Tract
Feminism and Western esotericism: documented intersections
A documentary survey of the intersections between Western esoteric currents — nineteenth-century spiritualism, Theosophy, Thelema, the Goddess movement, Dianic witchcraft, the reclamation of Lilith, and the contemporary Satanic organisations — and the movements for women's rights and liberation over the last one hundred and seventy-five years. Closes with the groups and figures within those currents who have themselves publicly claimed feminism as their own project, quoted in the original.
The intersections between Western esoteric currents and the various movements for women's rights and liberation over the last one hundred and seventy-five years are well documented. This tract surveys those intersections and closes with a specific further observation about them.
Nineteenth-century spiritualism gave American and British women their first culturally-sanctioned platform for public speech. The Theosophical Society under Blavatsky and Besant was co-extensive with the Fabian, suffrage, and Indian independence movements. Aleister Crowley's Thelema explicitly rejected the Christian sexual codes on which nineteenth-century patriarchal law rested. Marija Gimbutas's archaeology of Old European Goddess culture fed second-wave feminism through Merlin Stone's and Riane Eisler's popular works. Z. Budapest's 1971 founding of Dianic witchcraft, and the parallel 1972 feminist reclamation of the demon-figure Lilith by theologians and Ms. magazine writers, established explicit feminist religion within the wider women's movement. The Satanic Temple, since its 2013 founding, has framed reproductive-rights advocacy as core religious practice and is currently pursuing that framing in federal court.
Those are the documented intersections. The final sub-page of this tract addresses the further observation: a set of specific groups and individuals within these currents have themselves publicly claimed feminism as their own project — in their own words, in print, and in current legal filings. The tract closes with those statements quoted in the original. The reader is left to assess the balance of the claim against the historical record laid out above.
