General Update: More Authored Works, Compilations, etc!

Alright everyone, I figure it's about time for a literary update for all of you assorted occultists, history buffs, and general clankers.

As I pointed out prior, I am taking a bit of a break from editing literature related to religion, spirituality, folklore, and allied themes. After having released 400 such works (all of which are linked here on this blog) I wanted to get to a few other long-planned projects.

First, I am now writing two short works; a text on Erroneous Occultism, which strives to warn against some of the potential abuses of those seeking truth, by charlatans and spiritual distractions. Second, a work elucidating the premise that the occult not only cannot support censorship and suppression of ideas and beliefs, but ought to be actively engaged in rebuffing such attempts. I deliver my comments on the subject from pragmatic, ethical, and spiritual backdrops.

After these works are released I do plan as well to create a couple more compilational works. I have not yet decided the exact topics to compile. This will take a bit of time since it requires a final proofreading of the work in addition to reformatting the entirety.

After that, I plan on continuing to edit more works, but I am very likely to simultaneously try and develop hardcover editions of all of my compiled works (once these final two or three are done) as well as re-editing a few of my older works and potentially expanding them and preparing them for hardcover release as well.

Clank on!

General Update Time!

Alright everyone, I haven't released any new edited works in  a month, and here is why:

Amazon has begun querying uploaded works as though they are all public domain; even when they are clearly not (my editions are substantially different from their source material)- as a result, my last couple efforts to release works I already completed were bounced. In order to work around this strange change in Amazons' apparent policies, I have decided to have all of my future edited releases re-illustrated. This means it will take more time to release them (not to mention money)- but I refuse to relinquish my goal of 400 edited works by the end of this year- thankfully I worked so far ahead that I am nearly done with that goal anyways, especially since I now have seven of the remaining twelve works completely edited and formatted.

In other news, this means that I will be drastically slowing down my release of edited works over the coming years- maybe a dozen works a year- because it will take much longer; I intend to invest in the material I will need to create my own illustrations; a job made easier by my love for sketch-style woodcut-esque works, which look occult anyways.

Since this means I will have more time for other projects, I will pivot to creating several full academic works on historical and similar aspects of superstition, herbal medicine, etc, and will be fully re-working all of my own authored texts.

The future looks bright!

Happy New Year- Final 2021 Update!

2021 was an eventful year- mostly for the worse, but for literary work by yours truly, it was amazing; 63,136 copies of my paperback literature sold since the year began (a few more copies will be sold today, but it's New Years' Eve so I don't expect sales to be particularly high.) My first nine compilations are done, and my first hardcover is currently in review- of course, it is a hardcover version of the "Book of Forbidden Knowledge", which alone has sold several tens of thousands of copies since I edited it years ago. I expect this release will be quite popular.

I was not able to get to hardcover work done for my compiled titles, but that is not a problem- it was a decent tradeoff to complete an extra five edited works and literally complete half of 2022's work before the year even switches over. Anyways, I plan to create a couple more compiled works, so it makes sense to wait anyways, to soothe my raging OCD. I was also able to obtain a half dozen more works to edit- and I am well on my way to completing the next slew of edited releases, which should all be done before January ends.

Good as though 2021 was (for literature anyways) I expect 2022 will be astronomically better- onward!

General Update: Big News and More!

First, the big news: Amazon now offers hardcover as an option for literary releases. While some of my individual editing projects are a bit short for that, I should be able to soon offer all of my occult compilations in a new, snazzy hardcover jacket- and since I have kept editing works at breakneck speed, there will probably be two or three more compiled works in the making over the next year or so.

In other news, I recently started to redouble my editing speed, since I have had a lot of ambition and the effort is starting to pay off (literally) at an increased rate. I now plan to work my way to at least the 360th occult title by the end of the year, where initially I had planned for 350- that means that if I continue this pace I might finish before Halloween of 2022, and then work on hardcover releases, new compilations, some miscellany, and a few more authored booklets through next years' end.

Then, it's onward to another hundred editions! But probably at a slightly slower pace.

General Update Time!

Alright literary world!

I am now in the Netherlands, and taking a short break from actual literary work; having edited 250 different editions, I figure it's a good time to take a week or so to just focus on exploring a new and unfamiliar area. It's warmer here than in my native Vermont so I am enjoying an extended season of "no frost and daytime temperatures well into the 50s."

That is not to say the work has ended, though! It never will!

Over the next few days I intend to try and obtain a a few dozen new books and booklets to edit; I need fifty, of course, to attain my ultimate goal of 300 editions, which I hope to complete by the end of 2020. I already organized my work files, and I'll begin #251 fairly soon- but I also need to cull a few editions since some works are easier or more relevant than others. I start getting antsy if I don't do my editing or writing for extended periods. To me, a vacation is when you do the same work but in a new location, so expect new releases before October ends and, if I have my 'druthers, #260 before Christmas.

