Last
year, one of the scholars of religion that I interviewed was Joseph P. Laycock, whose work has included a study of the Temple of Satan, a
group founded in the United States in 2012. Although the Temple have
gained considerable attention for their socio-political stunts over
the past decade, Satanism itself has a far older and more complex
history. To learn a little more about it, I had the pleasure of
interviewing one of the world’s foremost specialists on the topic,
Dr Per Faxneld, currently an Associate Professor and Senior
Lecturer at Södertörn University in Stockholm. We talk about his
book Satanic Feminism, his interest in Japanese religion, and
the relationship between esotericism, the arts, and cinema.
[EDW]
Your academic research has predominantly dealt with esotericism and
new and culturally alternative religions, with a particular focus on
Satanism. Were these subjects that interested you prior to entering
academia, or rather something that you developed an interest in while
in the university system?
[PF]
The initial plan for my BA thesis in History of Religions back in
1999 was actually to write about Shintō. I took Japanese – but
gave up after half a term as I didn’t have the tenacity needed to
tackle the kanji. At a loss for ideas, I then reverted to the topic I
had written an earlier undergraduate thesis about, namely
esotericism. However, at this time, in the late 1990s, I was not yet
aware of “esotericism studies” as a field in its own right and
figured what I was doing belonged to new religious movement (NRM)
studies. When NRM studies later on sort of fizzled out and
esotericism became the next big thing as I began my MA, my topic
proved quite timely (I still think NRMs is a fascinating and
important field, though). Esotericism is something I have always been
captivated by. As a kid growing up in the 80s and early 90s,
esotericism was present in all the things I liked best: metal, goth,
and industrial music, Warhammer, role-playing games like Call of
Cthulhu, comic books by Alan Moore, horror films. I also happened to
have a paternal grandmother who was a co-mason and Rosicrucian
(AMORC), and for my tenth birthday she gave me a tarot deck. That
certainly also helped steer me in this direction.
[EDW]
The work for which you are best known is Satanic
Feminism: Lucifer as the Liberator of Woman in Nineteenth-Century
Culture, a monograph
first published in Sweden in 2014 as your doctoral thesis. It has
since been republished by Oxford University Press as part of their
‘Oxford Studies in Western Esotericism’ series. Could you tell us
more about what this “Satanic feminism” is and what led you to
undertake this significant project?
[PF]
It was quite simple, really: reading up on the pre-history of modern
Satanism, as well as contemporary manifestations of it, I caught
sight of a prominent feminist strand in both – that had not really
been discussed by scholars before. I took the idea to the head of the
History of Religions department at Stockholm University, the
Buddhologist Per-Arne Berglie, and he said “Sure, go ahead, write a
doctoral thesis about it” (an easy thing for him to say, as the
department did not have to offer salaried PhD positions back in those
days!). And the rest is history. Well, actually it was not intended
to be primarily about history:
as originally proposed, the monograph would be one third historical
background and two thirds ethnography on contemporary Satanic groups.
I did two rounds of fieldwork among Satanists on the US East Coast,
but after a while it became clear to me that the historical material
was so rich, and so huge, that it demanded being the sole focus of
the study. Indeed, the first published version of the thesis ran to
724 pages, and then I had cut out 300 pages of discussion of
additional source texts. I dare not think what a monster of a book it
would have become if the contemporary stuff had also been included.
Some of the fieldwork and analysis of present-day texts made it into
my 2013 International
Journal for the Study of New Religions
article “Intuitive, Receptive, Dark: Negotiations of Femininity in
the Contemporary Satanic and Left-hand Path milieu”.
Satanic
feminism arose as a response to bigoted, male chauvinist use of
Christian myth. According to the Bible, Eve was the first to heed
Satan’s advice to eat the forbidden fruit and thus responsible for
all of humanity's subsequent miseries. The notion of woman as the
Devil’s accomplice is prominent throughout Christian history and
has been used to legitimize the subordination of wives and daughters.
