The study analyses female fandom in Sweden, focusing on female football supporters' self-presentation on social media. We found social media to function as a forum for empowerment, where the female football fans construct and express solidarity between girls and women and challenge hegemonic notions of femininity. Female football supporters are actively involved in formulating and shaping their own agenda and self-presentation and are drawn to the supporter culture for many of the same reasons as their male peers: group community, thrill and excitement, and the love for their team. The contribution of the study is two-fold: it fills a knowledge gap regarding Swedish female fans, while also making a conceptual intervention in the study of female fandoms more broadly, demonstrating the usefulness of critical theorization on femininities and indicating how social media enables female football supporters to 'play' with different conceptions of femininity to create space within the supporter milieu.

In 1920, the Swiss-American music teacher and occultist Leah Hirsig (1883–1975) was appointed ‘Scarlet Woman’ by the British occultist Aleister Crowley (1875–1947), founder of the religion Thelema. In this role, Hirsig was Crowley’s right-hand woman during a formative period in the Thelemic movement, but her position shifted when Crowley found a new Scarlet Woman in 1924. Hirsig’s importance in Thelema gradually declined, and she distanced herself from the movement in the late 1920s. The article analyses Hirsig’s changing status in Thelema 1919–1930, proposing the term proximal authorityas an auxiliary category to Max Weber’s tripartite typology. Proximal authority is defined as authority ascribed to or enacted by a person based on their real or perceived relational closeness to a leader. The article briefly draws on two parallel cases so as to demonstrate the broader applicability of the term in highlighting how relational closeness to a leadership figure can entail considerable yet precarious power.

Rocketeer, poet, and polyamorous proto-feminist, Jack Parsons (1914-1952) is one of the earliest and most legendary followers of Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) and his religion Thelema in America. A precocious only child and avid sci-fi reader, Parsons made vital contributions to the American space programme, and was briefly regarded by Crowley as a potential successor. However, Parsons’ romantic side, keen imagination, and tendency to be seduced by literary fiction was a source of friction between the two men. Parsons drew freely on gothic horror as well as pulp and sci-fi literature in articulating his personal magical universe. In 1946, he undertook the ‘Babalon Working’: a series of magical operations aimed at manifesting the goddess Babalon on earth as a sort of Thelemic messiah. This paper will explore the importance of literature for Parsons’ magical worldview and experimentation, focusing on three key works: Crowley’s Moonchild, Jack Williamson’s Darker Than You Think, and M.R. James’ short story »Count Magnus«.

The study analyzes constructions of femininity and feminine sexuality in interpretations of the goddess Babalon, a central deity in the British occultist Aleister Crowley’s (1875–1947) religion Thelema. Babalon is based on Crowley’s positive reinterpretation of the biblical Whore of Babylon and symbolizes liberated female sexuality and the spiritual modality of passionate union with existence. Analyzing historical and contemporary written sources, qualitative interviews, and ethnographic fieldwork in the Anglo-American esoteric milieu, the study traces interpretations of Babalon from the works of Crowley and some of his key disciples—including the rocket scientist John Whiteside “Jack” Parsons and the enigmatic British occultist Kenneth Grant—from the fin-de-siècle to the present. From the 1990s onward, female and LGBTQ esotericists have challenged historical interpretations of Babalon, drawing on feminist and queer thought and conceptualizing femininity in new ways. Femininity has held a problematic position in feminist theory, often being associated with lack, artifice, and restriction. However, the present study—which assumes that femininities are neither exclusively heterosexual nor limited to women—indicates how interpretations of Babalon have both built on and challenged dominant gender logics. As the first academic monograph to analyze Crowley’s and his followers’ ideas from the perspective of gender, this book contributes to the underexplored study of gender in Western esotericism. By analyzing the development of a misogynistic biblical symbol into an image of feminine sexual freedom, the study also sheds light on interactions between Western esotericism and broader cultural and sociopolitical trends.

While Aleister Crowley’s religion of Thelema deals with notions of witchcraft peripherally, in the 1950s Crowley’s disciple John Whiteside Parsons sought to establish a duotheistic witchcraft tradition which focused on the veneration of Lucifer and the Thelemic goddess Babalon. Kenneth Grant, briefly Crowley’s secretary, instead melded Thelema and Tantra with notions of witchcraft in his perennialist concept of a “Typhonian Tradition”. In different ways, Parsons and Grant both link witchcraft to a primordial magical tradition in which women acted as leaders and initiators, and female sexuality was sacralised. This chapter will analyse and compare Parsons’s and Grant’s interpretations of witchcraft, focusing especially on their gendered aspects. I suggest, firstly, that these authors’ engagement with concepts of witchcraft can be read as part of an endeavour to position femininity as central to magic, and, secondly, that the intersection of second-wave feminism and Paganism exerted a stronger influence on Grant’s writings than previously recognised.

This article explores the development and ideology of The Satanic Temple, against the background of current American politics. The Satanic Temple is a recent addition to the Satanic milieu, and is positioned here as a form of "rationalist" Satanism that draws on the figure of Satan as a symbol of rebellion. The discussion follows the emergence of The Satanic Temple and its introduction to the mainstream media around 2012, the influences of esoteric, feminist, and secularist ideas on the group, and its present manifestation as a politically engaged "occulture."