I've been playing it for the last hour and you do need the book to play through this game at least for the symbol spells.
The first time you have to draw one you can just copy what you see on the top screen but after that you'll need the book.

Someone will probably scan it, or at least copy all the symbols in Photoshop listing each one where it needs to be used in the game lol.
Sounds a bit crazy but us westerners will probably need something like that to play through it.