In the nineteenth century, rebellious females therefore performed
counter-readings of this misogynist tradition. 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 tyrannical patriarchy supported by God the Father and his
male priests. Such “Satanic feminism” was expressed in a wide
variety of nineteenth-century literary texts, autobiographies,
pamphlets, newspaper articles, paintings, sculptures, and even
artifacts of consumer culture like jewellery. I investigated how
colourful figures like the suffragette Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
gender-bending Theosophist H. P. Blavatsky, author Aino Kallas,
actress Sarah Bernhardt, anti-clerical witch enthusiast Matilda
Joslyn Gage, decadent marchioness Luisa Casati, and the Luciferian
lesbian poetess Renée Vivien all embraced Satan as an empowering
symbol, and had the most wonderful time immersing myself in
turn-of-the-century culture (an era I have been obsessed with since I
read Sherlock Holmes and Bram Stoker’s Dracula
at age eight).
By
exploring the connections between esotericism, literature, art, and
the political realm, I attempted to shed new light on neglected
aspects of the intellectual history of feminism, Satanism, and
revisionary mythmaking. What I did not expect was the impact the book
would have on contemporary Satanic groups (for example, it ended up
on official Satanic Temple reading lists) and, even more surprising,
how conservative Christians across the world (for example in Italy,
Australia, and the US) would employ it as “proof” that feminism
is the Devil’s creation. In fact, the first to order the book from
the Swedish publisher was the Vatican Library (they even wanted two
copies!). The fact that Satanists, feminists, and conservatives have
all found the book so useful quite neatly illustrates the theoretical
points I make in it about the malleability of texts. Happily,
academic colleagues have also appreciated it, and it received rave
reviews in journals like History
of Religions, Nova
Religio, Aries,
Reading Religion,
Comparative Literature
Studies,
Nineteenth-Century French
Studies, Feministiskt
perspektiv, and
Tidsskrift før
kjønnsforskning (as
well as being awarded The Donner Institute Research Prize).
[EDW]
Satanic Feminism
deals heavily in literature, looking at works like Sylvia Townsend
Warner’s Lolly
Willowes. In the book
you make an important point about how literature has value for those
studying the history of religion. Could you tell us more about this
argument? How does the approach to literature that you take differ
from the perspective adopted by literature scholars?
[PF]
The basic argument is that literature powerfully shapes life worlds,
creates shifts in public discourse (or reproduces it), and that the
representation (and, in this case, subversion) of religion in
literature is therefore of key importance to the historical study of
religions.
I’m
not sure my approach is necessarily that different from what scholars
of literature do – it’s a vast academic field, with a multitude
of methodological schools of thought. One thing, perhaps, is that I
am quite interested in biographical details regarding authors, but
not, I should emphasize, as some sort of corrective or sole
determinant when it comes to interpreting texts. Rather, this
dimension is interesting to help understand why certain themes and
sources became popular to use (often linked to social class and
gender) and as a para-textual determinant of the reception
of texts – the public persona of the author often being of
significance to how readers understood their works. This, I suppose,
differs from the “death of the author” notion embraced by some
literature scholars, where the text itself is the sole focus, but
there are also many whose methods are much like mine.
[EDW]
Your work in Satanic
Feminism focuses on the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but I wondered if you had
thoughts on these discourses of Satanic feminism as they have
developed since that time? Do popular culture portrayals, such as the
recent Netflix series Chilling
Adventures of Sabrina
(with its clear feminist messaging in its portrayal of Satanic
witches), indicate a growing mainstreaming of these discourses?
[PF]
I have to admit I haven’t watched Chilling
Adventures of Sabrina
(the trailer did not appeal to me much), though I must do so sooner
or later for professional reasons. Certainly, such pop culture
portrayals indicate a growing mainstreaming of what we can call
Satanic feminism. Robert Eggers’ 2015 film The
VVitch is another
example. Well, at least many viewers have understood it as an
empowering depiction of devil-worshipping witches, though it could
arguably also be read as an example of demonized feminism or at least
a very traditional riff on witchcraft tropes – which is fine, as
it’s meant to be entertainment or a work of art, not a political
pamphlet that you need to agree with (many of the best horror films
have horrible politics).
