De kallades för Doktorn, Ingolf, Hiller och Orio­n. Bakom täcknamnen dolde sig höga östtyska kyrkofö­reträdare. Alla var involverade i Växjö stifts utbytesprogram med kyrkan i DDR – och samarbetade med den östtyska säkerhetspolisen Stasi. Dess främsta mål var att stoppa stiftet i Småland från att stödja kristna regimkritiker i öst.

The purpose of this study is to explore different power dynamics in the spiritualist movement of fin-de-siècle Sweden. The source material for this exploration is the spiritualist magazine of Efteråt, which was the main spiritualist magazine in Sweden at the time, in print between 1891–1922. The main material for this study is specifically the texts that fall under the genre of ”fictionalized witness-accounts” of supernatural phenomena. These witness accounts yield reoccurring tropes that are either actors, arenas, or narratives. The process of finding these tropes is made through discourse analysis as constructed by Norman Fairclough complemented using grammar and props as presented by Mattias Fyhr. The theoretical tools utilized are the framework of Luce Irigaray and the relationship between the subject and the object, the concept of receptivity as coined by Ann Cvetkovich, and finally the concept of heterotopia as coined by Michel Foucault.

The relationship between a masculine subject and a feminine object is generally maintained throughout the source material. However, this dynamic is open to destabilization. This is especially prominent in the arena of the séance room, where perceived feminine volatility is both a liability and a resource. This also rises interesting perspectives concerning male mediums. This destabilization in further deepened when the concept of receptivity is applied and the relationship between the spirit world and the material world is come into question: where is agency situated? The last result concerns the spiritualist movement and its relationship to hegemonic society. With the help of the concept of heterotopia the different spiritualist rooms show what is deemed lacking in society at large, as well as the perceived functions they have within the movement.

In this article the establishment of publicly funded Muslim schools in Sweden is described and analysed. This is done by reference to relevant debates about these schools as well as to the content of the extracurricular subject Islamic Religious Education (IRE), which is what distinguishes a Muslim school from other schools in Sweden. The article also raises the question to what extent the appearance of IRE within publicly funded Muslim schools implies that Islam in the Swedish context is turning into what José Casanova has termed a ‘deprivatized public religion’. It claims that Islam to a certain extent tends to be viewed as deprivatized even though it is not articulated in this way in schools. The conclusion drawn in relation to the study presented in this chapter is that Islam is rather following the Swedish secularization pattern and is not viewed as an alternative societal order which instead would indicate a de-privatization.

Negative attitudes toward dogs are common in Muslim societies. Thus, in studying both past and present Muslim writings on dogs, a contradictory picture emerges, indicating that Muslim attitudes toward dogs have had their ambiguities. At times the dog has been presented as the lowest, filthiest, and vilest of creatures, and at times the dog appears as a perfect role model, exemplifying qualities like loyalty, devotion, and self-sacrifice. There are signs that attitudes toward dogs are changing in some Muslim soci-eties. One such sign is that an increasing number of people in Muslim countries are now keeping dogs as companion animals. The following research will be used to highlight ambiguities as well as changes in order to not only better understand the position of the dog within Islam, but also to provide a very concrete example of how interpretations of religions are not isolated or single but are dependent on context.

Uppsatsen undersöker diskursen om Indien i Teosofisk tidskrift 1891-1894. Efter en introduktion till forskingsfälten, västerländsk esoterisk tradition och post-kolonialism, beskrivs den diskursiva framställningen av Indien i de svenska teosofernas tidskrift. Indien representerar en uråldrig visdom och ett samtida förfall. I den gamla sanskrit-litteraturen finner teosoferna svunna tiders andligt högtstående civilisation medan teosofernas samtida Indien är förslappat och i behov av revitalisering. Indien utgör även en motpol till västerlandet som är präglat av två andra sorts förfall: den andliga materialismen och en dogmatisk kyrkoreligion. Teosofernas uppgift blir att revitalisera Indiens uråldriga visdomar och förandliga väst i ett väst-östligt utbyte.

Denna bild av Indien har inte enbart påverkat nyandligheten utan även en bred västerländsk uppfattning om Indiens andlighet. Även inom hindu-nationalismen återfinns föreställningar som överensstämmer med teosofernas Indien-diskurs. Uppsatsen avslutas med en diskussion kring rötterna, betydelsen och spridningen av den teosofiska diskursen om Indien.

H. P. Blavatsky’s influential The Secret Doctrine (1888), one of the foundation texts of Theosophy, contains chapters propagating an unembarrassed Satanism. Theosophical sympathy for the Devil also extended to the name of their journal Lucifer, and discussions conducted in it. To Blavatsky, Satan is a cultural hero akin to Prometheus. According to her reinterpretation of the Christian myth of the Fall in Genesis 3, Satan in the shape of the serpent brings gnosis and liberates mankind. The present article situates these ideas in a wider nineteenth-century context, where some poets and Socialist thinkers held similar ideas and a counter-hegemonic reading of the Fall had far-reaching feminist implications. Additionally, influences on Blavatsky from French occultism and research on Gnosticism are discussed, and the instrumental value of Satanist shock tactics is considered. The article concludes that esoteric ideas cannot be viewed in isolation from politics and the world at large. Rather, they should be analyzed both as part of a religious cosmology and as having strategic polemical and didactic functions related to political debates, or, at the very least, carrying potential entailments for the latter.

