This talk traced the historical development of mindfulness, suggesting that modern mindfulness can be understood as a globally entangled discourse emerging from the crossroads of Buddhist traditions, esotericism, and academia. Mindfulness is the most common translation for the Pali term sati (Sanskrit: smrti). The global spread of mindfulness is the outcome of exchanges between learned Buddhists and Western academics and spiritual seekers from the late-nineteenth century onwards. Today, mindfulness is practiced in a variety of secular sectors such as schools, sports, and health care, wherein the historical links to Buddhist traditions are frequently toned down. However, Buddhist thinkers and concepts as well as notions of self-development cognizant with esotericism and holistic (”New Age”) spirituality remain important to the contemporary mindfulness discourse.

This talk traced the historical development of mindfulness, suggesting that modern mindfulness can be understood as a globally entangled discourse emerging from the crossroads of Buddhist traditions, esotericism, and academia. The global spread of mindfulness is the outcome of exchanges between learned Buddhists and Western academics and spiritual seekers from the late-nineteenth century onwards. Today, mindfulness is practiced in a variety of secular sectors such as schools, sports, and health care, wherein the historical links to Buddhist traditions are frequently toned down. However, Buddhist thinkers and concepts as well as notions of self-development cognizant with esotericism and holistic (”New Age”) spirituality remain important to the contemporary mindfulness discourse. The talk will draw from several studies in progress on historical and contemporary understandings of mindfulness. 

In this article we explore how young women and men in a Baptist congregation in Sweden in the early twentieth century described their conversion experience. Our premise is that conversion narratives can be understood as part of a performative making of the self and have the potential to enable novel ways of constructing masculinity and femininity. The assumption is that religion played an ambivalent role in the transformation of gender roles around the turn of the twentieth century. The study is qualitative, using rhetorical and content analyses of 21 conversion narratives derived from the Strängnäs branch of the Baptist youth association Senapskornet around 1913–1919. Writing about one’s conversion was not only a way of voicing one’s own experiences, but also of establishing the credibility of one’s personal identity as a Baptist, which required the use of accepted rhetorical and theological frameworks specific to the movement. We examine how male and female Baptists engaged with the rhetorical and theological frameworks, indicating the tendencies towards gender differences in the material. These included descriptions of crying and tearful prayer – exclusively attributed to women – and a variety of opinions about sin as either sinful behaviour or a subjective experience of the believer’s own sinfulness. However, we conclude there were smaller gender differences in Baptist conversion narratives than in those of other Christian movements of a similar date. Thus we contribute to the understanding of how identity is constructed through conversion narratives, as well as how constructions of gender can shape descriptions of religious conversion.  

In this article we explore how young women and men in a Baptist congregation in Sweden in the early twentieth century described their conversion experience. Our premise is that conversion narratives can be understood as part of a performative making of the self and have the potential to enable novel ways of constructing masculinity and femininity. The assumption is that religion played an ambivalent role in the transformation of gender roles around the turn of the twentieth century. The study is qualitative, using rhetorical and content analyses of 21 conversion narratives derived from the Strangnas branch of the Baptist youth association Senapskornet around 1913-1919. Writing about one's conversion was not only a way of voicing one's own experiences, but also of establishing the credibility of one's personal identity as a Baptist, which required the use of accepted rhetorical and theological frameworks specific to the movement. We examine how male and female Baptists engaged with the rhetorical and theological frameworks, indicating the tendencies towards gender differences in the material. These included descriptions of crying and tearful prayer-exclusively attributed to women-and a variety of opinions about sin as either sinful behaviour or a subjective experience of the believer's own sinfulness. However, we conclude there were smaller gender differences in Baptist conversion narratives than in those of other Christian movements of a similar date. Thus we contribute to the understanding of how identity is constructed through conversion narratives, as well as how constructions of gender can shape descriptions of religious conversion.

This lecture explores the emergence and development of women’s masonic activity in Sweden in the late-eighteenth through early-nineteenth century, arguing that mixed and female masonic orders enabled alternative conceptions of femininity in early modernity. While the Anderson Constitutions of 1723 bars women from initiation, the mid-eighteenth century witnessed the establishment of several mixed orders inspired by masonry in Europe. In France, female family members of male masons were initiated into a parallel degree system via so-called Adoption lodges from the 1740s on. Adoption lodges spread across mainland Europe through the second half of the eighteenth century, attracting women from the highest strata of society, including at the Swedish royal court. The starting point for the lecture is 1776, marking the initiation of Hedwig Elisabeth Charlotte of Holstein-Gottorp, by her husband, Duke Charles (later Charles XIII), the end point coinciding with the banning of all secret societies at the Swedish court in 1803. I will discuss the activities and grade symbolism of the women’s lodge of Adoption led by Duchess Charlotte, as well as the short-lived, co-masonic lodge Gula Rosen (Eng. “The Yellow Rose”). Though primarily available to elite women, I will argue that women’s activity in mixed and female masonic orders challenged early-modern gender norms, and that grade symbolism within these orders put forth a positive view of women’s spiritual and intellectual striving and capacity.

