Article Submissions

The Editorial Board for The Journal of Shamanic Practice solicits articles from well-known experts in the field of shamanism as well as from anyone doing something unique, interesting, and valuable with his or her shamanic practice and shamanic life. We welcome articles and stories from people who use shamanism professionally, often in a healing capacity, and those who use it as a spiritual practice for daily life.

Please read the guidelines below before submitting your work. If you feel your work is appropriate to the Journal, submit it by email to admin@shamanicpractice.org.

Submission Guidelines

The Journal of Shamanic Practice publishes a new original article approximately once per month on the website of the Society for Shamanic Practice (SSP). Articles are available first to our members, and 30 days after publication they become available to the general public. Articles are also posted and promoted on the SSP Facebook page and SSP Facebook Group.

Length of Articles

Articles should be between 700 and 1500 words. Occasionally longer articles are accepted. When appropriate, manuscript submissions should include original art or photographs, or those that are in the public domain, or those for which the author has received permission to publish.

Shaping Your Article

1. Consult the articles we have previously published, and note the various categories to determine what type of article you intend to write.

2. Remember that our readers are well-seasoned shamanic practitioners and already know the basics of shamanism. Keep in mind that you are writing for your peers. We find that submissions that are excepted from a book do not work well as   stand-alone articles. If you are interested in sharing a chapter from a book you have written, please re-write it as an article.

3. Your topic should appeal to our readership. If you intend to write about something personal, make sure that it has a universal appeal to people who practice shamanism.

4. We highly encourage you to include specific ways to incorporate what you have to say about shamanism into the lives of our readers, as daily practice, as ways to work with clients or work with their communities, or ways to enhance their teaching of shamanism.

5. We are open to your ideas. If you have an idea that you want to pitch, feel free to contact us.

Rarely does the journal publish personal healing stories. These stories are better incorporated into a report or an essay that frames the personal story in a larger context, or posted directly on the SSP Facebook page and/or our blog.

We don’t want articles that are purely self-promoting, and we won’t accept any article whose main agenda is to sell yourself. We are very happy to put your web site and contact info into your article, and we love to help members advance their work by sharing new articles with our growing membership, our Facebook Page and our Community Facebook Group.

CITING SOURCES WITHIN AN ARTICLE

There are a variety of accepted models for citing sources and listing references. We have chosen the following models with the intention of making it easy for you and at the same time giving the reader enough information to locate the source.

If you use a direct quote or refer to an author, indicate in the text the author of the quote and the date of publication. This information should be put at the end of the sentence in parenthesis.

Example: Black Elk said, “The Power of the world always works in circles.” (Neihardt, 1975)
Example: John Neihardt met Black Elk in 1930 on the Pine Ridge Reservation. (Neihardt, 1975)

If you are quoting from an article in an anthology, use the author of the article and the date.
Example: Maria Sabina said, “The mushroom is similar to your soul.” (Maria Sabina in Halifax, 1979)

LISTING REFERENCES AT THE END OF AN ARTICLE

At the end of the article, list all your sources alphabetically by author’s last name.

When quoting from a book, give author’s full name, title of the book, and the date of publication.
Example: Neihardt, John G. Black Elk Speaks, 1975.

When quoting from an anthology, list alphabetically by the author quoted.
Example: Sabina, Maria in Joan Halifax’s Shamanic Voices, 1979.

When quoting from a journal or magazine, list alphabetically by the author, giving the title of the article, the name of the journal, and date.
Example: Turner, Kevin B. “The Reluctant Shaman of Bali” in Shamanism, 2018.

When quoting form an article on a web site, list author’s name, article, journal or web site name, URL, copyright date, and date accessed, and the URL for the particular article.
Example: Boomer, Ben, “Becoming Prayers” in Journal of Shamanic Practice,
www.shamanicpractice.org., 2017, accessed January 5, 2019,
https://shamanicpractice.org/articles/becoming-prayers/

Peer-Review

All submissions to the journal are read and reviewed by a team of editors who are shamanic practitioners. Decisions to accept or reject a manuscript are based on this editorial/peer review. When suggestions for improvement are made, authors are asked to revise their manuscripts in accordance with the reviewers’ comments.

Permissions

If any material in the manuscript is from a copyrighted publication, a letter of permission from the copyright holder to reproduce the material should be included. If a photo, illustration, or figure does not belong to the author or is not in the public domain, it must be accompanied by a permission letter to reproduce it from the copyright holder.

Multiple Submission

If you are submitting the same article to other journals, notify us at the time of submission. If the article is accepted for publication elsewhere, we expect you to let us know. We will not publish the same, or substantially the same, piece.

Book Excerpts and Updates

If your submission is updating a previous article (published by SSP or elsewhere) it should be made clear in the text of the new article. We publish articles excerpted or adapted from your recently published, or soon to be published, book, and this also must be made clear in the text of your article.

Please send your written work to admin@shamanicpractice.org and include a brief bio and photo and/or images to be published online along with your article.

We look forward to reading your work.