General Update Time!

Alright literary world!

I've been busy editing at a much faster than normal pace over the prior month or so- this has culminated in running low on material and searching for more; which is great since I was able to obtain a grimoire that formerly was not available in a form I could work with- a notable one, which is similar to the Petit Albert but gets less attention. I am about half done editing it currently, but its format isn't great so it is a slow-ish process.

After it is released (the 240th edited occult work!) I will be proceeding with plans to create a couple new categories for the literary blogs; for those of you seeing this on Blogspot, I also have a Wordpress under the same moniker. For those on Wordpress, of course, I have one on Blogger.

This is great news since I have a bunch of new works also of various lengths and types to edit over the coming years; and that's the span I have in mind- this is no short term endeavor but rather a life-long endless project.

General Update Time!

Alright literary world!

I am just finishing up the first third or so of edited work 230; Gleanings of a Mystic, which is a Rosicrucian book comprised of chapters which are on disparate topics, originally in essay form. As such, with that mark nearly achieved I figured it was time to give a quick update on plans for the near future. I will be going on vacation fairly soon; a work vacation, so I will still be editing and making my normal videos- indeed since I'll be traveling abroad I might make more than my normal video load. I am trying to get to 250 works by the end of the year and thankfully it looks fairly likely that this is achievable.

Several dozen works are there in my source files awaiting a good edit. As to which come first, that is your guess as much as mine since I tend to bounce from subtopic to subtopic in the occult quite randomly.

I do have a couple of decent fortune telling works lined up and those are always fun; once they're done I can write a "book of books" work, detailing my own study of the evolution of dream-and-oracle style prognostication works through the last two centuries.

Fun ahead!

General Update Time!

Alright everyone!

I have gotten back into the swing of editing. I am currently working on Waites' "Devil Worship in France" which is a great book- after that I have several dozen more works planned. Happily, I have someone looking at illustrating a pair of herbals and a work by Manly Hall.

That will round of the work through July, probably. I need to go on a hunt for new literary material due to a glaring oversight on my part for years which has handicapped me- let's just say I am not an expert with regards to pdf files! This is a happy thing though; the amount of material I can work with has at least tripled upon recognition of this "misfortune."

Soon I plan on making two new sections on the literary blogs, because the amount of work has become too large for the current categorization system.

Happy times!

General Update Time!

It's time for the very first update of the year- I won't do these as frequently, probably, because some of the content gets a bit redundant.

First; I have managed to acquire a dozen or so new works I did not have before, for editing. I have enough material to last me through 200 editions, which is the end goal for this year.

Second: Because of my surge of work in December (which I will continue through this month also) I am well ahead of the curve- a lot of the remaining works I hope to release are fairly short and most are in good condition so replicating and editing them will be quicker than for works in poorer conditions or which are quite long. (I like to release works that most consider too short to be worth editing.)

Third: At some point I am going to take a good long look at the Grand Albert and consider releasing it as I did for the Petit Albert: It is important to note that there are two Grand Alberts in circulation, one of which is not a folkloric document and has nothing to do with occult workings.

Fourth: It seems sales have recovered from their lull post-Createspace and may even have risen, possibly because of the huge number of new titles released in December. Since income from crowdfunding is down across the board for most people who create content at all it makes sense to surge on ahead with what has been my primary income anyways; namely, literature.

Fifth: I hope to write a few works of my own in 2019- a couple occult topics and perhaps some spooky fiction.

Onward with the year!

150th Edition Literary Update

Over the course of the next 48 or so hours I'll be completing another section of the Lesser Keys of Solomon (The Ars Paulina) and releasing it. This will be the 150th edition of occult literature I have released, between edited and self-written works, and so it's a fairly significant milestone.

It also means it's time for disclosing my subsequent plans!

For some time now I've let my files (pdfs, odt files, text file descriptions, illustrations, etc) build up in various folders, unsorted and so forth- I am going to take a day subsequent to the release of the Ars Paulina to simply organize my files. After that, I need to take a good couple of weeks for some other planned catching up for previous releases:

1. Remaking about three dozen covers, since I use a different, better font, trim, and logo.
2. A cursory grammar and spelling check for said releases.
3. Re-illustration of a few early works.
4. Completely re-processing every pdf file into an epub file so all the kindle ebooks will be 100% perfect in format. No more complaints about blank pages, etc.

This will occupy me probably through all of May and so, as such, after I link out the Ars Paulina there may not be any further updates until June. Releases will resume thereafter; I promised at least 200 editions, and it will almost surely be hundreds more over the years.

