Journals, grimoires and spellbooks

Books have inspired me quite a lot this project. I liked the idea of dusty old magic books containing secrets of the afterlife.
Right at the beginning of this project I was reminded of a comic I really liked that was relevant; 'After you die' by artist and comedian, Ramin Nazer.
The book is bright and cartoonish. It illustrates a variety of more surreal concepts of what happens after you die;
 
You can see the rest here. I really like how the artist used the same general layout for each page but customised the typography for each. I feel he visually communicated these concepts very well while maintaining a simple and friendly style.

This comic put the idea of making an illustrated book in my head. I really like the weirder concepts put forward in this book but did not cover any of them in my own project. If I did this project again I'd definitely like to illustrate my own perspective on the concepts put forward here.


The next thought I had from the idea of making a book was inspired by my research into the Romans, Egyptian and other ancient cultures. I thought about explorers' journals- dusty battered books containing sketches of artifacts, maps of foreign lands and notes of ancient tombs- think Indiana Jones.

I didn't manage to find many explorer's journals, possibly because they haven't been scanned in and published online but I did find the diary of Captain Matthew Liddon, part of the 'Journal of a Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific Performed in the Years 1819-20'
I had the idea of Making a fake journal, presenting my art like it was sketches of ancient artifacts and my notes written like I was an explorer in the 19th century. I didn't go through with this but I really liked the idea.

Captain Liddon's Journal of the voyage     >









The last type of books I looked at were Grimoires- magical textbooks which 'typically include instructions on how to create magical objects like talismans and amulets, how to perform magical spells, charms and divination and also how to summon or invoke supernatural entities such as angels, spirits, and demons. In many cases, the books themselves are also believed to be imbued with magical powers'. There are real Grimoires from many different cultures dating all the way back to the Sumerians in 3000 BC. Famous books of magic include The Book of Enoch, The Black Pullet and The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses.

Once again, I really liked the idea of making my own Grimoire with illustrations, a made up language and some nice cover art. This has actually been done already by quite a few gothic and occult fantasy authors including H.P. Lovecraft who created the infamous Necronomicon.

The Necronomicon is now a pop-culture book and has been featured in books, films and has been parodied many times. H.R. Giger made his own grotesque version full of mutilated robot angel women and mutated sacrifices. You can find that book in the college library!
I was interested in the meaning of 'Necronomicon' and looked it up. Turns out that it's the words Nekros- Death, Nomos- Name and Ikon- Image merged together meaning 'image of the names of the dead'
I decided to look up relevant words to my project in Latin and Ancient Greek:

I found it very interesting to see how a lot of our English words simply come from Latin.
I used the phrase 'Exanimus Expensum' on the money that I made and wanted to find a name for the book I was going to make. I think that 'Aither Ephemeris', translating to 'Heaven Journal' could be a cool name.

Now that I had a name and quite a lot of inspiration, I actually needed to make this book!
My first thought was to make my own book. My sister has done this before and my friend, Minnie is skilled in book binding too but I decided that that was going to be too time consuming for this project.
So I decided to take an A3 sketchbook I have for college and cut it in half using a bandsaw!
A3 was too big for me and I think that the edges of the sketchbook that were cut look very cool and has frayed the black fabric covering a little.
In my mind, I wanted my book to have a golden design on the cover, like the necronomicon pictured above and I wanted marbled paper edges to tie in with my project.
So I did exactly that!
By dipping the edges of the book in ink, I successfully marbled them, producing a great effect.
A classmate then gave me some of their bronze acrylic. I painted a few demo designs on black paper then just went for it:

I'm very pleased with how this turned out and feel that it looks really interesting. The lack of writing makes people want to look inside and find out what it's about.
Inside, the book is comprised of about 12 sections; Intro page, Imagery, Judgement, Burial, Tombs, Skulls, Currency, Ceremonial skull, Hell, Purgatory, Heaven and Altars.
It contains a lot of my own work alongside photocopies and printed out research images.
I tried to present everything like a journal or scrapbook, pertaining to my earlier research and thoughts.






































The book still has gaps in parts and is missing some things which I would like to do something about but I don't have the time to do that. I made this about a week and a half before the deadline for this project but have reminded myself that I have written all of these blog posts as well as making the money and ceramic skull so I've made quite a lot! That it why I'm not being too harsh on myself over this book.
Overall, though, I am very happy with my outcome. I think I've presented the book nicely and it was almost completely inspired by a variety of research done for the project which I feel I have done justice.