The Ars Goetia: Now Available!

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I am extremely pleased to announce that the Ars Goetia, arguably the most infamous of all demonic works, has been completed; this edition has been re-illustrated by the talented Rita Metzner and has had some changes made to its format over some editions (for example, giving each of the 72 demons its own page for ease of use; some editions place the Seals in alternating columns or put the description of the demon above, not below them.) Not meant to be superfluous and flowery but rather a functional edition, I omitted some of Crowleys' additions, which have technically nothing to do with the original literary tradition.

I am pleased to say my edition here is the apparently least expensive edition available anywhere in paperback format.

For those not aware of the content, it is summoning; specifically aforementioned demons, using a system involving a magical circle and triangle, various seals, and standardized invocations. These various grotesque demons can, the book claims, allow the Master to talk to animals, see strange visions, and generally gain power, love, wealth, and other things; the one working such rituals needs to be wary though, since some of these demons can cause illness just by being nearby, requiring a magical ring. Others are a bit less malevolent. This text is one of a number of works which was compiled into the Lesser Keys of Solomon, of Mathers and Crowley fame.

It should be noted that I intend to release the other books of the Lesser Keys of Solomon (minus the Notoria, which is not authentically part of the same period works) compiled together, but that the Ars Goetia is its own stand-alone work and needed to be released as such prior.

Stolas be praised!

106 pages.

February 2018 Editing Update!

I am pleased to announce that at this time, the illustrations for my upcoming edition of the Ars Goetia have been completed by the artist (Rita Metzner, who has previously illustrated a couple of herbals for me.) The work is good and so far the formatting is going smoothly; the final edition should be a fairly standard length, perhaps a bit longer than some editions because I choose not to compress images to two-to-a-page so the finer lines are more easily legible. I expect to complete and release it this month; but it must be carefully done, because this is the ultimate big daddy of grimoires and will eventually be combined with the three other (authentic) works of the Lesser Keys in an edition of that as well.

I am also more than 80 pages into the Rosicrucian text I began editing in January; work has been slower since the beginning of chapter four, since now all remaining text is taken from other sources and compiled in this particular work by its author (read; it is in older English than the first two chapters with frequent quotations which are sometimes not entirely proper in format and must be reworked.)

Assuming both works are done before this month ends it will be time for a couple more herbal works I feel, and then work must begin on re-illustrating a half dozen prior editions.

Ars Goetia Update (And Other Stuff)

Alright literary world!

I'm happy to announce that the first slew of illustrations for the Ars Goetia have been completed as of yesterday; the illustrator sent them along. That's good, because there aren't a huge number more then to be processed- so the Goetia might be ready before the end of January and barring calamity will certainly be out by February sometime.

Meanwhile, my editing of the New Fortune Teller has been speeding along and it's almost done; I haven't yet decided on which work to do subsequent to it, but it will probably be alchemical in nature. Onward!

General Update Time: Last Update of 2017!

At this time the illustrating process of the Ars Goetia is underway and everyone is getting visions of demons in their heads, severed feet hanging over the fire, and Satan Claus, so I figure it's time for one last update for this year.

First, as to my current editing, I am about halfway through hammering out the Astrological Physician; this strange 17th century work combines astrology with medicine and uses the theory of the humors to diagnose disorders and speculate the likely cause of complaints by observing the position of planets at the time of examination. The work is in exceptionally arcane English so it's a slow process despite a relatively short (40 to 50 page) overall length.

Second, once that is done, it's time to edit the Theurgia Goetia, the shorter counterpart to the Ars Goetia always paired with it in Lesser Key editions. It won't take long to edit the relatively small amount of actual text since the work is half illustrations- I'll be speaking to my artist about this once the Ars Goetia is complete. It will not be ready in 2017 though, for a certainty.

Third, I'll begin work on Morbid Stories II and once the entries themselves are made I have to figure out whether to increase its bulk substantially or lower the cost to all of you by moving some content from MSI to MSII and making two entirely new editions of a length just under that which causes a significant increase on Amazon and affiliated sites.

Happy Unholy days!

General Update: Ars Goetia, Pagan Prayers, Morbid Stories, Aula Lucis, etc

It's been a busy last couple of weeks; the Ars Goetia has been completely edited and my illustrator has the plans for illustrating so it may not be long before the most infamous of all grimoires is released in a decent and inexpensive modern edition. In other news, I completed a short alchemical work yesterday entitled "Aula Lucis"- it's only 25 pages in length, but Thomas Vaughn did a very good job of generally being clear and not veiling his mostly-physical alchemical lore.

The new editing project is a compilation of prayers and invocations simply entitled "Pagan Prayers" and crafted at the dawn of the 20th century by Marah Ellis Ryan. The original format of this work is horrendous and half the pages are basically empty save for the titles of the subsequent very short prayers. The work will, due to major formatting overhaul, be reduced from about 120 pages to 40 or 50.

As before, Morbid Stories II is approaching the end of its first phase of development; the titles and rough outlines. These works involve my usual practice of entering a slightly berserker-like state where I am not completely aware of my writing and am mentally fixated on imagining the horrified reactions of people I dislike being forced to read the bizarre, grotesque stuff repeatedly. I am considering the possibility of compiling together all of the new entries with the old ones and splitting the categories themselves in half- thus technically MS II will contain some older entries while MS I will contain some new ones. Since I have to reformat the first volume, I will have to resubmit all the files anyways- I am considering the possibility.

Altogether this end year period will be full of work!

Now Forthcoming: The Ars Goetia and More

It's finally that special time where I get to make a major literary announcement again; after completing my two short planned works last month it was time to move on to something I have spent two years delaying- an edition of the Ars Goetia (which will be joined by the Theurgia Goetia not long after.)

