Book of Shadows Green Man Manifesto Pg 2

I created these pages during Yule since it was the time of the year to look internally into oneself and to assess the past year and make preparations for the coming new year. I also felt that I needed to work on the opening of my Illustrated Book of Shadows. I have been reading The Path of the Green Man by Michael Thomas Ford, and was particularly drawn to the second chapter of his book. I have used Mr. Ford's Manifesto in the creation of my own as well as several other pagan codes of ethics found on numerous Internet pages. I wanted to leave for my children and grandchildren a sense of the moral compass that I have used throughout my life and hopefully have passed down to them. These principles I think, are universal to most Christian, Judeo and Eastern religions. They make up the foundation for most civilized cultures. I would very much be interested in what other Pagans would add to the list.

The borders design in this section of my Book of Shadows [link] is based on a very old illuminated book from the 15th century called Book of Hours of the Use of Rome. These miniature manuscripts are only 215x155 mm in size. I found these examples in a beautiful book called Western European Illuminated Manuscripts of the 8th to 16th centuries published in 2003 by Tamara Voronova and Andrei Sterligov.

The page was first drawn as a graphite contour line drawing and then inked in with a technical pen .30, scanned into Photoshop where a background color was laid down, and then printed out on bristol paper. I use Prismacolor colored pencils to further enhance the design and then rescanned the page back into Photoshop where I placed the design over scanned parchment using the layer and blending features of the software. I used light ruled lines under the text to simulate the method of calligraphy used by the Monks and the Friars of the 8th through the 15th century. The text is Old English text MD.