Privacy

This is a plain account of what Mere Thelema collects, why, and what you can do about it. We've tried to write it the way we'd actually explain it to someone, not the way a form letter would. If a sentence here doesn't make sense, that's a good reason to ask us.

If you just read the site

You don't need an account to read anything that isn't gated. We keep a rough count of visits to each piece — a country, derived from your IP address but never stored alongside it, and a general device category (phone, tablet, desktop) — never a name, never a precise location, never anything that identifies you individually. The country comes from a lookup table on our own server, so your address isn't sent anywhere to work it out. It's read-and-forget traffic shape, not a record of any one visit.

Separately, like almost every web server, ours writes a line to a log for each page it serves: the IP address that asked, the time, the page, the page you came from, and the description your browser gives of itself. We use these logs to keep the site secure and to diagnose problems. They're deleted after about two weeks.

Your display choices (light or dark, text size, typeface, reduced motion) and how far you've got into a piece are kept in your own browser and never sent to us.

Signing in happens through the Thelema Foundation Hub, the Foundation's own identity system — we never see or store a password. The Hub tells us your name and email, and whether you're a member or one of our writers, and we keep a record here (your account) so the site remembers who you are between visits.

Every new account is enrolled in our newsletter automatically, the moment it's created. We'd rather say that plainly than bury it: you're on the list from your very first sign-in, and the site will tell you so the next time you load a page, with a way to unsubscribe right there. You can also unsubscribe from any newsletter email, or from the Privacy tab of your Ephemeris, at any time.

Signing in also starts a session — a way of remembering you're you for a while. It's stored on our server, tied to a random token in a cookie your browser holds, and it ends when you sign out or after a period of inactivity. Apart from that cookie and a security cookie that protects forms from forgery, the site sets no cookies of its own, and none for tracking or advertising. The one exception is the membership page, described below, where Stripe's card form may set cookies of its own.

Reading history

While you're signed in, we keep a running list of what you've read, so your Ephemeris can show you what you've read recently. This is on by default, because most people find it useful. You can turn it off from the Privacy tab of your Ephemeris, and clear everything already recorded from its Reading History tab, at any time. Turning tracking off doesn't erase what's already there; clearing does that separately.

Bookmarks and saved quotes

If you save an article for later, or save a quote from something you're reading, we keep exactly that: the article, the quote text, and when you saved it. Nobody but you can see these. The exception is a quote you choose to show on one of your own author profiles, where anyone can see it. You can take it down again from your Ephemeris whenever you like.

Following authors and topics

If you follow an author or a topic, we keep that list so we can email you when something new appears. The list is yours alone. Authors aren't told who follows them, and nobody else can see it. You can pause those emails from the Privacy tab of your Ephemeris, and unfollow anything from its Following tab.

Quote cards

If you make a shareable image of a quote from an article, signed in or not, we keep the quote, which article it came from, and the image, so the link works for anyone you share it with. We don't connect a card to your account. We do keep a cryptographic fingerprint of your IP address with it, not the address itself, purely to notice abuse. That fingerprint can't be turned back into your IP address without a secret key that lives only on our own server. Every card, and its link, is deleted automatically 30 days after it was made.

If you're subscribed, we send occasional email when we publish something new. We track, per email address, whether you opened a given email and which links you clicked — the same way most publications do; it's how we know the newsletter is worth sending. Unsubscribing, from any email or from the Privacy tab of your Ephemeris, stops future sends immediately. If an email to you can't be delivered, or you mark one as spam, our email provider tells us and we stop sending to that address. A record that a past email was sent to your address (not its content) stays in our delivery history afterward, for accounting and deliverability reasons, even once you've unsubscribed or deleted your account.

Membership and payment

If you become a paying member, the payment itself — your card, your billing details — is handled entirely by Stripe, by way of the Hub, and never touches our own systems. The card form on our membership page is Stripe's own, loaded from Stripe's servers when you open that page, and Stripe may set cookies there to prevent fraud. We keep only which tier you're on, when it started, and when it renews or ends. We never see or store a card number.

If you had an account on the earlier site

This site replaces the earlier Mere Thelema website, and we've brought the reader accounts over from it: your name, email address, the date you signed up, and whether you were a paying member. We've also set up a matching account for you on the Hub with the same name and email, so you can sign in. The first time you do, the carried-over record becomes your account here. Your newsletter subscription came over with it, so you receive the newsletter without signing in, and every issue has a link to unsubscribe.

