Submission Guidelines

Mere Thelema is a peer-reviewed journal devoted to serious writing, rigorous thought, and work of genuine artistic and intellectual consequence. We publish work that is lucid, disciplined, daring, and alive—less interested in trend performance, ideological reflex, or aesthetic posturing than in writing that has been honestly made and can stand up to a second reading.

We welcome submissions from emerging and established writers alike. What matters is not your back catalog but the work in front of us: strength of language, clarity of intention, formal control, seriousness of vision.

How Submission Works

1. Pitch your idea

No account required. Tell us what you’re working on—a paragraph or two on what the piece is, why it matters, and roughly what shape it will take.

2. If it’s a fit, we’ll invite the finished piece

We’ll set up your account and sign you in through the site’s normal login link — you’ll land in your own submission space automatically. From there, you’ll write or paste the full piece directly into our editor: no file to prepare, format, or attach.

3. We read, we respond

We aim to respond within 4–6 weeks, though response times may vary with editorial volume and capacity. Because of the volume of submissions we receive, we may not be able to provide individualized feedback on declined work.

What We Publish

We currently consider original work in the following categories:

Essays and Creative Nonfiction

Literary essays, reflective prose, criticism, memoir, literary journalism, and hybrid nonfiction.

Poetry

Individual poems or small groups of poems.

Fiction

Short stories, flash fiction, and self-contained novel excerpts. A note on fiction: we are open to it, but not to fiction in the abstract. Fiction submitted here should bear some meaningful relation to the journal’s nature and purpose—not doctrinal or programmatic, but participating, however indirectly, in our broader intellectual, spiritual, philosophical, cultural, or literary concerns. Fiction that could have been sent anywhere may not be right for us.

Translations

Translations of literary work are welcome when accompanied by any necessary permissions and enough information about the original text and author.

Reviews

Book reviews and other critical responses to recent work.

Visual Work

Artwork accompanying or standing alongside written work.

Because Mere Thelema is an online journal, we’re especially interested in work that reads well on screen without sacrificing literary density, seriousness, or stylistic distinction. See Preparing Your Work, below, for how we handle unusual spacing and visual form, particularly for poetry.

General Submission Standards

• We are not open to publishing blog posts.

• We consider original work and generally prefer work that has not been previously published.

• We do not accept simultaneous submissions.

• We will consider previously published work only by editorial review and only where the author provides a clear justification for republication. Any prior publication must be disclosed at the time of submission—original venue and date—so proper credit can be given to the first publisher. Acceptance of previously published work will be exceptional, not routine. Authors should also indicate whether the submitted version has been maintained as originally published or substantially revised since.

• We ask that writers submit no more than three submissions per genre at a time, and note that we will only publish one submission at a time.

• Serial works are encouraged. You may set the interval between installments in coordination with your editor.

Length Guidelines

These are general limits, not promises of acceptance within range:

We remain open to exceptional work outside these limits, but writers should assume that proportion, control, and concision matter.

Preparing Your Work

There’s no file to prepare, format, or attach. When you submit the finished piece, you’ll write or paste it directly into our own editor — plain paragraphs, minimal manual styling, no embedded design elements or unusual fonts. Clean copy travels best.

Poetry may use single spacing where lineation requires it. Because the piece is set for web publication, poetry that relies on highly unusual spacing, exact visual placement, or intricate typographic effects may run into real formatting limits online. We’ll make a good-faith effort to preserve the form of the poem, but we can’t guarantee exact visual replication in every case.

What to Include

Once you’re signed into your author account, the submission form asks for what it needs directly—no separate cover letter, and no need to explain the meaning of the work or offer an interpretive roadmap. Your name and email are already on your account, so you won’t be asked for them again.

If you publish under a pseudonym, its bio and website live on your author profile, not on the submission form—the form shows them read-only, with a link to where you can edit them.

House Style

Mere Thelema follows The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition, as its primary reference point, except where house preference warrants otherwise.

We also keep a fuller supplementary guide, the Mere Thelema Manual of Style, covering citation, transliteration, and technical terminology in more depth than makes sense to repeat here. Because your piece goes straight into our own editor rather than being assembled as a document you send us, only part of that manual actually concerns you as a contributor:

• Still applies, and worth reading: citation guidelines—general principles, citing Thelemic texts, commentaries, books and articles, digital sources—and languages & technical terms, including Greek, Hebrew, and other transliterations.

