New ebook for sale: Preces Castri (also now using Ko-fi Shop)!

Well, that was a pleasant break, if I do say so myself.  I took two weeks off from office work that I spent alternatively playing FFXIV or tending to my shrines for my birthday, and then just spent the rest of the month relaxing and taking things easy.  Admittedly, it’s hard to get back to a normal sleep schedule, given my natural propensity to be nocturnal and yet needing to be up for such trivial things as meetings with coworkers, but oh well.  Despite the crazy astro-weather we’ve been having, I hope you all had a relaxing time, too!

First, before we get to the main topic of this post, I want to mention that I’ve slightly redesigned how I offer my ebooks and services.  Before, I had my WordPress site set up to have payments through PayPal directly through the website, but recently, Ko-fi made a new feature, Ko-fi Shops, which I’m taking advantage of for my ebooks from now on.  This way, much as with Etsy, when you purchase an ebook from my store there, you’ll get a link sent to you automatically to download the ebook rather than having to wait for me to manually send it to you over email.  In addition, I’ve stopped offering services directly through my website, and instead offer them as commissions through my Ko-fi page (just click on the “Commissions” tab on the page).  As a result, I’ve reworked the Books and Services pages on this website to reflect how you can buy these things from me going forward.  If you’re interested in getting a reading or consultation (now that I’m off hiatus and getting back to Work), or if you’re interested in my ebooks (which you should be after reading this post if you’re not already), then check out my Ko-fi page!

Also, while knowing that there’re plenty of much more worthy recipients of your generosity and charity, remember that you can always support me and my endeavors by making a charitable contribution and donation to me through Ko-fi, whether you just want it to be a once-off thing or a repeating donation.  It’s by no means obligatory, of course, but if you find yourself exceedingly grateful and generous, please consider supporting me in the various costs and fees for Ko-fi Gold, Zoom, webhosting, books, classes, and supplies I go through in the course of my work.  Every little bit helps, and I’m deeply appreciative of all that my amazing readers to for me!

With that out of the way, I’m happy to announce a new ebook for sale: Preces Castri, or “Prayers of the Castle”, available through my Ko-fi store or my Etsy store for US$18!

As many of my readers know, the past three years or so have been an incredibly productive time for me when it comes to the writing of prayers and rituals, but as my practice has shifted and changed to match where I am along my own spiritual development, I realized that not all the prayers I had been writing were as useful as I had anticipated.  To be sure, there are some I still say frequently if not daily, or use in any number of ritual practices I have, but others either fell out of favor or never found a place at all.  I still find that having written them was deeply worthwhile, but otherwise, many of these prayers are just kinda…sitting around, doing neither me nor anyone else any good.  To that end, I decided to compile many of these prayers into an ebook, a bit of my own devotional writing and meditations, for those who are interested to make good use of them, or at least better use of them than I can.

These prayers are a collection of those that I’ve written from scratch, those that have been influenced by the various Abrahamic and monotheistic religious and magical traditions that I rely on in my work, from Judaism to Islam and from Spiritism to the Arbatel.  In addition to these, there are a few prayers that I didn’t write but are so useful that I couldn’t not include them in this vademecum of over a hundred pages, consisting of more than a hundred prayers.  Some of these prayers I’ve written or composed from existing sources are those I’ve already shared on my blog previously (like here, here, here, here, or here), but there are far more have not been shared publicly before, and I think it’s high time to share at least some of the fruits of my labors.  Between them all, there are plenty of prayers for a wide variety of purposes:

  • Various prayers and hymns to God, whether for general devotions or for specific needs
  • Prayers and invocations of the archangels and guardian angel
  • Prayers to the planets
  • Prayers for the dead
  • Prayers for the seven days of the week, the four solar points of the day, and the different points of the lunar month
  • Over two dozen prayer rules for the misbaḥa (Islamic prayer beads) for different entities and purposes
  • Prayers for ritual processes, blessings, and dedications of offerings
  • And more!

This prayerbook is intended to be used by anyone who operates within a roughly monotheistic or monolatric approach to divinity;  as such, the prayers within have been heavily influenced by Abrahamic prayers, especially the rich Islamic literature of supplications and other Qur’ānic verses, giving these prayers a distinctly Islamic flavor on top of the various magical and grimoiric sources that I drew on.  For that reason, it may not be to the tastes of all my readers, especially those who want to keep away from Abrahamic influences in their magic and spirituality, but I claim that there’s enough in this collection influenced by the PGM and other pagan sources that can be used by anyone who works within a post-classical Western or European approach to magic and spirituality.  To be fair, this is only a collection of prayers, not of rituals, but those who have even an ounce of ingenuity will be able to construct or adapt these prayers to their own ritual needs, perhaps augmenting what they already have or making new rituals with them.  (And yes, I do have plenty of other prayers I’ve been writing that aren’t nearly so monotheistic or Abrahamic, appropriate for a polytheistic, Hellenic, or Hellenized Egyptian approach, but those aren’t nearly as ready for publication.)

So what are you waiting for?  Head over to my Ko-fi store or to my Etsy store and get yourself a copy today, and I hope that these prayers serve you well in your own Work!

I upgraded to Ko-fi Gold with plenty of new bonuses, so check it out!

