library

On and off I have tried to condense my magickal notes into some form of book. Grimoire, Book of the Shadows, General Kal’s Little Blue Book, whatever you term it. I’ve also failed repeatedly. Part of my problem is I had the idea it had to be a physical text, which isn’t the problem in an of itself, but I’m very structured and a perfectionist. So my attempts often had lots of blank pages between sections for me to fill in, cause I couldn’t have anything out of order, but alas eventually one thing would grow too much and ruin the order.
So now I’m going to try shifting my notes into a digital format. At least this will make my notes in Tibetan/Sanskrit/Pali/Hebrew/Greek easier to put down as I can type in those scripts a lot faster than I can write. My challenge becomes though: how in the 136 Hells am I to organize this stuff? I could divide it simply with Western magick and Buddhist stuff, but they really aren’t that separate in my practice, a lot of my stuff draws on both things.
How do I divide what goes in? Cosmological theories? But those bleed into Angel/God/Spirit descriptions and various rituals. Sections on Spirits, but those are dependant in a way on how the Spirit is called. Different forms of evocation. Processes of meditation, ritual. But there in all of them there are the little tips that apply to every thing, but shouldn’t necessarily be repeated everywhere. How to properly dissolve a ritual space shouldn’t be listed in every ritual, but is it worth of it’s own spot? Chants, mantras, recipes, need-to-know facts, comments on astrology and timing.
Excuse me while I flail.
So for now I’m just digitizing stuff without order, and will hopefully organize it better later. But I want to ask my readers, whatever your path, however you store your information, do you have some advice? How do you categorize and separate all these things in whatever your favoured book of notes is? Any examples or ideas would be a great help for me.
And since I’m randomly away three hours into my sleep cycle (the Hour of the Wolf has been strong this week) another issue I have with organizing magickal stuff is my library. Another thing I have had trouble sorting out. My currently layout is more based on when I acquired the book than what it is about. Thankfully I have a remarkable memory for this sort of thing so while my books are in four different places I know what shelf and generally what section of the shelf any given book is on. That’s fine for me, but it’s problematic when I have a friend or student who wants to look at or borrow a book because they need me to guide them to a book. I’d much rather say “You’re looking for a book on summoning? Check out this area” and let them be. So for those of you who have an occult library of a size that needs organization, how does that work for you?
My current idea I’ve sketched out is:
Astrology – Divination – Tarot – Tarot Magick – Ceremonial Magick – Solomonic – Golden Dawn – Thelemic – Western Magick – Chaos Magick – Energy Model
Theravada – Mahayana – Vajrayana – Chöd – Buddhist Psychology – Taoism – Qi Gong – Reiki – Hinduism
Forbidden Archeology – Past Life Research
I’ve tried to group them in like ideas that bleed together, but this is always my problem: some books fit into more than one category, some more than two, and unfortunately my library is confined by three dimension space.
So while this is half rant, half ramble, half request, and half bad fractions, seriously I would love to know more about how others organize their personal magickal notes, and their libraries. Even if you think you organize it poorly it gives me another view to think about it from.