Tag Archives: update

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

November 2, 2020 By in creative, link, news, occult Tags: , , , , , , , , , 9 Comments

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!

October 2020 Hiatus

September 30, 2020 By in hermetica, link, news Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

I guess that if I need a break, then I need one, and boy howdy do I need one, and a more dedicated break than what I gave myself last time.

It’s been a crazy time, as y’all know, for one reason or another, and I need a bit of a break.  I already pulled a bit of a break earlier this year to focus on my Salem presentation, which went great, but this time, I need some time to just do nothing at all except relax and enjoy myself.  Between a busy year of writing, translating, teaching, the Reign of the Lady of Crowns, taking an online Sahidic Coptic course (and several other courses, including Jack Grayle’s excellent PGM Praxis course to buff out my own stuff), and just the usual day-to-day stuff of full-time software engineering to pay the bills and household management to make the most out of it all, I’m gonna be taking a bit of a vacation for the month of October for my birthday.  I won’t be taking on any client work or consultations during this time, and though I’ll still be replying to emails for access to the Red Work Course and Geomancy in the Reign of the Lady of Crowns courses I administer as well as PayPal purchases directly through my website for my ebooks, but any requests for readings, consultations, geomancy chart reviews, coaching sessions, or the like will be on hold until after November gets here, at which point I’ll pick up on those emails and requests again.  My Etsy page also has an announcement to the same effect; although all ebooks and divination tickets through Etsy will be sent automatically to your account/email as normal, I won’t get back to requests until after my vacation.  So, if you request a reading or another service between now and then, then I humbly ask for and will sincerely appreciate your patience until I get back to such work.  Although I’ll still be semi-available by email, those who are a member of my Red Work Course or Geomancy in the Lady of Crowns class mailing lists are encouraged, when and as possible, to ask questions and discussion topics to those forums rather than to me directly in case a more urgent answer is desired from your colleagues.  If there are any big updates or newsworthy things that come up for this blog between now and then, you can be sure I’ll post them, but otherwise, I plan on giving my (excellent) keyboard a bit of a break from writing, editing, teaching, and consulting, and instead will just relax for a well-deserved staycation of my own.

We’ll pick up again soon after I’ve caught up on naps and enjoying myself.  Taking time to rest and recuperate, after all, is as much a sacrament as anything else, and even Hermēs Trismegistos in SH V.4—7 notes that sleep is a blessed thing that keeps us fair, fit, and fine (Litwa’s translation):

Since our bodies are weak, they are in need of much assistance. To be sure, how would the connecting link of our bodies resist even occasional harm if it did not maintain the ingestion of foodstuffs made from the same elements which daily reinforce our bodies? Indeed, an influx of earth, water, fire, and air flows into us which renews our bodies and holds together this tent. Consequently, in the face of commotions, we are incredibly frail and cannot bear them for a single day.

You well know, my child, that if we did not rest our bodies at night, we could not withstand a single day. For this reason, the good Craftsman who foreknows all things, created sleep for the continuance of living creatures, which is the greatest cessation from the fatigue of motion. Moreover, he ordered an equal measure of time for each state—or rather, he allotted more time to repose.

Understand, my child, the magnificent activity of sleep; it is opposed to the activity of the soul, but not inferior to it. Just as the soul is an activity of motion, in the same way, too, bodies cannot live without sleep; for there is a relaxing and loosening of the connected limbs. Sleep operates within, making ingested matter into bodies, distributing the proper elements to each bodily part: water to blood, earth to bones and marrow, air to nerves and veins, and fire to vision. Accordingly, the body intensely enjoys sleep since it activates this pleasure of the body’s reconstitution.

With that, I hope you all have a blessed October in every which way, whether you have a birthday this month or not (but especially if you do, too)!

