Original subtitles

The Book of Shadows was an entity in itself.

The book cannot be touched by anybody evil.

The Book of Shadows represents all of the magic

and all of the witchly powers.

The artwork in the Book of Shadows was just stunning.

Without the Book of Shadows, there wouldn't have been a Charmed.

It was the identifying piece of the show.

"The Book of Shadows."

The girls discover-- Phoebe actually

discovers the Book of Shadows in a trunk in the attic.

Hear now the words of the witches

The secrets we hid in the night

And that's how the Halliwell sisters discovered that they were witches

and they came from a line of witches.

"Bring your powers to we sisters three." A book of witchcraft.

Grams throws the Book of Shadows into the trunk and closes it up

presumably to make sure that the girls never find it

right before she goes and keels over on the stairs and dies.

When | die

the girls will receive their powers. | have to stop that from happening.

But it's their destiny. It's what they're meant to be.

The Book of Shadows represents the lineage,

the family line that preceded the girls, the ancestors.

And every once in a while you'd see Mom's hand, writing something,

writing a page "To my beloved girls."

Our ancestors, that's what we're missing.

If we could draw magic from the entire Halliwell line...

We might have enough power to vanquish the source.

If you go forward,

when the girls die and move on, they become part of the Book of Shadows

and they add to the Halliwell-Warren ancestral magic that is that book.

Which is why it's really, as far as I'm concerned, a living, breathing entity.

We always felt there was some good, protective magic in Book of Shadows.

Things would appear in the book to help the girls

such as a vanquishing spell for this demon they happen to run across.

| figured out how to find who the demon is.

All we have to do is ask the Book of Shadows.

At one point, there was a pitch on the table

that there was actually a spirit that lived in the Book of Shadows.

That it was a personality in and of itself.

| mean, it really is, much like the manor, a character of the show,

| mean, an important piece of mythology in the show.

The reason Piper and | gave up our apartment and moved back

was because this house has been in our family for generations.

The house is, for all the folklore, very special and represents

everything that preceded them in their family line.

And the Book of Shadows represents all of the magic

and all of the witchly powers.

In this night and in this hour | call upon the ancient power

Bring your powers to we sisters three

As a director, any time an actor appears, you wanna give them

a character entrance. A special thing that signals to the audience

what this character's about.

And what we had to do with the Book of Shadows was say:

"This is an important thing." And we added a visual effect

of the trunk glowing because it came from the trunk.

And we had a storm outside, rain on the window.

It was a dramatic character entrance for a prop that was

going to be key to the entire series.

The house and the book we always considered to be characters.

They weren't just props, they weren't just sets.

The house was really the womb for the show,

the womb for the girls.

And the Book of Shadows was the heart and soul,

was the magical heart and soul. They were sacred.

Powers of the witches rise Course unseen across the skies

Come to us who call you near Come to us and settle here

We did create pages for the book that fit any particular story.

The book wasn't magically just created and all the stories created around it.

In case anybody was wondering.

The spells would always be the last thing that | would write in a script.

| would write the script, which would come from an outline,

so | knew exactly what had to happen and what that spell was gonna do.

So I'd get to the point in the script where the girls say something like:

"Well, let's do the spell." And then | would write, "Spell. Spell. Spell."

And then I'd say, "And the spell does this" and continue on with the script.

And then when | got to the end of the script, | would then go back,

because the spells took some time to craft,

you know, because you have to rhyme, and that takes a little thinking.

And that's when | would write the spell and put it into the show.

And then they would send it down to the set

where Roger in Props would take it and give to an artist

who would depict the actor or the alchemist tools

or whatever we needed visualized in the Book of Shadows

and make it all artistic and fun. And then it would appear on-screen.

Claws of pain we have to sever Demon, you are gone forever

Hi, my name is Scott Cockrell. I'm the assistant prop master on Charmed.

And this is the Book of Shadows.

A lot of the artwork is based on actual people, most of the time the actors,

sometimes the producers, sometimes the artists.

If we don't have an actual demon cast

or if it's just kind of a generic demon, sometimes they'll draw themselves,

look in the mirror and add their face onto the artwork,

which has happened quite a few times.

It was amazing seeing the growth of the Book of Shadows in real life,

because we had these amazing artists that were rendering our story lines.

And they really did amazing original artwork.

The guys that they had do those drawings were just brilliant.

The artwork in the Book of Shadows was just stunning.

And that was really cool, every week to go and see what the artists had done.

| marvel at the artistry in each one of the pages.

There were three different artists that did all the drawings, all the paintings.

One of the most amazing pieces of artwork

was the Shiva and Shakti god and goddess pages

because the intricate artwork, it was amazing.

It just added to the folklore and the mystique that was Charmed.

That's why that Book of Shadows is so special.

So many of the pages, in and of themselves,

could be individually framed.

| can't get over how big this book has gotten.

It was fun to thumb through it,

because once an episode was completed, they kept those pages

in the book. It kept getting thicker and thicker with incredible drawings.

It was a beautifully bound book, just as you see it in the show.

It just sat on that stand. Almost as if, magically,

you couldn't pick it up and walk away with it.

It really is a stunning book.

And we have Make-A-Wish kids come a lot and so then

| would always make the prop guys go and unlock it

because it had to be kept in a safe. It was very, very valuable.

It was the singular most prized prop on the set.

Rose was brand-new. She was like a brand-new baby on the show

and she's writing her lines in the book

and just kind of, like, doodling because to her it's just a prop.

And actors, sometimes we do this with our lines.

And | kind of went, "What are you doing?"

Because at that point it had become an integral part of the show

and important to me, personally.

And | was like, "You can't write in it."

