A grimoire is a book of magical instructions: how to cast a spell, make a charm, call a spirit, or read a sign. The word comes from the Old French grammaire, and for centuries it meant any book of learning written in Latin, before it narrowed to the books of magic it names today. This guide covers what a grimoire is and isn't, the famous grimoires that shaped Western magic, what goes in a modern one, and how to start your own from an empty notebook.
If you came here from an anime, a video game, or a tabletop rulebook, you're welcome too. Those grimoires are borrowed from the real thing, and the real thing is older and stranger than any of them.
What Is a Grimoire?
A grimoire is a manual of magic. That's the whole definition. It holds instructions rather than stories: which herb for which purpose, what to say over a candle, how to draw a protective circle, when to work by the moon. Some grimoires are five hundred years old and copied by hand in Latin. Some are a spiral notebook a witch started last Tuesday. Both count.
Historians such as Owen Davies, whose Grimoires: A History of Magic Books is the standard work on the subject, trace the term to the French grammaire. In the Middle Ages, when most people couldn't read, any Latin book looked like a book of secrets, and "grammar" slid toward "spellbook." By the eighteenth century the French were using grimoire specifically for magical texts, and English picked it up in the nineteenth. The pronunciation is grim-WAHR.
The same word gives us "glamour," the Scots form of "grammar," which once meant an enchantment cast over the eyes. Learning and magic have never been far apart.
Grimoire vs. Book of Shadows vs. Spell Journal
These three get used interchangeably online, and they aren't the same thing.
| What it holds | Where it comes from | |
|---|---|---|
| Grimoire | Instructions: spells, rituals, correspondences, often collected from other sources | The word is medieval; the books go back to antiquity |
| Book of Shadows | A witch's personal working book, which can include a grimoire section, a journal section, and anything else | Wicca, mid-twentieth century |
| Spell journal | Records: what you actually did and what came of it | Any tradition, any time |
Many witches keep all three in one binder. The grimoire pages are what you write before a working, the journal pages are what you write after, and the Book of Shadows is the whole book. If you're Wiccan, "Book of Shadows" is probably your word for it. If you're not, "grimoire" is the older, broader term and fits any path.
A Short History of Grimoires
The oldest surviving spellbooks in the Western tradition are the Greek Magical Papyri, a body of texts from Egypt written between roughly the second century BCE and the fifth century CE. They mix Greek, Egyptian, and Jewish material, and they read like a working handbook: love charms, protection, divination, recipes, the names to call and when.
The medieval grimoires that followed were mostly attributed to King Solomon, who by legend commanded spirits with a ring. The Key of Solomon, a Latin text of the fourteenth or fifteenth century, is the most copied grimoire in history and the source of the pentacles and circles that still turn up in modern witchcraft. The Sworn Book of Honorius and the Ars Notoria belong to the same world of learned, Christian-framed ritual magic. From the Arabic world came the Picatrix, a tenth or eleventh century treatise on astrological magic that reached Europe in Latin and shaped everything after it.
The Renaissance gave the tradition its great systematizer, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, whose Three Books of Occult Philosophy of 1533 laid out the correspondences between planets, stones, herbs, and spirits that correspondence tables still follow.
Then printing changed everything. From the eighteenth century, cheap French chapbooks like the Grand Grimoire and Le Petit Albert put spirit conjurations and folk recipes into the hands of anyone with a few coins. In Iceland the Galdrabók recorded staves and charms in the vernacular. In Pennsylvania, Pow-Wows; or, Long Lost Friend (1820) became the household grimoire of German-American folk magic, and the Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses traveled from Germany into Hoodoo and beyond.
The twentieth century added a new kind of grimoire: the personal one. When Gerald Gardner founded modern Wicca in the 1940s and 1950s, its central text was a hand-copied Book of Shadows, and every initiate copied their own. That habit, a book you write yourself rather than buy, is the one most witches follow today.
10 Famous Grimoires Worth Knowing
You don't need to read any of these to keep a grimoire. But they're the ancestors of the practice, and knowing them makes a lot of modern witchcraft make sense.
- Greek Magical Papyri (2nd century BCE to 5th century CE). The oldest working spellbooks we have. Everything from love charms to dream oracles.
- Picatrix (10th or 11th century, Arabic). Astrological magic: how to draw down the power of a planet into a talisman. The root of planetary timing.
- Key of Solomon (14th or 15th century). Circles, pentacles, tools, and purifications. The most copied grimoire ever written.
- Sworn Book of Honorius (13th century). Ritual magic for seeing the divine, written as a defense of magic against the Church.
- Three Books of Occult Philosophy (1533). Agrippa's encyclopedia of correspondences. If your candle color chart has a great-grandparent, this is it.
- The Book of Abramelin (manuscripts from the 17th century, claiming 1458). A long retreat to meet one's guardian angel, later central to the Golden Dawn and Aleister Crowley.
- Lesser Key of Solomon (17th century). The Lemegeton, including the Ars Goetia and its catalog of seventy-two spirits.
- Grand Grimoire (18th or 19th century, claiming 1522). The notorious French chapbook of pacts and conjurations, more read about than read.
- Galdrabók (16th and 17th centuries). Icelandic magical staves and charms, the source of the vegvísir and Ægishjálmur you see on jewelry.