Using ethnographic method combined with analysis of primary sources like mass media appearances, song lyrics and websites, the article ex-amines ritualized self-injury in the Black Metal milieu. It is shown that this type of ascetic mortification is no aberration in the history of religions, but diverges from older forms of Satanism. Self-injury functions in Black Metal Satanism as a symbol of transgression and virile bravado, and as a means to display allegiance to the Satanic cause by permanently marking the body. It is typically described by practitioners as a blood sacrifice to Satan. This ritualization of self-injury, where it is explicitly framed as a practice completely different from anything occurring in a secular context, is part of a broader endeavor in the milieu, which seeks to re-enchant a late modernity perceived to be devoid of spiritual values. Increasing mass media attention to self-injury, there postulated as a (secular) mental health problem among adolescent girls, has therefore lessened its usefulness as a sacralized and masculine transgressive symbol. This, it is argued, explains the declining emphasis on it in the Satanic milieu in recent years.

The article discusses how feminists, in particular in the period circa 1880–1930, have employed Satanism (i.e., a positive portrayal of the Devil) as a strategy in their endeavors. The central theme in this context is the construction of a counter-myth to the hegemonic Christian myth of Eve’s interaction with the Serpent/Satan in the Garden of Eden. This narrative has traditionally been used by conservative Christians to legitimate the subjugation of women. By making Eve and the Serpent heroic rebels against an oppressive patriarchal God, the social implications of the original myth are attacked. An important background for much of this insurrectionist rhetoric was the esoteric and pro-Satanic counter-myth constructed by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, chief ideologist of the influential Theosophical Society. Equally crucial was the fact that Satanism, as the article demonstrates, was well-established as a language of resistance, and had been employed by dissidents like Shelley and various socialists to provoke the bourgeoisie and display a complete rejection of hegemonic discourses. Concluding the article is a discussion of the paradoxes inherent when a counter-discourse is created, such as the reification and perpetuation of existent mythologies.

The article discusses some of the debates over the construction of gender taking place in the satanic and Left-hand Path (LHP) milieu, in particular the different varieties of upvaluing of “the feminine.” This includes disputes over what the term feminism entails, what the best strategies for women to gain more power are, and if “feminine” is an essence that can be contrasted with a fixed “masculine.”

Notions of gender polarity as necessary for magical practice or cosmic balance are given special attention, as are borrowings from feminist terminology (e.g. “patriar- chy”) by figures that are far from feminist in orientation. Aside from tex- tual sources, the article draws on communication with 44 informants.    

Three basic approaches to gender can be discerned in the milieu:  1) Gender as an insignificant category, 2) Gender as a natural polarity, 3) Gender as false consciousness. Of these, number two is the most common, while number one is quite seldom seen—gender is a major issue, one way or another. Femininity is frequently discussed by both men and women, while masculinity is a less popular topic. Femininity, then, is a particularly contested matter in the milieu.

Overall, the dominant view of gender is that the two sexes should be strictly dichotomized. The article concludes that with some exceptions most organizations in the milieu are numerically dominated by men. However, some important groups have periodically been led by women, and there are several female key producers of ideology. The partly reactionary views concerning gender issues held by some female leaders indicate that female leadership does not necessitate that a conventional feminism would permeate the organization. Further, it is difficult to see any absolute correlation between female leadership and upvaluing of the feminine in mythology. Moreover, the article demonstrates, such upvaluing does not in itself always signify an underlying ideology of political feminism.

The article discusses the innovative form of Satanism that arose in theNordic Black Metal milieu around 1989–1990. Its focus on theistic wor-ship of Satan, and evil as the highest value, set it apart from most otherknown forms of Satanism. Drawing on fanzines, records and interviews,it is demonstrated that this counter-discourse positioned itself in oppo-sition to LaVeyan Satanism – which was perceived as too humanitarian,positive and soft – to a greater extent than it focused on anti-Christianpolemics. The possible influence of role-playing games is also scruti-nized, and it is found that there are certain connections between BlackMetal Satanism and this phenomenon. Finally, the paradoxes inherentin a counter-discursive project like the celebration of evil are highlighted.

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.”

A study of which types of Satanism were present before the founding of the Church of Satan in 1966. The conclusion is that very few individuals or organisations prior to 1966 could reasonably be labelled Satanists, but that a few examples can in fact be found, and that some of these should be considered important for the development of the forms of Satanism that we can observe today.

