Samhain Magic Book

I made this little booklet as a short and simple introduction to Samhain for children.

Print out, color, cut away the margins and fold into a book. For folding instructions see my article magic one-sheet-of-paper mini book.

Autumn Equinox Magic Book

I made this little booklet as a short and simple introduction for children to some Autumn Equinox themes in Druid/Heathen tradition.

Print out, color, cut away the margins and fold into a book. For folding instructions see my article magic one-sheet-of-paper mini book.

color magic for kids

Below is a sequel to All About Magic part 1, a booklet I wrote last year as an introduction to magic for kids. Print out, color, cut away the margins and fold into a book. For folding instructions see my article magic one-sheet-of-paper mini book. Have this little booklet be but a starting point in learning color magic. You can give your own examples and methods after using this fun introduction.

Sigrdrifa’s Prayer One Page Book

Last year, I posted an article about making little mini books out of a single sheet of paper. Since then, I’ve figured out how to make them digitally! Below you will find a simple version of Sigrdrifa’s prayer, the only direct invocation of the Norse gods preserved from ancient times. It is a classic and beautiful prayer that can be said anytime, but is especially appropriate at the start of one’s day, observing the sun rise, and at the Solstices.

Copy and paste image into a word processing program (set up with narrow margins) to make sure the image takes up most of a full sheet of paper, expanding as necessary.
After printing, trim away the margins on the outside of the thick black lines. Let your child color the pictures, then follow directions given in my article magic one-sheet-of-paper mini book to complete the book.

For more Summer Solstice fun, see Kids’ Activities for Midsummer / Summer Solstice.

A Child’s Introduction to Magic

Belief in magic comes easily to children. A creative child, growing up on fairy tales, may even weave their own magic and cast their own spells as part of creative play without anyone ever teaching them the ‘ins and outs’ of magic. I suppose the first task for Pagan/Druid parents, who want to give their child a magical education, is to teach our kids the difference between movie magic (or performance magic) and what we consider ‘real’ magic (the use of symbolism, thought, energy, and creativity, to bring about change).

One way of teaching young children the basics of magic is with a story. The Children’s Handbook of Real Magic by Linda Waldron and Leroy Montana is a child’s introduction to magic, centering, shielding, positive energy, and color symbolism. It is told from the perspective of the “Butterfly Faerie”, who has been sent by the world of faeries to teach children about magic. Some Pagans will find this book a little too airy for their liking. However, one has to admire the scope of what is covered in such a short book. The explanations are simple, as they should be for a young audience, but there are places where a little more explanation would be helpful. For example, where the a child is taught to “put roots to the center of the earth like an old tree” but is not told that this is called grounding, nor why to do it.

The phrase “Great Good Love (or Power)” is used throughout the book. It is unclear to me whether the author is using this word as a new age synonym for a pantheistic deity, or as a term for universal magical energy, such as Prana, Od, or Chi. In any case, if your want to use the book, you could just substitute your own phrase for magical energy (or source of magic) when reading aloud. Also, at the end of the book, it is stated that if you use your magic for bad, you will lose it. I would amend this to say that the magic you send out also effects yourself, so make sure it’s always for the good of all. (You can never “lose” your magic, and I wouldn’t want a child to think that.) Another caveat of the book is that the only illustrations are stick figures.

So the highlights and shortcomings of the fore-mentioned book inspired me to come up with something a bit more simple, yet with more visuals. Below is a magic folding book that I made as a brief introduction to magic. To make one, enlarge to full size (landscape mode, not portrait) and print out. Cut away the margins and fold into a book; for folding instructions see my article magic one-sheet-of-paper mini book.

But let’s say you have an older child you want to introduce to magic. Even some of the most creative children may lose faith in magic around the time of early adolescence. This may be when it is time for a more substantial explanation. There are some Wiccan sources that are useful for teaching magical theory and few basics, much of which applies to non-Wiccan magical systems as well. One of the best explanations I’ve seen of Pagan magic theory is from the Correllian Wicca 1st Degree class, lesson 1. The energy work exercises of the 1st degree lessons are excellent as well. I don’t really recommend the rest of the course though, unless you’re Wiccan, and then, only if you can ignore all the pseudo-history.

After your kids learn the basic concepts, you’ll want to teach the magical folkways of your family and hearth culture. In addition to this, Scott Cunningham’s book Earth Power contains a wealth of simple nature magic, folk magic, and simple divination methods, much of which can be taught to children. The four elements format in parts of the book is easily translated into a (Druid/Celtic) three realms paradigm, with fire as a hallow.

See also All About Real Magic -Part 2

magic one-sheet-of-paper mini book

A neat little trick I found in a magazine several years ago is how to make an eight page mini book from just one sheet of paper.

I really liked the idea of using this book making method for little stories or explanations of the Pagan holidays. But I wanted to make something that could be duplicated at a copy machine. I also wanted to type out the story to give it a nice clean appearance and use clip art to give it a nice crisp look to go along with the typing. So here is how I did it: I opened up the word processing program, put all margins to half inch with no headers or footers. I put it in landscape orientation and put in four equal sized columns. I could have also used eight equal-sized text boxes, instead of columns. Anyway, I quickly figured out that there was no way to print it out to use as-is, because of the thickness of the margins (if I had made the margins any thinner, the printer would have cut off the print). So, I typed up the story along with clip art to about the size each little page was going to be, printed it out, and cut and pasted the pages to a separate sheet of paper which I had already folded on the lines. (I know there is probably a better way to do it. Savvy graphics people are probably shaking their heads in disgust reading this.) Below is an illustration of how pages of a pre-made mini book are arranged. Notice how the top row of panels needs to be upside down. After pasting, I drew a line where the slit should be cut, then made copies at a copier.

When folding a pre-printed mini book, make sure the page is printed-side out in step five!
Here are a couple mini books I’ve made, ready to fold. The first one is an explanation of Samhain and the other is Sigdrifa’s prayer. I’ve made some for most of the other Pagan holidays too.