So I know that I challenged myself to create a prayer book for my spiritual practice and although I didn’t start it on time like I had hoped I DID start it, and that’s all that really matters, right? And now that I’ve gotten started, I’m sharing my progress with you!

The first thing I did before I even bought anything was do some research. I really just wanted to know how others were creating their prayer books. Turns out lots of people have different ideas about what a prayer book should look like. I found a few blog posts about creating a bible study guide that also included prayers, and grimoire or book of shadows tutorials that were really creative. Like drawings of herbs and goddesses and DIY book binding and all that stuff. Super awesome! However I quickly realized that I’m just not that creative. My drawing skills are severely limited, to put it nicely, and there’s no way I can bind books on my own at this point. But that didn’t stop me from wanting to create this book. So I decided to lower my expectations a bit and bought a binder and some grid paper– I find grid paper keeps my handwriting straight– and some pens from Amazon. And then while I was in Colorado they were delivered. When I got back there was my Amazon box waiting for me!

My binder and pens, all perdy and stuff.

Anyway, what I’ve done is taken a nice binder, added a bunch of dividers and grid paper, and just started writing. Some of it will be my own creation and some of it I’ve just taken from the internet (I cannot tell you enough how great Pinterest is for collecting rituals, recipes and prayers all in one place, I love it so hard right now). It’s not about necessarily having everything be of my own creation, it’s about having a space to hold the knowledge I’ve collected and be able to reference it later AND share it with my family. I have no intention of publishing this as a book because 1) a lot of the info is common knowledge, and anyone can find it with a few clicks so what’s the point in publishing and 2) holy plagiarism, Batman! I feel like as long as it’s for personal use it’s okay to put it in my prayer book (and for the record, if I were to publish a prayer book for the masses I would use only things that I have written myself). All the information I’m using is out there already, I’m just organizing it all in a way that is easy for me to access and make sense to me.

I love saying grace before a meal, it really takes me back to my childhood!

I’ve already started adding prayers and rituals, and I’m adding a space for herbs with their magical and medicinal uses and correspondences so I can study up. One of my goals is to become more skilled in the herbalism department and be a good kitchen witch (or Jewitch. But I’m not really a Jew yet so maybe I can’t use that term for myself). But before I can get to that level I have to start with the basics. So I’m adding a new page each day with a different herb and writing down its qualities and how to use it safely and successfully. It will be a slow process, but I’m really excited about it and I hope I can get to the point where I can make my own home remedies and do a little magic of my own. Yay!

One of the things I’ve noticed is that so far a majority of my entries are pretty Pagan/Witchy. I’m hoping to change that so my prayer book is more interfaith, since that’s what my family is, but I keep being drawn to goddess/EarthMother prayers. Any tips on evening out my collection?