[EDW]
You have also played an important role in raising academic awareness
of some of the earliest self-described Satanists, namely Stanisław
Przybyszewski and Ben Kadosh. How did you come across these figures
and what do you see as their significance in the broader history of
Satanism?
[PF]
I found both of them when I wrote my BA thesis back in 2001–2002.
The topic of the thesis was Satanism prior to the establishing of the
Church of Satan in 1966, and I dug pretty deep and hard to find
examples of actual, self-designated earlier Satanists. Przybyszewski,
Kadosh, Herbert Sloane, Maria de Naglowska, and Fraternitas Saturni
(the latter two, however, with come caveats) were what I came up
with. Them, and the pro-Satanic tendencies present in certain texts
by Eliphas Lévi and H.P. Blavatsky. Plus, of course, numerous
literary and socialist figures employing Satan as a positive symbol
of rebellion. The BA thesis was then expanded into my first published
monograph, Mörkrets
apostlar (“Apostles of
Darkness”) in 2006, subsequently accepted as my MA thesis. Once I
started my PhD in 2007, I looked further into these figures, and
wrote academic articles and book chapters about some of them.
Their
significance lies in that figures like Anton LaVey or Michael Aquino
should be understood as part of a longer tradition of lauding Satan,
that is not merely literary in nature. Pre-LaVeyan Satanism is
interesting as a sort of dark, sinister underbelly of more mainstream
forms of esoteric thought, and the fact that it had this subaltern
position speaks volumes about the broader historical esoteric milieu.
It is also thought-provoking with the complex and ambiguous
pro-Satanic ideas nested in Blavatsky’s The
Secret Doctrine (1888).
Though of marginal importance to Theosophy at large, they arguably
laid the ground for much of the esoteric Satanism to follow.
[EDW]
With Jesper Aa. Petersen, you are the co-editor of the 2013 edited
volume The Devil’s
Party: Satanism in Modernity.
How did that project come to fruition? Did it emerge from an existing
network of scholars engaged in researching Satanism?
[PF]
That book resulted directly from the first SatCon, an academic
conference on Satanism organized by me and Jesper and Asbjørn
Dyrendal in Trondheim, Norway in 2010 (I think it was). One of the
more memorable things about that conference, aside from the many
interesting papers and discussions, was the soft ice machine the
Norwegians had leased – meaning all these experts in diabolical
matters stood slurping away on ice cream cones during the coffee
breaks. Suitably gluttonous, I suppose. You could say an
international network of scholars working on the topic was properly
established at that very conference. We did a second SatCon a few
years later in Stockholm, co-organized by me and Kennet Granholm (who
has since sadly left academia), and there is occasional talk of a
third one any year now…
[EDW]
Has your work attracted much interest from contemporary Satanic
groups, and/or practitioners of other esoteric currents? If so, what
has that response been?
[PF]
It has, and with very few exceptions the reactions have been
positive. As mentioned, some groups have even added my work to their
official reading lists. I think it is important for scholars of
religion to have a cordial and respectful relationship with groups
they study, though this should of course not keep us from
deconstructing insider historiographies (Ronald Hutton’s The
Triumph of the Moon
being a perfect example of how this should be done) or dissecting
power dynamics within the religious field.
[EDW]
You are also interested in the relationship between art and
esotericism, having for instance published an article on that topic
in Nova Religio.
This intersection is something that a growing number of scholars,
such as Amy Hale, have delved into over the past decade or so. What
do you see as the importance of this avenue of research?
[PF]
In one way, art can function like literature, shaping life worlds and
creating shifts in public discourse (or reproducing it) on religion
and esotericism, and so on. Discussions about esoteric art, for
example in the art criticism of a period, also often have much to
tell us about contemporary society. So, there is that sociological
dimension to why the topic is interesting. Careful analysis of the
esoteric context for works of art will also facilitate a deeper
understanding of art history, for example the by now well-known role
of Theosophy in the development of abstract art. Large chunks of
modern art history are really impossible to comprehend correctly
without a basic grasp of esotericism. It is furthermore a vital key
to unlocking deeper layers of meaning and resonances in the work of
individual artists. I have just finalized an article on the
surrealist Leonora Carrington, who I think is a good example of how
we can engage more fully with an artistic production via esotericism.