This is the first official, annotated edition of the complete magical diaries of the Swiss-American occultist Leah Hirsig (1883–1975), lover and disciple of the British occultist Aleister Crowley (1875–1947), self-styled Great Beast 666 and founder and prophet of the new religion Thelema. A schoolteacher by training, who lived, loved, and traveled independently, Hirsig embodied New Woman ideals in her life and in her attraction to a counternormative occult movement. In the early 1920s, Hirsig was appointed Crowley’s Scarlet Woman—a title that identified her as the earthly avatar of the Thelemic goddess Babalon and as Crowley’s feminine counterpart. In this role, Hirsig was essential in stewarding the Thelemic community during an eventful period, which coincided with the establishment of an Abbey of Thelema at Cefalù, Sicily, and the authorship of several of Crowley’s important magical works. In 1924, Hirsig was replaced as Scarlet Woman but remained devoted to Thelema for several years. Hirsig’s magical diaries provide a unique window onto the possibilities and challenges faced by women occultists in the early twentieth century. They highlight how occult movements offered heightened opportunities for women’s leadership but were also impacted by wider gender inequalities. The diaries are presented with a selection of previously unpublished letters and poems by Hirsig and Crowley, which shed further light on their relationship and the period from Hirsig’s attraction to Thelema in 1919 until her departure from the movement in 1927–1930. The book also includes an extensive editorial introduction that situates Hirsig within Thelema, twentieth-century occultism, and women’s changing roles during this period.

This paper will consider esotericism as a vehicle for the transmission of Buddhist meditation to Britain in the early twentieth century. While fin-de-siècle esotericism has been identified as essential for the spread of interest in Hinduism and Buddhism to the West, the esoteric sources for Buddhist meditation in Britain have not been fully charted. In this paper, I will focus on the relationship between the British magus Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) and Allan Bennett (Ananda Metteyya, 1872–1923), as a vehicle for this transmission. A high-degree member and Crowley’s teacher within the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Bennett in 1902 became one of the first British citizens to be ordained as a Buddhist monk. He was essential to Crowley’s study, in Asia, of yoga and meditation, which form central components on Crowley’s influential magical system. In the essay “On the Culture of the Mind” (which Crowley later reprinted), Bennett sought to promote Buddhism to a Western audience, presenting it as a rational, ethical, and scientific philosophy, and emphasised meditation – both seated meditation and conscious awareness in everyday action – above merit-making or other forms of Buddhist practice. In this paper, I will analyse how meditation is presented in Bennett’s writings, indicating parallels between his and Crowley’s thought. In so doing, I will suggest that Bennett’s and Crowley’s relationship was important to linking Buddhist meditation with Western spirituality, paving the ground for the global spread of meditation and mindfulness in the second half of the twentieth century.

This lecture will consider the complex intersections of esotericism, rationality, and gender, using as its starting point the gendered dichotomy of reason and unreason, central to the formation of modernity. Enlightenment philosophy upheld a masculinized ideal of disembodied, rational, and detached study and domination of a shadowy, unruly, and feminized natural world. This image hinges on a series of related gendered binaries: active-passive; mind-body; culture-nature; and light-darkness, with unreason ascribed to women and femininity. As Hanegraaff (e.g, 2012) has demonstrated, the binary of rationality and irrationality fundamentally shaped the emergence of the category of esotericism, which Enlightenment thinkers polemically ascribed to the realm of irrationality. The relationship between esotericism and rationality appears thornier, however, when viewed from the perspective of gender. In this lecture, I will discuss three illustrative examples of how esotericism has upheld, subverted, or destabilized the gendered dichotomy of reason and unreason. Firstly, I will consider women’s masonic activity around the turn of the century 1800, indicating how the rituals and symbolism of women’s lodges of Adoption indicated a positive valuation of women as seekers of knowledge and illumination and offered (elite) women a venue for challenging early-modern notions of female spiritual and intellectual inferiority. Secondly, I will consider the complex gender politics of Anglophone occultism around the year 1900. Fin-de-siècle occultism, formulated by its proponents as a scientific quest for spiritual knowledge, offered women of the growing middle-classes the opportunity to hone masculinized characteristics of reason and willpower. At the same time, occultist polemics against (female-dominated) Spiritualism (seen as passive and irrational) highlight how esoteric movements have frequently upheld gendered scripts. Thirdly, I will discuss the British occultist Kenneth Grant and his Typhonian Trilogies (published 1972–2002), indicating Grant’s vision of the transcendence of rational subjectivity as a desirable and feminized state. Through these examples, I will highlight how a consideration of gender offers new insights into the different ways esotericism has related to hegemonic systems of knowledge, as well as how the history of esotericism sheds novel light on how notions of reason have been shaped in the intersection with gender.

This paper will analyze the intersection of orientalism, racialization, and sexualized anxieties around new religions in the early-twentieth-century United States. I will argue that 1920s rhetoric around predatory “love cults” inscribed a racialized, heteronormative script of vulnerable, white femininity requiring protection from a rational, appropriately sexed, white masculinity against the sexualized threat of religious and racialized others. As a case study, I will highlight 1920s press coverage of the British occultist Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) and the followers of his religion Thelema. Crowley received considerable negative press attention in his life, often highlighting his allegedly deviant sexual morals and influence over women and youth. His movement was frequently described as a “love cult”, a term often used in sensationalist journalism of the time to denote male-led religious movements that emphasized permissive sexual morals and attracted female members. Amidst cultural anxieties around declining births and changing gender roles, U.S. conservative press in the early twentieth century frequently portrayed these and other new religious movements as a threat to the (white) nuclear family. Further, as the example of Crowley and his treatment in U.S. tabloids highlights, white spiritual teachers perceived as sexually deviant could be orientalized and construed as a threat to white femininity and heterosexuality. I will link Crowley’s case to a longer history of racialization and sexualization of religious minorities in the U.S., tracing how religious otherness has had the potential to signify ruptures in whiteness and heterosexuality.