Brief Hiatus, but Have Some Prayers in the Meanwhile

July 1, 2020 By in creative, link, news, philosophy Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

As the title of the post suggests, I’m going to go on a brief hiatus for July and August.  Nothing bad, I assure you, it’s just that I’ve been cranking out a lot of work on my blog and social media generally while other work has piled up, and I need to focus on those projects for the next few weeks.  The bulk of this focus—in addition to The Adocentyn Temple Almanac project (which you should get your voice heard regarding options and desires if you haven’t yet!) and various book-writing projects—is to prepare my presentation for this year’s Salem Summer Symposium.  Yes, it’s still being held this year, though in an online format only due to the ongoing Reign of the Lady of Crowns, so even though we can’t all meet up in Salem, Massachusetts this year, there’s still plenty of awesome classes, presentations, and lectures being held that I thoroughly encourage you all to sign up for and participate in!  This year, I’m presenting my lecture at 1pm EDT on Saturday, August 15: Spelling by Spelling: Greek Alphabet Divination & Magic:

A variety of divination systems were used in ancient and classical Greece, ranging from oracles and prophets to common forms of sortilege. One of the more fascinating kinds of divination that was used in the ancient Hellenic world was that of grammatomancy, divination through the individual letters of the Greek alphabet. This lecture will cover the history of this useful and direct form of divination, and how it can build into an overarching spiritual practice of devotion to the Greek gods, theurgy, contemplation, and magic.

I’ve brought up grammatomancy a number of times on my blog before, and even though I don’t bring it up a lot nowadays, rest assured that it’s still a system I use often, both for the sake of divination, calendrics, and various other aspects of mysticism and theurgy.  I’m thrilled to be able to present on this topic, and hope you’ll join in!  I just need to get my ass in gear and actually develop the actual lecture and material for it, hence the hiatus so I can focus on that.

In the meantime, I don’t want to leave you high and dry, so let me leave you with something to mull over and busy yourself in the meantime.  As I’ve brought up in a number of previous posts, I’ve spent a good chunk of my time writing and developing a novel set of prayers, some of which are original and some of which are based on or influenced by the existing prayers and scriptures of religions that have played a role in my own spiritual development and growth.  Over time, some of these prayers get used more or less, depending on how my own practice develops further, and some I intend for general purpose stuff eventually get relegated to specific uses or vice versa.  To tide over my readers with some prayers that I invite them to give a whirl, or to at least share some of the logic and reasoning I use when coming up with such prayers, I’d like to show off a bit of my own stuff with three of my own prayers which I use to varying degrees in my own practice.

The first prayer is one I call the “Invocation to the Almighty”.  This prayer is based heavily on the biblical Book of Daniel, specifically verses 2:20-23, 2:28, 4:2-3, 4:35, and 6:26-27.  The wording of the original verses has been generalized somewhat to be more deistic than Jewish or Abrahamic at points, but what results is a simple invocation and praise of God, which I find to be a good one to open up a session of prayer in general focused on the Divine.

O God, may your holy name be blessed forever and ever,
for wisdom and power are yours.
You change all times and seasons, you remove and install all kings;
you give the wise their wisdom and knowledge to those who know;
you reveal deep and hidden things, and you know what is in the darkness.
Light abides with you, and Light comes forth from you.
I adore you and I praise you,
o God of the angels and the prophets,
o Lord of Heaven and Earth,
o Master of the Seen and Unseen,
o you who gives me wisdom and power.

Truly, he is the God of Gods, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords!
Bless the God of the angels and the prophets, he who is Most High,
the Ever-Living One who reigns forever,
whose dominion is everlasting,
whose kingdom endures throughout the generations,
whose might surpasses the end of time!
None can hold back his hand from acting,
none can challenge his deeds once done!

Praise, exalt, glorify, and bless the King of the All,
whose works are just and whose ways are right,
who humbles those who behave arrogantly,
who relieves those with burdened hearts,
who delivers and saves from perdition,
and who performs signs and wonders in Heaven and on Earth.