She is also paradigmatic for how it is nonetheless seldom possible to
lock down a single
meaning using esotericism as some sort of matrix for interpretation.
[EDW]
Many of your early writings, largely in Swedish, focus on cinema. Is
the intersection between esotericism and cinema an ongoing interest
of yours?
[PF]
It is indeed. I took three terms of cinema studies, plus a summer
course on Japanese cinema, and film remains one of my great passions
– I spend a lot of time at the Cinematheque in Stockholm! My mother
also had a background in cinema studies, so I had something of a
cinephile upbringing. Even though I enjoy many different genres,
horror is close to my heart and also the genre where my academic
expertise in esotericism is most useful for doing analysis.
The
early publications you refer to deal with topics like the cultural
history of zombie films, mummy films and Egyptomania, Japanese horror
films, and German silent horror films. I have recently written pieces
on occult dimensions of Nosferatu
(1922, my all-time favourite film and a work I constantly find myself
returning to in my writing), the bizarre “documentary” Häxan
(1922), and personifications of death in cinema. Coming up is also an
overview chapter on esotericism and cinema that I’m co-writing with
my good friend Francisco Santos Silva. This spring, a cinema in
Stockholm invited me to select a series of classic early horror films
and I then gave talks on their religious dimensions before the
screenings – great fun, with very enthusiastic audiences.
[EDW]
From 2015 to 2017 you also worked on a post-doctoral project focusing
on the character of Lilith, and her transition from Jewish lore into
Christian and post-Christian contexts. Could you tell us more about
this particular project?
[PF]
The Lilith monograph, a short one compared to for example Satanic
Feminism, has been 60%
finished since back in 2017. The reason I did not wrap it up at that
time as planned was that in the middle of my post-doc my mother
suddenly became ill and died. This hit me very hard, and I
temporarily re-focused my publishing strategy on clearly delimited
articles (so I still gave my post-doc financers more than their
money’s worth in terms of publications!). A sprawling monograph,
focusing on the period from around 1800 until the present day, was
simply a bit much to handle under the circumstances. Immediately when
my post-doc ended, I was tenured at a different university. This
meant I was thrown into a world of heavy teaching and administration
duties, and Lilith ended up in the desk drawer. I still hope to
return to this project at some point, as it’s a quite agreeable
little book and I did an awful lot of fieldwork and digging for
obscure primary sources that would be a shame to waste. However,
there’s a very promising PhD thesis being written by Brennan
Kettelle in Amsterdam right now on queer dimensions of Lilith, so I
will at least wait until that is published so as not to unnecessarily
duplicate anything, and to be able to enter into dialogue with the
present cutting edge of Lilith studies.
[EDW]
Your current focus is on martial arts and the sacralisation of
physical exercise. Could you tell us more about this?
[PF]
I have a three-year project funded by The Swedish Research Council
where I’m looking at notions of spirituality in Japanese martial
arts in Sweden. Primarily, I’m analysing how ideas about subtle
energy (ki),
martial practice as a form of meditation, the development of a “sixth
sense”, attaining unity with the cosmos, a sacralisation of the
self, and so on, have been negotiated in relation to Swedish
secularity over time, ever since the arrival of Japanese martial arts
in the early twentieth century. There are also interesting tensions
and polemics within the martial arts milieu itself over whether there
is, or should be, a spiritual dimension at all to such activities.
A
view among westerners of East Asian martial arts training as
spiritual has been around for a long time and is found across Europe.
