Submissions

Gnadenthal is written, for the most part, by friends and acquaintances. Alongside this, we accept unsolicited submissions.

We concern ourselves with subjects from the border regions of the Catholic and Orthodox traditions: mysticism and hermeticism, material piety and folk belief, syncretisms, forgotten metaphysics. Whoever dwells in these regions is invited — believers and doubters, monks and Schwärmer, pilgrims, comparatists, seekers of God and the longing. No scholarly training is required.

Send a text, or briefly present the idea: [email address].

Proposals for reviews are welcome: half-forgotten and obscure religious films, books, music — especially from abroad or from the past.

For the coming issues and the online register we are commissioning, among others: the cynocephali; the cephalophores; the dancing plague of St Vitus; the sanbenito and the carocha; the ostentatio genitalium; John of Rupescissa’s dreams of the Antichrist in Quanzhou; the psychogeography of the City of God; the Haemorrhoissa; ruach and hevel; the melancholy of the seas; osmogenesis, or the odour of sanctity; the myroblytes; the blood miracle of Naples; theophagy; teoqualo; the Abgar correspondence; Jesus = 888; the whispered initiation; bridal mysticism as a clinical picture; the flagellants; the self-crucifixions; the children’s crusades; the convent epidemics; the possessed of Loudun and Louviers; the Raskolniki; religious samizdat journals; the globus cruciger in the fashion industry; the martyr’s palm at the Cannes film festival; Eliade and the tetrachromatic vision of bees.

Write to us, too, if a subject is missing from this register.

Texts up to 800 words. Essayistic, lyrical or narrative; poetic-theological rather than academic. Anonymous publication under a Christian pseudonym is possible.

If this seems too short to you: learn from Borges. Pretend the longer text already exists, and write its summary. And remember that God is against hevel.