The second prayer is one I call the “Servant’s Call to God”.  This prayer takes on much looser influence from a variety of sources, including the Surah al-Fātiḥah from the Qur’ān and some of the wording of the prayer used for Ṣalah, while also taking in symbolic and literary references to the Three Holy Youths and the archangel Michael from the Book of Daniel and from some Syrian Orthodox Christian daily prayers.  Both an invocation and a supplication, this is also another good introductory prayer, but it also works well as a concluding one or one that stands well enough on its own.

How gracious is my God, how merciful is my Lord!
How holy is my God, how truly great is my Lord!
Who can match his power, who can be his equal?
Who can judge, but the one Lord of Judgment alone?
We are but guests in the world he has made for us,
but travelers along the road he has built for us!
For God is more gracious than any royal king, more merciful than any noble host,
more holy than any sacred priest, and greater than all he created!

May these prayers of pure speech and intention reach the Throne of God,
that God may be pleased with my offering to aid me in this life,
for it is to God that I pray, to God that I praise,
to God that I thank, and to God that I bless!
May God guide me along the straight path and empower me over my enemies.
May God purify me through his light and protect me from the darkness.
May God inspire me with his spirit and nourish me with his word.
May God correct me when I err and lift me when I fall.

The third prayer is one I call the “Prayer of Remembrance”.  Many people are familiar with the convention in Islamic cultures to sprinkle certain religious phrases throughout conversation and writing, like inshāllāh or alḥamdulillāh or subḥānallāh, which is frankly and honestly a beautiful and devout thing to do, constantly invoking God even in mundane communication as a means to pray without ceasing.  I basically took all these sayings—some used more often than others—and combined them all into one prayer.  There’s a dash of Hermetic stuff in this prayer, but it’s otherwise a general deist prayer with heavy Islamic flavor and origin.  This is a prayer I use every day, usually at the end of my own prayer sessions, though I’ll also use it on its own if I either cannot afford the time or energy to a full session of prayer or if I’m just taking a moment to myself for prayer outside my usual routine.

With God we begin, and with God may we always continue, God willing,
until such time as God sees fit to bring our lives to an end.
It is to God we all belong, and it is to God we all return,
for God is great and perfect in all things,
and there is no might nor power except in God.
In this and in all things do we thank God
for all his work, all his blessing, all his mercy, and all his Light unto us.
In this and in all things do we praise God, for only God knows best.
All glory be to God.

Although I didn’t include them as part of the prayers above, feel free to append “amen” or whatever sealing phrase you prefer.  Generally, nowadays, I only say “amen” if I’m declaring something to be or asking for something.  So, as an example, I typically won’t end the Invocation to the Almighty with “amen”, because I’m just praising God which does not need a seal (and rightfully so, as such praise should never end), but I do for the Servant’s Call to God, because I’m asking for something as a blessing from God.  I will, however, use “amen” for the Prayer of Remembrance, as that’s often my final prayer that I use to seal my entire prayer sessions with.  This is all just a thing I do, don’t feel obliged to follow my rule on this; end them with “amen” or not as is your own prayer custom, if you use these prayers at all.

For easier access of these prayers, I’ve updated the menu of the website, adding in the submenu Prayers → General Prayers (under which I’ve also put some of my older original prayers as well).  Just use the menu at the top of the website to navigate and take a look.

And with that, I’m off!  We’ll get back to our usual irregular posting again after the Symposium.  In the meantime, if you have any questions or would like to sign up for my self-directed courses on Renaissance Hermetic planetary ritual theurgy or the practice of European geomancy, please feel free to contact me!  And yes, I’m still available for readings and consultations, too, if desired.

Never a dull moment

December 24, 2018 By in creative, geomancy, link, news, occult, whining Tags: , , 1 Comment

So, I realize that I haven’t made a post since, yikes, mid-October?  Has it really been so long so quick?  According to my posting records and how many notifications Facebook gives me about updating my Digital Ambler page, apparently!