Enligt Bibeln var Eva först med att lyssna till ormen och äta av den förbjudna frukten. Tanken på kvinnan som Satans utvalda är framträdande under stora delar av kristendomens historia. Under 1800-talet kom feminister att börja läsa denna misogyna tradition motvalls. Härigenom blev Lucifer omgestaltad till en kvinnans befriare, och den syndiga Eva förvandlades till en hjältinna. I dessa motmyter fick Satan rollen av en allierad i kampen mot Gud Fader och hans patriarkala prästerskap.

Avhandlingen kartlägger hur sådan “satanistisk feminism” under 1800-talet kommer till uttryck i en rad esoteriska verk, självbiografier, pamfletter och tidskrifter, tidningsartiklar, målningar, skulpturer och till och med sådana konsumtionskulturens artefakter som smycken. Bland individerna som på olika sätt bidrog till diskursen finner vi exempelvis suffragetten Elizabeth Cady Stanton, den könsöverskridande teosofen Madame Blavatsky, författaren och diplomathustrun Aino Kallas, skådespelerskan Sarah Bernhardt, den antiklerikala häxentusiasten Matilda Joslyn Gage, den dekadenta markisinnan Luisa Casati och den luciferianska lesbiska poeten Renée Vivien.

I materialet är särskilt fyra motiv framträdande: 1) omtolkningar av Evas roll i syndafallet som något positivt, 2) häxan som en protofeminist, 3) demonälskaren omstöpt till en befriare, 4) en feminiserad Satan som kontrasteras mot en förtryckande manlig Gud. Ett femte och något mindre centralt motiv är uppfattningar om Lilith, enligt judiska folkliga och esoteriska traditioner Adams rebelliska hustru innan skapelsen av Eva, som den första feministen.

Analysen fokuserar på skärningspunkterna mellan esoterism och den politiska sfären, såväl som den påverkan som ockultism och konst utövat på varandra. Teoretiskt fokus ligger på motläsningar, motdiskurser och motmyter, samt det komplexa samspelet mellan dessa och hegemoniska diskurser som syftade till att demonisera feminismen. Ett nyckeltema i detta sammanhang är inverteringens gränser och paradoxer.

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).

The chapter investigates how Anton LaVey constructs a Satanic tradition in his texts, and to what use he puts it. It presents an interpretation of this based on LaVey’s overall ontology and view of religious and esoteric phenomena. LaVey both utilizes historical predecessors in a way that is common within Western esotercism in general, and breaks with this common usage. Discarding most of the old esoteric and Satanic material as ineffectual and outdated, he paradoxically still emerges as dependent on it. The chapter argues that the prime function of tradition for LaVey is not legitimization, as perhaps would be expected. Rather, he seems to deem tradition most useful for bringing about certain psychological effects in a framework where one practises the ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ in a limited context, playfully creating the right atmosphere for Satanic activities. The mechanics of tradition are thus openly displayed and consciously utilized as mood‐creating spectacle for purely instrumental purposes. Hence, LaVey’s references to secret lineages should not be considered a counterfeiting of tradition, since he is quite openly playing with the psychological effects of (a more or less fictitious) tradition, and inviting others to take part in this game.

During the nineteenth century, socialists all over the Western world employed Satan as a symbol of the workers’ emancipation from capitalist tyranny and the toppling of the Christian Church, which they perceived as a protector of this oppressive system. Starting with the English Romantics at the end of the eighteenth century, European radicals developed a discourse of symbolic Satanism, which was put to use by major names in socialism like Godwin, Proudhon, and Bakunin. This shock tactic became especially widespread in turn-of-the-century Sweden, and accordingly the article focuses on the many examples of explicit socialist Satanism in that country. They are contextualized by showing the parallels to, among other things, use of Lucifer as a positive symbol in the realm of alternative spirituality, specifically the Theosophical Society. A number of reasons for why Satan gained such popularity among socialists are suggested, and the sometimes blurry line separating the rhetoric of symbolic Satanism from actual religious writing is scrutinized.

In diesem Aufsatz wird ein früher und ziemlich unbekannter Satanist namens Ben Kadosh behandelt (Carl William Hansen 1872-1936), der in Dänemark am Anfang des 20en Jahrhunderts tätig war. Kadosh hat in der Gründung mehreren Freimauerlogen teilgenommen und stand mit einer Reihe von wohlbekannten esoterischen und literarischen Persönlischkeiten in Verbindung. Als sein System eine eklektische Mischung darstellte, wo der griechische Gott Pan beispielsweise mit Gnostizismus, Freimauermystizismus und Lobpreisungen von Luzifer verbunden wird, können verschiedene möglische Influenzen auf seine Lehre angeführt werden. Es ist ganz unwahrscheinlich, daß Kadosch in seiner Zeit mehrere Anhänger gewonnen hat. Heutzutage sind aber seine Idéen von einer Gruppe rehabilitiert worden, die hauptsätzlich in Dänemark und Schweden aktiv ist. Wichtiger für die Anhänger dieser Gruppe erscheint die Verwendung von Kadosh als ein Werkzeug um ihre eigene Wirksamkeit Legitimität und historische Würzeln zu geben, als für die eigentliche Fortsetzung seiner Gedanken zu sorgen.