Please note this lecture will not be recorded
Join Per Faxneld, author of the award-winning book “Satanic Feminism” (Oxford University Press, 2017), to learn about how feminists around the year 1900 used satanic symbolism as a strategic tool. Discover how these women weaponized and inverted misogynistic notions of Eve as the Devil’s chosen one, making a heroine of her, Lilith, and witches to combat conservative Christian oppressors. The talk explores various forms of Satanic feminism appearing at the crossroads of feminism, art, occultism, and progressive politics. We will see colourful examples from literature, painting, occult texts, feminist tracts, and even jewellery design. The cast of spectacular characters include occult-inspired suffragette Elizabeth Cady Stanton, her guru the theosophist H.P. Blavatsky, Luciferian lesbian poet Renée Vivien, and Mary MacLane of Butte, Montana, who wanted to marry the Devil to become free of all societal regulation of women.
Per Faxneld is Associate Professor in History of Religions at Södertörn University (Stockholm), and a devotee of weird antiques, ominous music, and sinister sartorialism. He is the author of three monographs, two edited volumes, and numerous articles on Satanism, occultism, and esoteric art. In 2020, Faxneld made his literary debut with “Offerträdet” (“The Tree of Sacrifice”), an illustrated collection of folk horror tales set in 19th-century northern Sweden.