I have already begun editing the text of this work- it isn't all that difficult; the edition I plan will omit the critical commentary and institute a few entries of my own (it's always important to note that "N." stands for the name of the spirit within invocations, for example) and an expanded foreword. Since it will require full illustration well beyond my means I have contacted my usual artist for its eventual completion. Altogether it will be full length but since my goal is to hold the price down I will do what I can to keep the page length under the apparent threshold for Amazon to take it from the 5-to-7 dollar range up to the 11+ dollar range which is achieved by adding at most a dozen extra pages of material.

I have also compiled most of the entries for Morbid Stories II. I will release it as soon as it's done and re-edit MS I to share its same format.

October Projects and General Update!

Today in "general updates" I am working on a pair of fairly short authored works; one on the topic of overcoming adversity (and converting anger into ambition in a conscious, alchemical sense) and a second as-yet unannounced work. I figured I should crank out a few works of my own creation to balance the increasingly massive number of edited works here.

Subsequent to this (which will surely be well within the confines of this month) I'll begin editing the Ars Goetia and probably the rest of the works of the Lesser Keys. I have already contacted my artist on this token. Soon, the Goetia itself and the complete Lesser Keys will be available to everyone for a somewhat lower cost than in the past; that's my goal!

The Joy of Obtaining New Source Materials

In the last 72 hours a number of things have happened that ought to vastly improve the nature of the work I am doing. I have acquired a brand new gaming laptop (programs like open office run instantaneously with almost no loading time at all on this baby... so does Minecraft!) as well as a bunch of literary source materials- a pair of new herbals, an old text compiling all of the four works of Geber (or pseudo Geber) on alchemy, and a few other odds and ends including a couple of grimoires I hadn't somehow obtained before.

Then to celebrate the occult birth of our country so many years ago, I got a copy of the Lesser Keys; I intend to cross-reference this vaguely critical, academic variant with other source materials as research, although I intend to release both the Ars Goetia alone and the Lesser Keys (Goetia, Theurgia Goetia, Paulina, Almadel, omitting the Notoria/Nova) as non-critical and simply inexpensive editions; trust me I am aware the world needs such a release!

Much work is to be done; happy work, culminating in I hope the 130th edition before Halloween.

General Update For July

As of right now I am juggling several good projects; Puckle's "Funeral Customs" is first on the list, rapidly approaching completion, and will be available probably within a week, indeed possibly two or three more days if I continue editing at the rate I have been for some time.

I have obtained several new works that fit within the herbal and homeopathic category; I still have the South Sea Herbal to work on as well, so that makes three more entries within that category for the fairly near future; one is a longer work, the South Sea Herbal is rather short, and another that is about 60 pages in length, a simple hand guide to some herbal species.

The tenth category to be added to this blog (specifically for cryptids and folklore) will be made subsequent to the next title being finished that will fit into the same category. I may eliminate the folk magic category and create a new one specifically for mysticism which requires shuffling a few titles around as well- into that category will go works like the Sepher Bahir, along with a few works currently in the Divination category which are more spiritual as opposed to some of the routine fortune-telling titles.

Over the coming months I hope to return to works of divination and, once the South Sea Herbal is illustrated and released, it will finally be time to unleash a stand-alone variant of the Ars Goetia on the world and, after that, a version of the Lesser Keys of Solomon; the most famous of all grimoires.

General Update Time: Upcoming Releases

Alright literary world!

I am approaching the end of two new short political works; "Against Communism" and "Against Corporate Media." As promised I have two other political titles I plan to release as well this month. I have decided to break apart my efforts into segments over the coming months also. April will be herbal month; two and possibly three new works will be edited then. In May, it's time to return to grimoires and work through the Ars Goetia (as a stand-alone release) and to begin working on the other books of the Lesser Keys. A modified version of my Ars Notoria will be wrapped up into this bundle.

June and July will bring a slew of psychic works and a new literary category. After that, I plan to return to my own titles and begin hammering Sickness in Hell II out.

These plans are malleable, but the year ahead looks like some good stuff.

Aradia Update 2: Delayed/ Liber Salomonis Update

I'm glad I made my prior post about the Aradia.

As it turns out the copyright wasn't an issue; what did emerge was that the template I used was faulty somehow and the cover art was off-center by a good centimeter or so. I sized it properly from Createspace' own template site so I'm not sure how this happened, but I'm a stickler for format now, and even plan to go back and correct (minor) flaws in my older works as soon as my current work is done. It may be a few days to a week before this is fixed since I have to redesign the cover, apparently, in a different format.

In other news I have begun work on the Liber Salomonis which of course is a hermetic era text masquerading as a Kabbalistic work called the Sepher Raziel. Since there are at least three major versions of the same I decided to use the one which was most complete, even though the antiquation of the language usage is making the editing more slow than for other versions. This specific text claims to be Solomonic but is certainly of primordial European manufacture as evidenced by its ritualized content which appears to both borrow from and give content to other contemporary grimoires in the European tradition; especially the Red Dragon.

It's a good work overall and longer than some grimoires at about 90 pages before any artistic content is added. It will be a worthy contribution to the literature I'm releasing.

I also have a basic schedule for when other works will be done:

-Liber Salomonis should be done by early March.
-Both of Hollandus' short-ish works done by mid to late March. These might require no more than two or three days to edit apiece.
-An edition of the Ars Goetia done by the end of March, or at latest mid April.
-A full edition of the Lesser Keys to be released, containing the Ars Goetia as well as the traditional content therein done by mid May.

I am additionally preparing to re-edit "Morbid Stories" into a proper format with new art, and release Morbid Stories II. I'm still in the beginning stages on my other works.