Let the object of objection Become but a dream

As | cause the seen To be unseen

But it was also really quite heavy. It really is what it looked like.

We got a lighter one because it was so heavy.

Rose would be trudging down the stairs and go:

"God, this thing is heavy." So we got a lighter one.

We got one that we could throw around.

Someone's after the book.

Demons are always after the book. What's new?

- Hey, we're in here. - We made the Book of Shadows?

What, no picture?

Daniel Cerone wrote the episode "Power of Three Blondes."

To me that was, like, the greatest thing that ever happened with the book

because here three bad witches, warlocks, figure out

how to get their hands on the book.

And the book was such a character in that show.

And the fact that these girls could figure out how to impersonate our girls

so well that they could actually touch the book--

Because if you have any evil in you, you can't touch it.

Told you it wouldn't work.

And they finally get it down to where they can actually touch the book

and they banish the girls from their own house.

- Okay. - Oh, this is not good.

We're standing in the home of the Charmed Ones.

We've got their powers. We've got their book.

And it really shows you how powerful this book is.

Don't worry, this bimbo couldn't hit the broad side of a beauty parlor.

Check out that dye job.

How dare you.

Hear these words Hear my cry

Spirit from the other side Come to me, | summon thee

Cross now the great divide

Grams.

Losing Prue, learning about another sister...

This is your path. It's your destiny.

My favourite moments were anything emotional connected to the book.

The show was really about family. And that book represented family.

And even when we as producers of the show couldn't afford

to hire the actors that we wanted to bring back,

but we wanted to use something as a touchstone

that was a great, like, object that we could use

to kind of bring back the feelings of those people.

Impressive. Most impressive.

| wrote an episode called "Death Becomes Them"

wherein Zankou, the biggest, baddest demon up till that point,

figures out a way to get the Book of Shadows away from the girls.

And we had always played throughout the years

that the Book of Shadows protects itself from being taken

out of the house, from being grabbed by demons.

And that ultimately the girls' magic is linked to that book.

There's a triquetra on the front of the book

that, when it was split, that signified that the girls’ powers were down.

So they are tied to it.

The triquetra, it's us. It's on the cover of the Book of Shadows.

The power of three will set you free,

which we complained about having to say every time we had to say it,

but basically that's what the emblem means.

We'll face them together. Remember the spirit board?

The inscription on the back.

The power of three will set us free.

What Zankou figured out was that if you disempowered the girls

by making them emotionally vulnerable, and in that case it was

bringing back the undead innocents that they had lost over the years.

Don't you recognise me?

Inspector Davidson.

They would become vulnerable.

And the book itself would be vulnerable enough so that he could grab it.

Why did he vanquish the alchemist himself?

| don't know. Maybe there's something in the book.

Where's the book?

When Zankou steals the book and Oded does this incredible laugh

while he's thumbing through the Book of Shadows.

Now the fun really begins.

| love that moment because, first of all, Oded did an absolutely appropriate

reaction to having stolen the book.

And | think if you see the shot-- There's this sort of a complicated shot

which sort of swirls around him while he's doing it

which tries to sell the delirious happiness that he has in stealing it.

Come on, it's a poison thorn.

Could somebody check the book?

| think I'm gonna check the book upstairs.

- See what | can do for Piper. - Call if she gets worse.

| had a very special encounter with the Book of Shadows.

Billy Zane goes up into the attic because he decides

he's gonna find the answer in the Book of Shadows.

And, in fact, the Book of Shadows wants to have no part of that.

| don't think the Book of Shadows ever was thrown.

And we literally threw it.

With Michael Grossman's show, we did use the real book.

Michael didn't want the foam one.

Creating a computer model of the book is very expensive, very time-consuming

and just not as good as the real thing. So they actually let me

put a wire on the book and pull it off the stand for the initial pull,

and then it was on a wire so that each time he got closer,

we could pull it and pull it further away.

So not only did we throw it off the stand, we dragged it across the floor.

Let a little bit of the old demon slip out there, won't happen again.

This was one time where the Book of Shadows actually had a life.

It had a personality.

Come on, would you?

It was reacting to something another character was doing.

It was making a decision to do or not do something.

And it went all the way from, "You're not going to touch me"

to, he literally gets down on his hands and knees

and slowly coaxes himself towards the book

just to try and convince the book to let him open it up and take a look.

If you watch him, once he picks it up and he sort of takes it in his arms

and he's holding it very carefully because at any point,

the Book of Shadows could decide, "Sorry. That's not gonna happen."

Well, maybe it's time we face the fact that, you know,

perhaps we're not meant to find love.

- That is ridiculous. - Phoebe.

If love isn't worth fighting for, what is?

Okay. This is what we're gonna do. We'll look in the Book of Shadows and

- see if there's a way to find Leo. - Amen.

Who doesn't want to have a Book of Shadows, you know?

That's the magic of Charmed. It's the wish-fulfillment.

It's the, "Oh, my God, what if | had a book

that I'm having trouble in my love life and can say a spell and try to solve it?"

And it always goes awry, but what | love is,

if | had that book, I'd go to it every single time.

And it didn't matter how many crazy things happen

and how many demons | accidentally set free by using that spell,

| would still try to use that spell. You know, I'd still try to use that book

to solve life. It's so tempting to go for a shortcut to solve life.

It was the whole basis of the girls learning about their powers

and their spells. And without the Book of Shadows,

there wouldn't have been a Charmed.

- Okay. - Thanks, Grams.

- You touched the book. - Oh, my God. So | did.

I guess that means I'm good.

That's him. This is him.

| found a vanquishing potion for the sorcerer.

Wait, so you're the one that keeps turning the pages in the book?

Just my way of looking after you.