Per Faxneld

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 professor in Study of Religions at Södertörn University, Sweden. Specialising in esotericism, he has published more than 100 articles and book chapters as well as several books (among them the award-winning “Satanic Feminism: Lucifer as the Liberator of Woman in Nineteenth-Century Culture”, Oxford University Press, 2017). Current research projects include a book on spirituality in Japanese martial arts, and a study of early spiritualism in Sweden. He also writes fiction, and made his literary debut in 2020 with a “folk gothic” collection of short stories, “The Tree of Sacrifice” (subsequently translated into four languages). His first novel will appear from Albert Bonniers Förlag in early 2026.

Instagram: @perfaxneld