If you submit writing to us

If you send us a pitch, a manuscript, or an application to contribute, we keep your name, email, and whatever you sent us, for as long as it takes to make a decision and for a reasonable time afterward — there's no automatic expiry on this yet, which is worth saying honestly rather than implying otherwise. If you'd like us to delete an old submission that's already been decided, ask us and we will. Drafts saved while you write are deleted automatically 30 days after they were started.

Editors sometimes ask an outside reader to review a piece. That reviewer sees the piece through a private link that stops working after 90 days, but never your name or contact details.

If we approve an application to contribute and you don't yet have a Hub account, we create one with the name and email you gave us, so you can sign in as a writer. Images you add while writing in the Contributor area are kept in the Foundation's media library on the Hub.

Once a piece is accepted, editors may use two outside services while preparing it. Anthropic's Claude suggests a summary and tags, which an editor accepts or rejects, and ElevenLabs records the audio narration. Each receives the text of the piece and nothing else.

When we publish your work, the byline you chose appears with it. Your author profile is public too: your name and whatever you add to it, such as a photo, a short biography, your location and links. You edit it yourself in the Contributor area. An email address on your profile is never shown publicly.

The Thelema Foundation Hub — the Foundation's own identity and membership system. It's where sign-in and payment genuinely happen; think of it as a sibling system to this one, not an outside company.
Postmark — sends our email. Every address we send to passes through them, and they tell us when an email bounces or is marked as spam, and when a newsletter is opened or a link in it clicked.
Stripe — processes payment, by way of the Hub, and supplies the card form on our membership page. We never handle your card directly ourselves.
Anthropic — suggests summaries and tags for pieces our editors are preparing to publish. It receives the text of the piece, never anything about readers.
ElevenLabs — turns a piece's text into its audio narration. It receives the text and nothing else.
DreamHost — hosts an encrypted, off-site backup copy of our database, for disaster recovery. It's encrypted before it ever leaves our own server, and DreamHost has no way to read it.

We don't sell your data, to anyone, ever. We don't run advertising, so there's no advertising network to share anything with.

How long we keep things

Most of what's described above stays until you ask us to remove it or delete your account outright. A couple of things last longer, on purpose, and we'd rather be upfront about it than let a deletion feature promise more than it delivers:

Backups. We keep nightly encrypted backups of our whole database for disaster recovery — locally for 21 days, and off-site for up to about 13 months (daily copies for a month, then one per month for the rest of the year). Deleting your account removes you from the live site immediately, but a copy of what existed can persist in a backup for up to that long. We have no practical way to reach into last month's backup and edit it — and doing so would defeat the point of keeping it at all.
Newsletter delivery records. Once an email has genuinely been sent to an address, the record that it was sent stays in our delivery history indefinitely, tied to that address, for deliverability and accounting reasons — the same way most bulk-email systems work.

Your account, your choices

From the Privacy tab of your Ephemeris, signed in, you can:

Turn reading-history tracking on or off. Clearing what's already recorded is on the Reading History tab.
Subscribe or unsubscribe from the newsletter, immediately, without waiting for an email to arrive.
Pause or resume emails about the authors and topics you follow.

Downloading a copy of what we hold about your account, and deleting your account outright, both live on your Account page with the Thelema Foundation Hub rather than here — the Hub is the Foundation's own central record of who you are across every one of our platforms, and the natural place for those two actions to live, since they cover more than just Mere Thelema. Deleting your account there is permanent and immediate: your reading history, bookmarks, saved quotes, follows and account record here are erased right away, subject to the backup and newsletter-record exceptions above. Submissions aren't part of that; ask us, as above. If you sign in again later, you start fresh, as a new reader.

Security

We take real, reasonable precautions — encrypted backups, encrypted connections, a keyed fingerprint instead of a raw IP address wherever we don't need the address itself. No system is perfect, and we won't claim more certainty than that.

Children

This site isn't directed at children, and we don't knowingly collect information from anyone under 13.

Changes to this page

If this changes in a way that matters, we'll say so here. This version was last revised on 31 October 2026.

Questions

If any of this is unclear, or you'd rather ask us directly than use the tools above, write to us at info@merethelema.com.