For example, a 1983 survey among West German Kyūdō (Japanese
archery) practitioners determined 84% claimed they were drawn to it
as a spiritual training. The theme of martial arts spirituality has
occasionally caused controversy, as evidenced by discussions in the
International Olympic Committee. When Japan applied to have Judō
included in the programme for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, concerned
voices claimed Judō was insufficiently “secular”. This rhetoric
reared its head anew in 2008, when China (unsuccessfully) attempted
to incorporate Wushu for the Beijing Olympics. In terms of a broader
impact outside martial arts practice as such, this milieu has also
functioned as a contact point with Buddhism for many. Moreover, it
has, alongside yoga, arguably been pivotal in a broader sacralization
of bodily exercises in the West. Such dimensions make martial arts
relevant to all scholars working on the transnational circulation of
East Asian religiosity and/or Western alternative spirituality.
I’m
also looking at how masculinity is constructed in this milieu.
Insider discourses often hold up Western masculinity as limiting for
the individual, tied to unnecessary violence and to a (supposedly)
destructive hard-line secularism. Eastern masculinity, by contrast,
is constructed as spiritual, semi-pacifist, and encompassing a
broader spectrum of situation-specific softness and hardness.
Enlightened Zen samurai and (paradoxically pacifist) warrior monks
are ideal figures, connecting spirituality and forms of
“alternative”, “non-Western” masculinity. There are always
multiple constructions of masculinity in any given culture, which
stand in a hierarchical relation to each other as well as to the
varieties of femininity. Awareness of this provides a scaffolding for
analysing the martial arts milieu and what hegemonic masculinities
its counter-ideal of “spiritual, peaceful warriors” has
historically been positioned in relation to. Conceivably, however,
martial arts masculinities often need to be conceptualised as “hybrid
masculinities”, a recent term designating when men in a position of
privilege nominally distance themselves from dominant ways of “doing
gender”, yet to some degree reproduce hegemonic masculinity.
[EDW]
Are there any future research projects or publications of yours that
we should be looking out for?
[PF]
Last month, Satanism: A
Reader, co-edited by me
and Johan Nilsson, came out from Oxford University Press. And just a
couple of weeks ago, the huge volume Det
esoteriska Sverige
(“Esoteric Sweden”), where I have contributed three lengthy
chapters, was published. It will appear in English translation next
year.
Together
with the historian and folklorist Fredrik Skott, I’m applying for
funding for a project on Swedish folk grimoires that I have high
hopes for. I’m also looking for funding to write a monograph on the
Spiritualist group The Edelweiss Society (that I contributed a
chapter on in Det esoteriska Sverige).
On
a completely different note, I have a new book coming out in the
spring of 2024 called Secret
Stockholm – a
guidebook to peculiar places in my native city. Much of the content
is, unsurprisingly, related to esotericism. The book is part of the
brilliant series from French publisher Jonglez, that has already
covered many other cities across the world.
Finally,
my book of “folk gothic” short stories, The
Tree of Sacrifice
(2020), is being published in English next year (originally written
in Swedish, it has since been translated into Finnish and Danish,
with a Ukrainian edition also on its way). Moreover, I have a new
fiction book in the works, with a similar setting (rural northern
Sweden a hundred years ago or so).
[EDW]
Are there topics to do with Satanism, or with esotericism and
alternative religion more broadly, that you feel are really in need
of further investigation?
[PF]
Numerous. “Folk magic” (and its intersections with so-called
“learned magic”, in itself a problematic category in many ways)
is a topic that needs to be more fully integrated into esotericism
studies (something I hope to do with the folk grimoire project just
mentioned), which as currently constructed has a very classist bias
in many ways. In general, social class is a topic I plan to do more
work on. Often mentioned in passing in discussions of for example
Theosophy, its full ramifications need to be explored in-depth.
Regarding
Satanism, I think there has been an unfortunate emphasis on US, UK
and Scandinavian Satanism. This field is in dire need of a more
global approach. Right now, I’m a visiting scholar at Tōhoku
University in Japan, and I’ve had the opportunity to talk to some
local Satanists. It’s fascinating to see the differences between
Anglo-European Satanism and the varieties present in a country where
only around 1% identify as Christians. I would love to do a
conference and collected volume on global Satanism!