It’s been about two years since I signed up for Ko-fi as a way to take donations for the Digital Ambler.  It’s a simple thing, really; like Patreon, Kickstarter, or Gofundme, Ko-fi is a simple way to support artists or other content creators.  As I said when I got a Ko-fi, the Digital Ambler is free and I plan to keep it that way; between my day job that pays me an actual salary, my divination and consultation services, the ebooks I sell, and the occasional crafting commission I take on, I earn myself a little extra pocket change while also supporting the operating costs of my website and Zoom account, to say nothing of my occult supplies and books and ongoing lessons and classes.  Ko-fi is just a simple way for people to chip in with an Internet-based tip jar and support me and the things I do and write about, so if you don’t need a reading or want an ebook of mine but still want to help support me, this is the way to do it—by buying me a symbolic coffee.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Well, after considering it for a while, I recently upgraded to Ko-fi Gold, which gives me some pretty neat ways to do some nifty things with the platform.  Besides the aesthetic changes that Ko-fi lets me make (color of the page, changing the base donation price from $3 to anything else, changing “coffee” to anything else, etc.), one neat thing is the ability to take commissions, which…I mean, for me, I’m really kinda getting away from taking on physical crafts anymore, due to the time and energy that it takes that I often just don’t have anymore.  (When I do get in the mood, I’ll probably make them as once-off things and just slap them up on my Etsy for whoever wants it first.)  However, “commissions” here can be a pretty broad thing, so I’ve also put up my own services of divination and consultation up through Ko-fi over there as “commissions”, which you can pay by PayPal (just as you would on my website directly) or by credit card through Stripe.  So that’s pretty nifty.  I’ve even put up a few services as tests over there; I might try out temporary services through Ko-fi, since it’s easier than putting them up through WordPress directly, so if they seem to work well for me and for others, I’ll put them up on my website directly if it seems workable.  Besides my usual divination and consultation offerings, I’ve currently got two other services up on Ko-fi for those who would be interested:

  • Prayer Requests:  Need an extra push from a kind hand? As a mage and priest, I’m happy to offer my ritual services to make prayers, make requests, or make offerings on your behalf. If you need something special to help get you over the edge, then this could be just the thing for you.  Can also set lights, make offerings to ancestors and spiritual courts, and offerings to the Greek gods as requested.
  • Domino Readings: Puzzled by what to do? Need a simple forecast for the coming month or year? Got questions about what’s going on in your life? Divination using the fortune-telling art of reading the dominoes. At their simplest, only a single domino needs to be drawn, but if desired, another one or two may be drawn for more information, but never more than three at a time.

So if you’re interested in either of those services, take a look!  I’m offering them for a fair price for now to see how popular they might be, but if they seem to be desired, I’ll refine the process (and the price a bit) and move them over to my main website’s Services page.  In the future, when I try out an experimental service, it’ll go up on Ko-fi first, and I’ll mention it on my website.

Something else that Ko-fi Gold lets me do—or, rather, lets you do—is the ability to make a recurring monthly subscription, based on multiples of the base “coffee” donation of $3 (which isn’t a number I plan to increase).  Unlike Patreon, Ko-fi is a pretty simple platform, so there are no tiers or anything.  If you find yourself regularly turning to the Digital Ambler for my blog posts, writings, articles, and the like, then consider this a way to help out for the help and entertainment you yourself might be getting!  Of course, I write for the joy and love of it, and even a simple once-off donation is more than enough to make me grovel in appreciation—so of course there’d be something in it for you, dear reader, if you were to put in a monthly recurring donation.  Ko-fi Gold lets me make supporter-only content through their platform, which I think is a pretty nifty thing, don’t you think?

So, tell you what.  I need practice with domino fortune-telling and divination reading (which is one of the reasons why I’m putting that up as a test service through my Ko-fi commissions), and I kinda miss the days when I used to do my Daily Grammatomancy over on my Facebook page years ago.  With that in mind, here’s my plan to start with:

  • Around the start of every month (or maybe around the New Moon?), I’ll do a general reading forecast for the coming lunar month, with the forecast shared up on Ko-fi, available only to monthly subscribers.  It could be with dominoes, it could be with geomancy, it could be with grammatomancy; I may change it up, or I may settle into using one system more than others.  We’ll see!
  • Around the latter part of every month, I’ll set up a general Zoom chat for me and my readers to hang out, chat, and discuss whatever’s on your mind, a sort of hour-long-or-so private radio show kinda thing.  The exact date, link, and password will be sent out through Ko-fi only to monthly subscribers.

Of course, these are just a few things I have in mind for now.  Ideally, this would start in January 2020, assuming I get at least one recurring supporter through Ko-fi by the end of the month (or, rather, December 26, when there’s a New Moon—and also an annular solar eclipse).  While I’ll always keep writing for the Digital Ambler, I think it’d be nice to give something special for those who want to keep me aloft, and I’d be happy to consider different things to do for my supporters (group prayer requests, communal offerings, weekly forecasts, in-depth lessons on a particular aspect of magical practice, excerpts of my books and private projects, etc.) if they’re suggested and seem popular enough.

Also, one last thing: do you yourself have a Ko-fi and have been eyeing a Ko-fi Gold account for yourself?  It’s only US$6/mo, but if you use this referral link you can get yourself a 10% discount for the subscription to Ko-fi, which helps put a bit of money in my own pocket, too!  Since Ko-fi doesn’t take a fee out of supporter’s donations and commissions, Ko-fi is entirely supported through donations itself as well as through Ko-fi Gold subscriptions, so by upgrading to Gold, you yourself can help support the platform for endless artists and content creators.  This is a really neat, hassle-free, ethical website that I enjoy supporting, and it does good work for a lot of people.  Consider upgrading today!