A fragmentation of self often informed the modernist quest for redefining the authorial self, a development explored in this chapter. The focus lies on the crisis of authorship as it manifested in the works of British writers and artists who claimed to have been inspired by fairies or even had their works produced by fairies. Occultist, antiquarian and artistic discourses concerning fairies could collide, as the chapter’s case study of William Butler Yeats shows. In a milieu where fairies were captured in photographs and cited as inspiration for paintings and literature, fairies could play an important role in experiments into fragmenting the authorial self, contributing to the modernist perception of the creative subject as passive and unstable, or even splintered, by ascribing artistic innovation to external entities.

Artikeln diskuterar uppfattningar om islam i svenska esoteriska grupper med inriktning mot satanism och left-hand path. Den amerikanska bakgrunden till ateistiska satanisters synsätt skisseras och kontroverserna som omgivit black metal-låttexter med islamfientligt innehåll analyseras. Hyllandet av den islamikata minoritetsreligionen yezidism i Sveriges mest inflytelserika left-hand path-rörelse får exemplifiera esoterikers försök till interkulturell konkordans. Yezidier kan härvid lyftas fram av dessa som “Mellanösterns satanister.” Ett nyckeltema är esoterikers önskan att förbli opolitiska (eller åtminstone fjärmade från dagspolitiken). Detta, påvisar artikeln, ter sig dock i dag svåruppnåeligt när det gäller förhållningssätt till islam.

According to the Bible, Eve was the first to heed Satan’s advice to eat of the forbidden fruit. The notion of woman as the Devil’s accomplice is prominent throughout the history of Christianity and has been used to legitimate the subordination of wives and daughters. During the nineteenth century, rebellious females performed counter-readings of this misogynist tradition. Hereby, Lucifer was reconceptualized as a feminist liberator of womankind, and Eve became a heroine. In these reimaginings, Satan is an ally in the struggle against a patriarchy supported by God the Father and his male priests. The book delineates how such Satanic feminism is expressed in a number of nineteenth-century esoteric works, literary texts, autobiographies, pamphlets and journals, newspaper articles, paintings, sculptures, and even artefacts of consumer culture such as jewellery. The analysis focuses on interfaces between esotericism, literature, art, and the political realm. New light is thus shed on neglected aspects of the intellectual history of feminism, Satanism, and revisionary mythmaking. The scope of the study makes it valuable not only for historians of religion but also for those with a general interest in cultural history (or specific aspects of it like gender history, romanticism, or decadent-symbolist art and literature).

Föreliggande artikel syftar till att överföra analytiska modeller från det akademiska fältet västerländsk esoterism, på ett empiriskt exempel ur den islamikata kultursfären, närmare bestämt yezidiska traditioner och den yezidiska gruppen under det osmanska rikets tid och styre mellan cirka 1200–1900. Sedan en tid pågår diskussioner kring begreppet “esoterism” och huruvida detta ska förstås som en kulturspecifik kategori, eller om det snarare är ett transkulturellt begrepp. Trots att artikeln inte primärt syftar till att skriva in sig i denna diskussion tangerar den ämnet, varför vi inledningsvis berör de resonemang som pågår. Vår huvudsakliga ambition är istället att undersöka hur teoretiska landvinningar inom det akademiska fältet västerländsk esoterism, kan överföras på och berika exempelvis forskning om religion i Mellanöstern.

The article discusses the view, held by many nineteenth-century authors, of Leonardo da Vinci as an esotericist, and his La Gioconda as mysterious, sinister and filled with hidden signs. This “esoterization” of the painting and its creator was part of a broader tendency to view artists, both historical and contemporary, as magicians and mystics in some sense. Hereby, art became integrated into the endeavors of various esoteric groups and thinkers, and an originally secular Renaissance work was absorbed into a nineteenth-century “occulture” or “cultic milieu.”