Using Day One as a digital grimoire?

So it’s autumn again, my favourite season! Around Mabon I tend to get a bit spiritually invigorated; life slows down, routines seem to return and I find it easier to get back into magic practice. One of the shifts this year is away from my paper journals, just generally. In the last few years of trying to do paper journals etc nothing consistent has come of it. I am just too busy. What I need is something that is instantly available when I have 10 minutes without the kids or work or house chores. And doesn’t require me to go to a specific room of the house to find specific pens, tape, stickers etc. Sound like you?… Read on…

Mind you this is a fake one I did just for this article;
I don’t know about y’all but no one reads my Grimoire but me…

Digital journaling was not possible for me until I was gifted an old iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil. And after that, the only consistent bullet journaling I’ve done, has been on Goodnotes. But even then, I needed my iPad and the pencil. What if I wanted to do some journaling when I was in the woods, about a cool leaf I’d found? Or had a great idea while feeling bored while the kids play at soft play? Well, outta luck. For those times, I have a trusty pocket notebook and pen but you can’t really write that much in that. Or attach photos.

Then I found the Day One app. Disclaimer, they are not sponsoring me, nor have they asked me to write this. They don’t know that I’m writing this and I doubt they would care if they did know. There.

It is, according to their website “Your journal for life”. There are a lot of features for journaling in this app, but I will only touch on a few here that makes it good for making a Grimoire. Peeps over on YouTube got you covered for how to use it otherwise. The good thing about the app is that its basic journaling  function is free however some functions are paywalled against an annual subscription fee. It’s is also, crucially for me, cross-platform. As someone who’s never owned an iPhone, I needed a solution that was able to seamlessly function between an android phone and my ipad. And that’s where the subscription fee comes in; just like other apps like Evernote, Day One only works on one device unless you pay. So I did. And this article will continue unfortunately to feature a few things you can only do in the paid version.

I started using Day One as is intended. Journaling. Like 5 min AM check in with some gratitude stuff. The regular feel-good woke stuff that is good for you but we all like to hate on. But it was really easy to actually do it, and I started to feel like I had more headspace. I started adding random memories in. Cool bug on my car - check it goes in the journal with a photo. Then I was like, what if I recorded daily tarot draws in here?.. .so I did. With photo of the card. Game changer for consistent practise! I set up a daily draw template (these are great for consistency in formatting).

Then one day I’d had too much coffee and thought to myself, I’m going to start up a Grimoire in Day One. So, I did. I set up a separate journal. Then I sat down and thought about what I wanted to put in it, such as correspondences, moon phases etc and of course, spells. And then I started adding things in. I made up some templates, like a crystal inventory one, so I can add them as I go but they all have the same formatting. Now, there isn’t a structure or index or the like really in this app, but what there is, is a very powerful search function. Wanna find the post on magical properties of rosemary? Search for keyword. Or filter your stuff with tags! Searching becomes second nature and is super quick. 

So I have added a lot of stuff from herb/crystal properties, moon phase stuff, lore, and of course, spells, to this Grimoire. And the fact I can take a photo of my spell setup and then write the spell down without having to print photos etc is just, well, perfect. I can also nab stuff I find online/social media, link it straight to the source, add my own notes etc and tags for searching. It has actually revolutionised the way I witch lately and I feel like I should have got this thing going years ago!

I will try to write another article on the types of content I put in my Day One Grimoire, but for now, why not get the app downloaded and try it for your witchy stuff?