.”

I’ve been consulting books for wisdom long before I knew what I was doing. I’d thumb through Bluets by Maggie Nelson or Rumi’s work — seeking wisdom, motivation, a message — and poetry never failed me. I’m sure you’ve done this, too, perhaps subconsciously. Not reading, per se, but seeking. Stumbling upon a stanza. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I began intentionally meditating on a question before selecting a passage and journaling about the line or stanza I’d be directed to upon asking it.

Like tarot or astrology, bibliomancy asks us to lean into the mystery and examine what we’ve been told. What is revealed? What does this revelation ask of us? What sings out when we see the words before us?

In this practice, the reader opens a book, whatever book calls out to them. As a poet, I prefer poetry. The reader then may call out to a guide or spirit to direct them to passage. Then, with eyes closed, the reader selects a page and then selects a line ( at least this is how I do it; although I am secular, so I work with no entity or deity). From there, the given line can be taken as wisdom, an omen, or a sign. Intuit this. Sometimes, people place the book on its spine and let it fall open (this was traditionally done with the bible, according to some research).

Although there are many approaches to bibliomancy, it is best that you create your own approach. Poems offer the most beautiful and mysterious answers to those questions we hold quiet and deep within us, I believe. In their ability to span the liminal parts of the self — the unsaid, the almost-said, the said-between-the-lines — poems offer great wisdom. Perhaps the spirit of the poet is there to direct you as well.

Poems are little written oceans, in which we dive deep, hungry to reach the bottom. Perhaps there is no bottom and that is the answer. Perhaps it’s the journey that matters.

When you let the book fall open, investigate what a line could mean in the context of your life. What images does it bring to mind? How does it make you feel? What does it force you to think about that perhaps you had not before? 

Here, I’ll be doing that for you — for each of the sun signs.

The method: I’ll be opening a poetry book every two weeks and asking for wisdom for each every sign. I will put myself into a receptive, trance-like state (I believe being loose, open, and connected yields the most accurate answers), close my eyes, call out the sign I’m asking about, thumb through the pages of a book, and let my fingers guide me to a line.

It is up to you to reflect the line assigned to your sun sign. Journal about it, meditate on it and listen to the way it reverberates through your mind. Let it stay with you. Write it down and carry it with you.

And at the very least, you’ll discover a new poet.

Our poet is Etel Adnan, and we draw on her book, NIGHT.

Aries

My breathing is a tide. Love doesn’t die.

Taurus

Memory is intelligent. It’s a knowledge seated neighter in the senses, nor the spirit, but in collective memory. It is communal….it helps us rampage through the old self, hang on the certitude that it has to be.

Gemini

What we mean by “God” is that He is night. Reality is night too. From the same night.

Cancer

Words trace their way to the ocean. From the ridge facing this house, signals take off, scaring us, but a large stride, a deep breath, restores tranquility.

Leo

Love creates sand-storms and loosens reality’s building stones. Its feverish energy takes us into the heart of mountains.

Virgo

One day, the sun will not rise at its hour, therefore that won’t be a day. And without a day, there won’t be a night either.

Libra

Are the rockets shooting for the moon killing invisible animals on their way?

Scorpio

Everything I do is memory. Even everything I am.

Sagittarius

Sometimes the sea catches fire.

Capricorn

We create reality by just being. This is also true for the owl who right now is dozing on a branch.

Aquarius

Our mind has a border line with the universe, there, where we promenade, and where tragedy resides.

Pisces

Memory is within us and reaches out, sometimes missing the connection with reality, it's neighbor, its substance.

For more on poetry, divination and magical writing, preorder my forthcoming book, THE MAGICAL WRITING GRIMOIRE.

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Lisa Marie Basile is the founding creative director of Luna Luna Magazine--a digital diary of literature and magical living. She is the author of "Light Magic for Dark Times," a modern collection of inspired rituals and daily practices, as well as the forthcoming book, "The Magical Writing Grimoire: Use the Word as Your Wand for Magic, Manifestation & Ritual." She's written for Refinery 29, The New York Times, Self, Chakrubs, Marie Claire, Narratively, Catapult, Sabat Magazine, Healthline, Bust, Hello Giggles, Grimoire Magazine, and more. Lisa Marie has taught writing and ritual workshops at HausWitch in Salem, MA, Manhattanville College, and Pace University. She earned a Masters's degree in Writing from The New School and studied literature and psychology as an undergraduate at Pace University.