Around the year 1900, European discourse on art was becoming increasingly 'esotericized'. The 1890s saw esoteric art salons create a sensation in Paris, and art critics and theorists painted a picture of the true artist and the esotericist as overlapping figures. There was also at the time a conflict regarding mediumistic art, a phenomenon initially made popular through Spiritualist mediums. This debate, as we shall see, had interesting gendered dimensions. In what follows, I will discuss how the Swedish female esotericist and artist Tyra Kleen (1874-1951) attempted to situate herself in connection to the concept of the artist as a magus, and the tensions between the positive view of mediumism in Spiritualism and the more negative or cautious approach to it in Theosophy, as well as in relation to the attendant gender issues.

Satanism. The mere word conjures up all sorts of strange images: human sacrifice, sexual orgies and shadowy conspiracies. Unsurprisingly, as any scholar working on the topic will tell you, the reality of this phenomenon is more prosaic than what is commonly imagined. Certain aspects of it, which we will consider at the end of the chapter, are however almost as bizarre and startling as anything that can be imagined by paranoid Pentecostals or authors of lurid pulp horror. Between here and that point of extreme expressions, however, we first need to visit raucous English rakes, Romantic poets, anarchists, Decadents, a Danish dairy salesman, a supposed lion tamer and lover to Marilyn Monroe, a PSYOPS officer, and other colorful characters.

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.”

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 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.

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.