General Update: Current and Planned Works for March

Alright literary world, it's time for a brief update as spring (very slowly) decides to encroach; this gives me a lot of ambition while suffering from cabin fever, although once it actually gets nice outside I do a "little" less editing and writing for a while mid spring.

I am currently about 90% of the way through "Aryan Sun Myths" and so that work will be ready and available within a week or so- "Demonism" I am half done with, so that would be the third week of March, roughly. A couple other works are planned for March: once Aryan Sun Myths is complete I'll begin editing, I believe, the Theurgia Goetia, or perhaps the Paulina and Almadel (the two will be released together due to the lengths being too short to get the Paulina out solo); either way I'll be contacting my illustrator, and by the summer all four books of the Lesser Keys will be available, I hope. After that it won't be long before I release an edition of the same with a fairly elaborate foreword and some explanatory comments.

I have a few short alchemical works of note to process as well, along with the planned two herbals!

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.

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!

General Update Time!

Alright literary world;

It's time for a little bit of an update- I'm quite excited for the next three months, that happy period of time where summer winds down towards Halloween, AKA the greatest holiday of the year. After Halloween, there's nothing to look forward to until spring except stuffing yourself on Thanksgiving and Yule.

I have four works that I am definitively working on during this period; two herbal works (another government circular by the author of "Weeds as Medicine" and the South Sea Herbal) which will require illustration are on the docket, along with a short alchemical tract and the current work I am editing; "Secrets of Black Arts!" which is similar to other travelers booklets from the late 19th century and into the 1920s- these short works were part historical and part titillating grotesquery. Don't worry, those won't be the only works I release over this period; I have a half dozen others ready to format but I am not sure which of them will be completed- along with, I hope, the beginnings of SIH two.

That's about all. Don't dog-ear your books.

Short Update Re: Ebooks

It's time for a short announcement for several important pieces of information for my readers here.

1. I have transferred the files and information for the last 20ish works I have released to kdp. Soon they will be available on kindle as ebooks. I tend to drag my heels for months at a time on such things (because I myself do not like ebooks and tablets, I want physical copies of literary works) and then do them in spurts like this. This includes works like "The Piasa", "The Roman Index of Forbidden Books", and "Is the Devil a Myth?" among others.

2. Soon I will add links for both paperback and ebook copies to the category lists. For a few titles there will be no ebook because kindle's platform has slightly different terms of service from Createspace for paperback works.

3. I have obtained a dozen new works to work on; some titles on alchemy, a few psychic works, and some mesmerism and other pseudoscience.

4. The tenth category will soon be added; "Folklore, Mythology, and Cryptozoology." A new "Mysticism and Spirituality" category will absorb some works from other categories and replace the folk magic category.

General Update Time!

I have completed the editing of "Lore of the Unicorn" and it will be available today and of course posted about here. This is just the first of several more folklore-and-cryptid style works I wish to release in a fairly short span of time. Those two herbals have not been forgotten; I think I'll bend to pressure and pay someone a flat fee and put their name on the works in exchange for not having to draw up the illustrations there personally; it means it might take a year or so for the works to pay themselves off (they're not top tier works, popularity-wise) but it's worth it to have them done and to expand the herbal category.

Which brings me to the goal of creating a new category sometime this summer for a new style of work which doesn't currently fit in any other category; folklore and cryptozoology. This will likely be the last category created for this year, although I could plow away at some works on ghosts and psychic lore and craft that one as well. I haven't decided yet!

Good times ahead!

General Update: Herbals Forthcoming!

I have decided to fixate upon three medically related works for the month of April and, once they are done (could be soon, I might have to pay an illustrator, I'm tired of slowing my work down to draw up, scan, format, and re-edit interior images!) I intend to begin working on another manuscript of my own composition on the topic of robotics, automation, synthetic life, and similar topics.

These three works are summarized:

1. Weeds as Medicine: A government-crafted tract on the medicinal use, form, and habit of several dozen species considered at the time to be pests nonetheless worth harvesting to supplement the income of farmers. Things like foxglove, poison hemlock, and yarrow are mentioned here.

2. Valuable Herbal Prescriptions: A work I had already edited in January but never illustrated; a homeopathic work of sorts, combining the design of a short herbal into a medicinal form for basic remedies.

3. Counterblast to Tobacco: An extremely early public health manifest against smoking written by the infamous King James I, of "Daemonologie" fame, the lord of the burning times themselves.

If any artist I pay to complete the illustrations for the first two works quickly I may indeed also release the South Sea herbal, which at first appears freakishly short, but is actually about as long as the others, and merely in an old, compacted form as many herbals were prior to the enlightenment.