Writing It All Down - A Look Through A Personal Archive
By Blayze

I must admit, that whatever else I may be, I’m certainly an archive witch, the technical term for someone who is a hoarder, a packrat and paper piler of the highest order. I keep everything from snippets of lyrics and poems that come to me on the train, first drafts to final drafts of rituals, doodles of ritual ideas, mindmaps of workshop notes and fliers of old events. I even have (oh the shame!) old packing lists from gatherings. These are all variously “filed” in folders, ring binders or as stacks of paper “hidden” behind the couch, on bookshelves or under the bed.

So maybe I’m not the neatest person in the world, but there is a method to my madness, illness, obsession…. whatever. It is this: all of these writings and pieces of paper and old envelopes equate to a living, sometimes breathing, Book of Shadows as a work-in-progress. I have tried writing everything up in a large hardcover book with pristine white pages, I have illuminated borders and calligraphied circle casts with magically prepared colour coded inks. I get through a few pages, get writers cramp and put it away for another year. Maybe this tome will be the master work of my old age, gilded miniatures and all, but for the moment, I enjoy the freedom of being able to re-arrange the order of my notes at a whim, and I can generally find what I am looking for at a moments notice.

But then I suppose the question is, why would I want to keep all of this stuff in the first place? Well my archives allow me to look back at what I have done before and draw upon these ideas to move forward into unexpected or unexplored realms. It is the art of re-interpretation and invention (plus it allows me to clear out my long-term memory and abused brain cells).

When I come to write a ritual for a sabbat, for instance, if I don’t have a clear starting point in mind I can look back at all of the other rituals I have written or attended for that sabbat. I can examine what worked and what didn’t and hopefully learn from my mistakes or improve on old ideas. Maybe I will keep the central theme from a past ritual but explore and approach it from a different perspective, including that of hindsight. I use this as a way of continually improving my understanding of mystery. I do read books, both new and old, but I find that looking back at my own stuff allows me to come to grips with where I have been and where I am going. It can also be something of a challenge to take a small personal or group ritual and expand it so that it can be used for a large group. 

Sometimes it is the discarded idea from a first draft that will give me the starting point for a new ritual. Maybe the original setting was not appropriate for that idea, or I did not have the skill to make that idea work, or maybe it just needed tweaking by a writing partner with a different perspective to my own. This is why I find personal archives invaluable.

There is also something of a history contained within these folders and piles, I have articles found in pagan newsletters from 1994 to the present, notes from workshops I attended at gatherings and my own notes first made when I was a solitary exploring my path for the first time. It can be very interesting going back over those notes as the basics of my path can sometimes get clouded by what I have since learnt. Sometimes it is good to go back and examine one’s reasons for following a path in the first place. There are also memories, both good and bad contained in those piles, memories of rituals that opened gateways for me, or a lecture that changed my perspective when I first heard it. Sometimes those piles chronicle political change within our own community.

As a teacher all of this stuff is invaluable, I can draw from it to write my curricula, passing on what was taught to me as well as my own discoveries or observations. I keep my student’s writings as well, as they teach me just as much as I teach them.

At the moment I am using three ring binders. One is just sabbat rituals, one is workshop notes, songs and other rituals - both my own and those I have been given, and the last are the notes I use for teaching. I can see my self always adding and subtracting from these folders as the piles of paper gradually overwhelm me. 

But then, that is what being an archive witch is all about.