How the pieces get made
The rules we write by, the checks a piece passes before it ships, and the things this site will never do — to its readers or to the traditions it describes.
How a piece is written
Pieces are drafted with modern writing tools and shaped by the standards on this page — the sourcing rules, the naming rules, the restraint. Every piece is written for a reader with nobody to ask: names are glossed in plain language, tellings are attributed to their people, and where accounts differ, we say so instead of inventing a canon.
What we check before publishing
- The people are named. Every belief, story, and practice is attributed to a specific people and place. "Africans believe" does not survive an edit.
- Story and practice stay distinct. Myths are retold as stories. Living practices — Ifá, ancestor veneration, Vodou — are described in the present tense, as things real people do today.
- We describe, we don't instruct. No ritual how-tos, no invocations, no "how to work with" any deity or spirit. Ceremony belongs to lineages and initiates; we publish the meaning, never the manual.
- Variation is honoured. Oral traditions differ by region and teller. "In one telling" is accuracy, not hedging.
- The record gets corrected calmly. Missionary-era labels and Hollywood distortions are fixed with the reason, not with outrage.
What we will never publish
- Instructions for rituals, offerings, or invocations.
- Sensationalism — any framing that makes a living faith a horror prop or a curiosity.
- Content that ranks faiths against each other, or proselytizes for or against any.
- Medical or life-outcome claims for traditional practice.
- A paywall, ever, in front of any of it.
Corrections
When a reader — especially a reader inside a tradition — flags an error, we fix the page and note the change. The fastest way to reach us is the contact page — name the piece and the line.
Money
The site is free: no paywalls, no accounts, no subscriptions. We don't run sponsored pieces, and no advertiser decides what a piece says about anyone's tradition.
"Tell the story the way you'd want your own told: by name, in full, with the meaning intact."