Unoccult

Tract · Feminism and Western esotericism: documented intersections

Factual audit

3 min read

This tract was reviewed for factual accuracy immediately after initial publication. This page publishes the audit results. Corrections identified by readers can be flagged through the contact route on the about page.

100% Verified against cited sources
Reviewed
2026-05-24, same day as initial publication
Method
Manual review of every named claim, date, quote attribution, book citation, and case reference against primary and academic secondary sources
Items checked
Approximately fifty across the ten authored sub-pages
Corrections applied
Ten total — four factual and date corrections, six direct-quote attributions replaced with paraphrases of documented positions
Verification sources
Faxneld (Oxford UP 2017); Braude (Beacon 1989); Wessinger (Mellen 1988); Campbell (UC Press 1980); Eller (Beacon 2000); Hutton (Oxford UP 1999); public court records; primary-source texts consulted directly where possible

Corrections log

  1. Besant's Indian National Congress presidency: was 1916; corrected to 1917 (Calcutta session, December 1917).
  2. Budapest's first book year: was 1976; corrected to 1975 (The Feminist Book of Lights and Shadows, self-published as Feminist Wicca).
  3. Rivlin's Ms. essay: was "first issue in the summer of 1972"; corrected to "December 1972 issue" — the first issue of Ms. was Spring 1972; Rivlin's essay was the December issue.
  4. TST Abortion Ritual description: was described as invoking Lilith and Satan; corrected to describe the ritual as published by TST — the member recites the Seven Fundamental Tenets, with particular emphasis on Tenet III on bodily inviolability, and takes a Personal Affirmation before and after the abortion.
  5. Gage attributed quote ("The whole theory regarding the Devil is a most stupendous fraud"): could not be verified against full-text of Woman, Church and State; replaced with paraphrase of her documented position.
  6. Budapest attributed 1976 introduction quote ("spiritual daughter of the burned witches..."): could not be verified; replaced with a description of her documented position across five decades of publications and interviews.
  7. Budapest attributed 1980 quote ("Dianic Wicca is the religious wing of the feminist movement..."): could not be verified; replaced with a description of her documented position across published work and public teaching.
  8. Lilith magazine attributed founding-editorial quote ("We call ourselves Lilith because..."): could not be verified verbatim; replaced with a description of the magazine's identity and consistent editorial framing.
  9. Lucien Greaves attributed press-release quote ("We believe abortion is a religious right..."): could not be verified against public press-release archive; replaced with a description of TST's position and its currently-live federal filings.
  10. TST attributed press-release quote ("The Satanic Temple views the practice of abortion as a religious ritual"): could not be verified verbatim; replaced with a description of TST's public characterisation of the practice under RFRA.

What the score means

"One hundred percent verified against cited sources" means that every remaining factual claim in the tract can be traced to a specific cited source at the level of specificity claimed. It does not mean every claim in the tract is guaranteed true — only that every claim maps to a citable source, and that no direct quotes are attributed to primary sources without either verified verbatim citation or explicit paraphrase-of-position framing.

The score reflects the state of the tract after correction. The audit does not extend to the interpretive framework of the tract itself — the reading advanced in the "Claims of authorship" sub-page is what the primary-source record supports on the assessment offered there; readers arriving at a different assessment of the same record are working with the same citations.