• Doesn’t apply here: its manuscript-formatting sections—page layout, title pages, contents pages, sample model pages. Those are written for a printed or file-based manuscript. There’s no file to format on our end: your title, byline, and structure are handled by the submission form, not typed as a title block on the page.

In practice, this means:

• Spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and usage should be consistent.

• Quotations, citations, references, and foreign-language terms should be accurate and properly presented.

• Excessive typographic styling should be avoided.

• Intentional stylistic deviations should be truly deliberate and artistically meaningful.

Accepted work may be edited for grammar, punctuation, clarity, internal consistency, title styling, and presentation for the web. We respect the integrity of the work, but the journal makes final editorial decisions on copyediting and presentation.

Tone and Editorial Fit

We’re looking for work that is literary without being self-indulgent, intelligent without becoming academic sludge, spiritually or philosophically, and culturally or artistically serious without collapsing into jargon. We look for originality in thought and language, shaped by genuine craft rather than posture.

We’re generally less interested in polemic masquerading as literature, shapeless confession, fashionable abstraction without felt necessity, or work that relies on shock, slogan, or performance in place of form. This isn’t a prohibition on difficult subject matter, strong conviction, experimental practice, or intensity of opinion—only a baseline expectation of intelligence and sophistication in what we publish.

Images

We’ll make every effort to include the images your piece needs, but reserve the right to decline to publish a given image. Each article carries a featured image reflective of its content—you may propose your own, subject to editorial approval, or we’ll choose one at our discretion. Images are set with a focal point so they crop cleanly across the site’s different layouts.

Rights, Citations, and Permissions

Upon publication, Mere Thelema acquires First Worldwide Serial Rights—meaning Mere Thelema is the first publisher of the piece anywhere in the world. After first publication, all rights revert to the author, except that Mere Thelema retains the nonexclusive right to archive, display, reproduce, and promote the work as part of the journal, its website, and its ongoing records as the place of first publication.

If the work is later republished elsewhere, we ask that the author acknowledge Mere Thelema as the place of first publication. Authors are responsible for securing permission for any copyrighted material included in their work, including extended quotations, song lyrics, and epigraphs.

Accuracy, Attribution, and Permissions

Authors are responsible for the factual accuracy of their submissions, including names, dates, quotations, citations, and permissions. Where a submission engages historical, literary, scriptural, or scholarly material, sources should be checked with care before submission—clean copy is part of seriousness. Mere Thelema reserves the right to retract any published work upon notice of copyright infringement or ethical conflict.

Pseudonyms and AI Profile Images

We encourage people to write under their civil names and faces when they’re able. Thelema deserves to be represented in the world by people, not online puppets.

We’d like to discourage—though we do not disallow—the use of the standard “Frater/Soror Whatever” monikers so typical in the occult community. Once, “magical mottos” were a mark of sophistication and elegance. Today they mostly read as childish posturing and avoidance of accountability. Part of our aim with Mere Thelema is to raise the bar of mature writing and the mature appearance of the people doing the writing.

That said, real dangers exist in the world today, and some cannot write under their civil name for any number of reasons. You don’t have to justify your reasons to us for using a pseudonym, or a reasonable AI facsimile of yourself. We accept it. Period. If you use a nom de plume, all we ask is that you stick with it across multiple pieces—take ownership of your work, even as we protect your civil identity under the cloak of anonymity.

AI and Authorship

We expect all submitted work to be the author’s own. Mere Thelema does not accept literary work generated solely by AI. Limited use of digital tools for editing, spelling, grammar, or administrative assistance is one thing; outsourcing authorship is another.

Response Time

We aim to respond within 2–4 weeks, though response times may vary with editorial volume and capacity. Because of the volume of submissions we receive, we may not be able to provide individualized feedback on declined work.

How to Submit

Pitch your idea, or submit a finished piece directly if you already have an author account. Please don’t send unsolicited work through social media, direct messages, or editors’ personal accounts unless specifically invited.