Normally, when I go into these slow periods when I don’t post much, it’s because I’m usually not doing much, since a lot of my writing is based on what I’m actually doing, studying, debating, researching, ritualing, and the like.  And yet, this time, that’s not as much the case.  While I haven’t been up to much proper ritual stuff, that’s not to say I haven’t been busy.  Besides the usual stuff like keeping an orderly household or keeping up with my full-time software engineering day job and visiting family and whatnot, there’s been a lot of stuff going on, too, not least of which I received several major further ceremonies in La Regla de Ocha Lukumí (a.k.a. Santería) to further my own abilities, license, and spiritual fortitude as a priest of Ogun.  (That, frankly, knocked me on my ass for a good month or so.)  Besides that, I’ve been doing plenty of research and reading and other legwork for a whole bunch of things:

  • Continuing to learn, study, and practice further elements of La Regla de Ocha Lukumí
  • The Akkadian/Babylonian anti-witchcraft ritual Maqlû, which I want to analyze and redevelop using a similar framework into a Hermetic or PGM-style curse-breaking and witchcraft-warding ritual
  • Investigating the origin of the letter- and name-divination techniques using Western geomantic rules (which I’ve previously written off before but may have a good lead to figure out where they came from and how to improve upon them)
  • Continuing to edit, improve, and add on to my geomancy textbook “Principia Geomantica” (yes, it’s still in the works! no, I don’t know when it’ll be ready!)
  • Preparing new tools for a Delphic Maxim oracle for my own use with Apollōn and Hermēs
  • Preparing consecrations of astragaloi sets and four coin sets for Hermaic divination
  • Preparing for a Mars consecration of carnelian bracelets as wearable talismans
  • Spending more money than I’m strictly comfortable with on academic books on various topics for niche and specialized research
  • The usual bullshit on Twitter

I also note that today happens to be Christmas Eve, which is also the feast of Adam and Eve.  Since I consider Adam to be the Earthy Forebear of geomantic practitioners (along with Daniel as the Fiery, Enoch as the Airy, and Hermes Trismegistus as the Watery Forebears), I wanted to share a prayer or invocation of Adam, but I don’t have one in a presentable format yet.  In the meantime, go read Dr. Cummins’ post about Adam and Eve and how they relate to magical praxis and theory and history; it’s a lovely read, especially for so fitting a day.  Perhaps by April 4th, the feast I give to Hermes Trismegistus, or March 24th, the feast for Gabriel the Archangel, I’ll have a set of prayers ready to share for geomancers with a more devotional bent to their practice.

And that’s all on top of the client work I do, fielding questions for guidance and doing readings for those who need it.  Speaking of, I’m also getting ready for 2019 yearly geomantic forecasts; stay tuned!  I’ll be doing a several-week special, to be announced later this week once Christmas itself has passed.

I’ve also been drawing up ideas to start a kind of subscription service; something small in exchange for a collective forecast every New Moon, plus communal discussions or impromptu teaching sessions on Discord every month or something.  It’s an idea I’d like to explore and see how it’d be received; if you’d like to give me your thoughts on that, feel free to comment below!  It wouldn’t affect the blog posts or pages any, at least not that I can think of, but if you’d like that little extra push from my end, it might be useful and worth your time and mine.

I’m not in the habit of apologizing for not posting; after all, it’s my blog, and it’s up to me and me alone to update it when I feel like it, however I feel like it.  That said, I do know that a good number of people are wondering where I’ve been, so I just wanted to let you know that between everything going on, everything I’m gearing up for, and a good deal of indecision about what to write about next (seriously my drafts folder is filling up with ideas, none of which are immediately appetizing for me to write about), I haven’t forgotten about you or the blog, nor have I fallen off the face of the earth!

Never a dull moment, indeed, but at least I’m doing well.  (Though I would like to go to the gym again at some point, had I enough time to do that on top of everything else plus commuting plus working plus sleeping etc.)  I hope the end of this interminable year is treating you all well, dear readers, and that the dawn of 2019 looks brighter than anything you’ve seen lately.