- Pow-Wows; or, Long Lost Friend (1820). John George Hohman's collection of Pennsylvania German charms and remedies, still in print two centuries on.
One note on reading them. These are historical documents, and several contain remedies that were folk medicine in their day and nothing more. Read them for the practice and the history, and leave the medicine to your doctor.
What Goes in a Grimoire
Whatever you'd want to look up while working. For most witches that settles into a handful of sections.
- Correspondences. Herbs, stones, colors, planets, days, and what each is used for. Our candle color meanings and herb dictionary are the kind of thing that ends up copied here.
- Spells and rituals. Written out step by step, with materials, timing, and the words. Include where each came from.
- Symbols and sigils. The ones you use and what they mean. Our guide to witch symbols is a starting list, and how to make word sigils covers your own.
- The Wheel of the Year. Sabbats and esbats, what you do for each, what you ate, what worked.
- Deities, spirits, and ancestors. Who you work with, how you address them, what they've asked of you.
- Tools. How you consecrated your athame, what your wand is made of, where your cauldron came from.
- Recipes. Oils, incense, teas, and baths, with amounts.
- Divination. Your tarot meanings, your rune notes, your dream symbols. A tarot journal can live here or in its own section.
- Records. What you did and what happened. This is the spell journal half of the book, and the half most people forget.
How to Make a Grimoire
A grimoire is built, not bought, and the building is most of the point.
- Choose the book. A binder wins for beginners, because you can reorder pages and add printed ones. A bound journal wins for permanence. A tablet wins for search. Any of them is right. Our journals and Books of Shadows collection has bound options if you want one that feels like a grimoire from the first page.
- Decide the first three sections. Correspondences, spells, and a journal are enough to start. Add sections as your practice grows into them.
- Write what you already know. The three herbs you actually use. The one spell you've done. Your own tarot meanings for the cards you've pulled. A grimoire that begins with what's real beats one that begins with someone else's table copied whole.
- Copy by hand, and cite. When you take a spell or a correspondence from a book or a site, write the source next to it. In ten years you'll want to know where it came from.
- Leave room. Skip pages between sections. Grimoires grow sideways as much as forward.
- Keep the record half. Every working gets a page after the fact: what you did, what you said, what came of it. That's what turns a copied grimoire into your own.
- Read it back at each new moon. Ten minutes. This is how you notice which pages you never open, and which you've worn thin.
How to Start a Grimoire When You Know Almost Nothing Yet
Start anyway. The first page of most witches' grimoires is a list of questions, not answers. Write down what you want to learn, what draws you, and what you've noticed. Then add one thing a week: a herb you looked up, a moon phase you tracked, a card you pulled and what you thought it meant. Our guides on what witchcraft is and how to become a witch are good first pages to take notes from, and types of witches will help you decide which sections you'll fill fastest.
Paper or Digital?
Paper is traditional, and there's a reason. Writing by hand is slower, and slower is how a correspondence gets into your memory rather than your bookmarks. A physical book can also be consecrated, kept on the altar, and left to someone.
Digital is searchable. Once you have two hundred pages, "which spell used rosemary" is a real question, and a notes app answers it in a second. Many witches run both: a digital grimoire for reference and a paper one for the workings that matter. If you go digital, keep a printed copy of the pages you'd hate to lose.
Grimoire Pages You Can Print
If you want a head start on the record half of the book, our Journal Pages & Printables collection has one-page sheets built for a binder: a Daily Practice Page, a Tarot Journal Page, and a Spell Journal Page. Each one is a free fillable PDF you can print or use on a tablet, and each was designed to sit inside a grimoire rather than replace one.
Grimoire FAQ
What is a grimoire?
A grimoire is a book of magical instructions: spells, rituals, correspondences, charms, and how to use them. The word comes from the Old French for "grammar," and historical grimoires date back to antiquity. Today it usually means a witch's own handwritten book of practice.
How do you pronounce grimoire?
Grim-WAHR, with the stress on the second syllable. It's a French word.
What is the difference between a grimoire and a Book of Shadows?
A grimoire is a book of instructions and can come from any tradition or period. A Book of Shadows is a witch's personal working book, a term that comes from Wicca in the 1950s, and it can contain a grimoire section along with journals, rituals, and anything else. In everyday use many witches treat the words as interchangeable.
Are grimoires evil or dangerous?
No. A grimoire is a notebook. Some historical grimoires describe conjuring spirits, and some contain folk remedies that were never safe, but the book itself is paper and ink. A modern witch's grimoire is a record of herbs, moon phases, spells, and results.
Can I buy a grimoire?
You can buy a blank book made to hold one, and you can buy published grimoires that collect other people's spells. The book that matters is the one you write. Published collections are sources to copy from and cite, not a substitute for your own.
What is the most famous grimoire?
The Key of Solomon is the most copied and most influential grimoire in Western history. In popular culture, the Grand Grimoire and the Lesser Key of Solomon are the most notorious, and the Necronomicon, which is fictional, is probably the most famous of all.
Do I need a grimoire to practice witchcraft?
No. Plenty of witches keep everything in their heads or on their phones. But most find that writing the practice down is what makes it a practice, and the book becomes the thing they'd save in a fire.
