Looking for a grimoire or book of shadows as prop

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Jan Paparazzi

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I am looking for an illustrated grimoire or book of shadows to use as a prop in my horror game. Does anyone know where I could buy one? Most of the stuff I find online is either not illustrated, it's homemade and not for sale or it's from Charmed. I want it to be modern horror so any Cthulhu-esque grimoire are not what I am looking for. I did find a magazine which looks cool, so I insert an image of it so you know what I am looking for. I could of course just buy the magazine, but a book is cooler.

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I had a look at Propnomicon, and while some of the creators have Etsy stores I don't see any that are illustrated.
I don't know of any traditionally published ones that have the full effect.

This guy should gather up his illustrations and put out a collection/grimoire... though his stuff is too full of mythos flavor for your purposes.
 
My suggestion is just buy a fancy leather notebook and make your own - I did this for one of my horror campaigns

you can copy pages directly from cheap paperback grimoires like the Simon Necronomicon, the Lesser Key of Solomon, or The Book of Tears

alternately buy a cheap oversized paperback printing and just rebind it and weather the pages
 
This guy should gather up his illustrations and put out a collection/grimoire... though his stuff is too full of mythos flavor for your purposes.

He puts out "fragments" that are several pages with a rough binding. An example would be his current listing titled "NECRONOMICON TOME FRAGMENT The Spawn of Cthulhu larp prop lovecraft monsters." I bought one of those a while back, and it is pretty cool. It is made to look like someone got part of the Necronomicon.
 
I can't draw. But I did see a pretty cool Buffy grimoire. Looks way better than the Charmed one I saw.

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I got a related question. Which rpg's have a lot of grimoires, symbols, strange languages and rituals? I know Cthulhu has a lot of them and it's main mythology is based on all of this. But beside of Cthulhu which rpg's also have a lot of this? Am I forgetting something? Something with a focus on the conjuration or evocation of spirits would fit right into what I have in mind.
 
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I got a related question. Which rpg's have a lot of grimoires, symbols, strange languages and rituals? I know Cthulhu has a lot of them and it's main mythology is based on all of this. But beside of Cthulhu which rpg's also have a lot of this? Am I forgetting something? Something with a focus on the conjuration or evocation of spirits would fit right into what I have in mind.

HeroQuest and RuneQuest have Grimoires in the rules, they are what sorcerers use for their magic. However, I can't remember seeing any examples. Merrie England uses Sacred texts as a way of getting Arcane magic in Revolution D100, which makes them a type of Grimoire.
 
All the tips are great. I could even go to that library, because I live close to Amsterdam. I just want to add that I am mostly interested in grimoires in rpg's for the setting material and lore I can steal and not really for the magic systems themselves.
 
All the tips are great. I could even go to that library, because I live close to Amsterdam. I just want to add that I am mostly interested in grimoires in rpg's for the setting material and lore I can steal and not really for the magic systems themselves.


The Lemegaton aka Lesser Key of Solomon is probably going to be the most use to you in that regard. Details the 72 Infernal spirits, including their sigils, summoning rites, dominions, and various ritual summoning magic procedures. The McGregor/Crowly illustrated translation is probably the best.
 
You could always look at online grimoires and copy/paste bits of the pages into a word processor/desktop publisher, then get a copy done from Lulu or something similar. It wouldn't be cheap and the content wouldn't make sense, but it might look good as a prop.
 
The Lemegaton aka Lesser Key of Solomon is probably going to be the most use to you in that regard. Details the 72 Infernal spirits, including their sigils, summoning rites, dominions, and various ritual summoning magic procedures. The McGregor/Crowly illustrated translation is probably the best.
And which one is that? I see there are several McGregor/Crowley versions available online.
Probably this one: Lesser Key of Solomon
 
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I can tell you, now that my Kickstarter package has finally arrived after three years, that Aquelarre ("Aquelarre" means "coven" in Spanish) is bloody good for this. Not only is the book fashioned after a Grimoire, and looks absolutely gorgeous, but it's very extensive spell list describes all the weird, symbolic rituals and ingredients for each spell. This is similar to the way Unknown Armies presents it's rituals, but this feels much more authentically based upon medieval occult/folklore practices.

A few images:
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The game itself is set in 14th/15th Century Spanish Penisular, where five warring nations duke it out against the backdrop of a very dark, demon infested medieval world. Characters have a mechanic for measuring their Rationality as opposed to their Irrationality. Rational characters tend to have a good willpower but a low capacity for supernatural magic, whereas Irrational characters can study an authentically reseached set of magical practices (alchemy, etc). Of course, nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition…...

It feels similar to Ars Magica, particularly in it's 3rd edition, but is better mainly because it sticks to historical magic rather than the Ars Magica fantasy system and also because it is focussed on a tighter geographical area. (I love Ars Magica too, but in retrospect, I think it's better as a fantasy system, standing apart from the Medieval setting). The rules are percentile and similar enough to RuneQuest, to get an idea.
 
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I can tell you, now that my Kickstarter package has finally arrived after three years, that Aquelarre ("Aquelarre" means "coven" in Spanish) is bloody good for this. Not only is the book fashioned after a Grimoire, and looks absolutely gorgeous, but it's very extensive spell list describes all the weird, symbolic rituals and ingredients for each spell. This is similar to the way Unknown Armies presents it's rituals, but this feels much more authentically based upon medieval occult/folklore practices.

The game itself is set in 14th/15th Century Spanish Penisular, where five warring nations duke it out against the backdrop of a very dark, demon infested medieval world. Characters have a mechanic for measuring their Rationality as opposed to their Irrationality. Rational characters tend to have a good willpower but a low capacity for supernatural magic, whereas Irrational characters can study an authentically reseached set of magical practices (alchemy, etc). Of course, nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition…...

This feels a bit like an historical version of my homebrew. I always liked the idea of Western occultism, witchcraft, hermeticism in combation with a dark demon and spirit infested world. I guess that's why I never got into the WoD that much, because I want it to be like Kult mixed with Witchcraft and Cthulhu.

What can you tell about the magic systems they use in this game? And is it available in English on pdf?
 
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