The Grimoire of Morgausa Darkeye

Owned by the renowned Sorceress of Gwynedd, this grimoire was said to be able to bestow upon a witch all the powers of its former owners. Morgausa, a witch gifted with the power of prophesy, knew that she would never have a child of her own, and wanted to find a way to pass her magic down to her apprentice, a young male witch known as Tali. To this end, Morgausa enchanted her grimoire to absorb her powers and magical strength at the moment of her death, and for this magic to be granted to Tali after he performed a ritual of bonding with the grimoire. This ritual would bind Tali to the book, ensuring that his powers would also be absorbed upon his death to be passed onto his apprentice, and in this way a considerable stockpile of magical powers and energy would be passed down, master to apprentice, for as long as the grimoire existed.
According to legend, the grimoire was passed down to many witches over the course of four centuries, each witch more powerful than the last thanks to the power of the book. The last owner of the grimoire was a self-styled sorcerer called  Mad Cathmor, who refused to train an apprentice. Although no one knows for certain what happened to the grimoire after his death, it was rumoured that he destroyed the book to prevent anyone else from obtaining the almost god-like power that now resided within its pages. Others said that Cathmor traded the book with a demon in exchange for his life. Still others believed that Cathmor neither died, destroyed the book, nor traded it away, but that he took the book and went into the faery Otherworld to live an immortal life away from the mortal world.

Historical Basis

Whether or not the grimoire existed at all is unclear, and most modern witches who have heard of it believe that it is a myth thought up to explain a period of increasingly powerful Welsh witches in the post-Roman era. No one has been able to find physical evidence of the book's existence, nor are there any first hand accounts of the book and its appearance or contents.

Spread

The myth of the grimoire is prolific among academic and historical supernaturals, mainly scholarly witch historians of institutions such as Oxford, Harvard, and Yale universities. Most modern witches are unaware of the myth at all.

Variations & Mutation

First mentions of the grimoire appear among the diaries of witches who lived elsewhere in the British Isles in the 7th century CE. They describe a lineage of powerful sorceresses in Wales, not hereditary like usual, but rather an initiated system master to apprentice. These Welsh witches were far more powerful than anyone believed they could have been naturally. One Cornish witch named Cellesa became acquainted with the witch Selyf, who claimed to possess the grimoire of his predecessor Morgausa, and attributed all his power to the book. When Cellesa asked what he meant, she writes that he refused to speak any more of it, but this was enough to convince her that the grimoire somehow transferred power from user to user.

Date of First Recording

640 CE