A Book of Magic

When I first started watching Merlin, I became fascinated with the spells, and wanted to learn them all, so I decided to create a spell book listing every single one of them.
I found a few collections of spells online on websites like wiki, but there were hardly any pronunciations to go with them, and my computer was very slow-loading.


Instead, I decided to watch the entirety of Merlin series 1-5, and write down the spells from every single episode.

Although I LOVE watching Merlin, this was still quite a lengthy task to complete!
Whenever there was a spell, I would turn on the subtitles and scribble down the spell, then replay the scene and listen for the pronunciation. I'd write down what the spell does, or what it was meant to do, and who performed it. I would also number the spell.
As I continued to watch, I found that many of the spells did not have subtitles, it just said: (chants spell), so I had to guess or create my own spellings based on the grammar I had picked up on.

This is how I got all the spells for The Merlin Mega Fan Website, so I am sorry if most of them are incorrect! So far, I have uploaded 65 spells - all of series 1.

A few months later, I had the complete collection of Merlin spells scribbled down in my notebook, written down in the order in which they appeared on the show, all cataloged and numbered.
By then I had memorised about 200 out of 262 of them.

So I had my notebook filled with spells... but I wanted it to feel special and, well, magical, and this list didn't.
I thought about Merlin's own book of magic which Gaius had given him (in episode one series one in case anyone's wondering), and decided I wanted a book similar to that, with beautiful coloured illustrations, swirly calligraphy, and a medieval look about it.

My spell book

Then I found a collection of leather-effect notebooks in WHSmith which I liked the look of, and I picked out this one, which I decided to make into my spell book.

Once I had decided to do this, the first step was to organise all the spells into categories: fire spells, water spells etc...

After I had organised enough to start, I got gel-pens and fineliners and pencils all in a wide variety of different colours (I love being creative!) and began!

At first, I would lightly sketch in pencil what I wanted on each page, so I could see the layout without anything being permanent. Once I was happy with it, I would go around the pencil with fineliners, and then after rubbing the pencil out, I added some details in gel-pen.

Here are a few of the pages:

This is a page in the "fire spells" section.

On this page, like most in the book, I've used mainly illustrations to explain what the spells do, or what they effect.

I liked this spell book a lot better than my scribbly notebook list!

It was more organised, and it had a (for want of a better word) nicer layout.

I would use words as well as using illustrations, and I would sometimes put spells into a table if they did or effected the same thing, or if they could be used in the same way.

I did this on a page in the "Water spells" section.

Every few pages, at the end of each section, I would add a pronunciation paragraph, explaining a few things about the grammar I had learned, or patterns I had found. They are probably very inaccurate, as I'm not an expert, and learned old english only from watching Merlin!

Sometimes, I would also write pronunciation in black underneath difficult spells, as you can see opposite.

 Usually I could fit up to 4 or 5 short spells onto one page, but for the longer spells, like the ageing spell (Mict degena...), it would use up an entire page, which made a change in the layout, and allowed me to arrange the words into proper paragraphs.
This is what I did for "The Sleep Song" which is actually the Witches Aria, composed by Rob Lane and/or other Merlin composers.

I also wrote out the sheet music for the song onto the page opposite!








Here are a few more images of pages in my book.

On this page, I've put the three spells Grunhilda the pixie used to break out of the vaults in series 3 episode 6, using illustrations again to show what the spells do.










And here I've used pictures again.
This is the spell that Merlin used to make the candle lights float for Freya in series 2 ep.9

... And here's the first page in the "Healing Spells" section, where I've put the base healing spell/s into a table.

 I call them base healing spells because they are used in nearly every healing spell in Merlin! For example: "Ic the Thurhaele thinu licsar!" "Ic pe Purhaele pinu licsar mid paem sundorcraef thaere ealdon e!"

I started this book months ago, and it still isn't finished! It keeps me occupied during my spare time, but I haven't really HAD the time to work on it!

If you're ever wondering what to do now Merlin's finished, I would recommend this project!