This study investigates polemical representations of enemies in early Christian Greek literature (1–600 CE) through the framework of Cultural Attraction Theory. It begins with the identification of recurring categories of accusations—such as heresy, hypocrisy, arrogance, immorality, strife and associations with dubious characters—and, through a combination of close reading and extensive computational analysis of the GreLa corpus, finds that they exhibit both structural stability and diachronic transformation. Comparison with pagan corpora reveals shared reliance on Graeco-Roman rhetorical topoi, while also highlighting Christians’ increasing focus on heresiology after the Constantinian turn. The findings suggest that enemy depictions can be understood as cultural attractors, stabilized by cognitive mechanisms (such as negativity bias, moral disgust and categorization) and influenced by ecological factors (rhetorical conventions, persecution discourse, institutionalization and doctrinal consolidation).
This article examines how identity motives shape siblings’ disaffiliation from the Conservative Laestadian revival movement in a Sweden-Finnish context, highlighting apostasy as a multifaceted identity process marked by renegotiation between inherited and emerging identities. Drawing on life-story interviews, the study shows that religious exit is influenced by age, motivational structures and family relations: adolescent departures were accompanied by destructive behaviour, while adult apostasy involved reflection and negotiation within the family. Although the siblings left Conservative Laestadianism, some retained elements of Christian faith, suggesting reformulation rather than outright rejection. By situating these narratives within Identity Process Theory and Motivated Identity Construction Theory, the article demonstrates how motives such as continuity, belonging and psychological coherence shape religious identity processes. The findings also reveal the risks of marginalization and the vacuum state described in role-exit theory, where individuals feel suspended between identities and struggle to establish new roles. By foregrounding sibling dynamics and motivational structures, this article contributes new insights into how religious disaffiliation unfolds as an ongoing negotiation of continuity and belonging.
The aim of this article is to synthesize existing knowledge in a novel way by looking through a social psychological lens at historical manifestations of antisemitism and its most recent variant, presented as a case study which tracks its development and compares it with the core demonology of antisemitism. By reviewing literature representing many different disciplines, focusing particularly on history, theology and social psychology, the article aims to bridge disciplinary gaps, making social psychological insights on inter-group relations and social identities accessible to scholars in other fields and thus foster a cross-disciplinary dialogue on antisemitism. Linguistic “innovation” has been needed whenever an existing variety becomes politically incorrect, which, on the individual level, may give rise to a denial that the new variety is antisemitism. It is concluded that compared to other racisms applied research is still needed to fill the existing lacuna to find remedies for antisemitism.
Identity is a key concept in practically all fields of the humanities and social sciences. However, different approaches diverge dramatically in their conceptualization of identity, which makes mutual dialogue and integration markedly challenging. In this article, I present two key approaches to identity—Social Identity Theory (SIT) and Dialogical Self Theory (DST)—and discuss the possibilities of combining them. While the two theories stem from different subfields of psychology, I argue that their key concepts can be meaningfully mapped onto one another. In particular, I argue that the I-positions and we-positions of DST can be understood as the personal and social identities of SIT, respectively. Combining DST and SIT terminology in this way helps to address the blind spots of both theories. What SIT adds to DST is a detailed outline of the causes and consequences of we-position activation. What DST adds to SIT, in turn, is a more elaborate conceptualization of intrapersonal identity work. While the integrated approach I propose here is useful for the study of identity in general, I argue that it is particularly beneficial for the psychology of religion. Unlike mainstream psychologists, psychologists of religion have been especially interested in investigating the identities of people long since dead. Biblical scholars in particular have employed SIT in their investigations. In this article, I suggest that a dialogical (or more broadly narrative) conceptualization of identity is more readily applicable to the textual sources used by biblical scholars than the more mainstream SIT approach.
Identities (and social identities) are studied in many different disciplines and approached with different theoretical tools and concepts. This special issue grew out of the need to enhance dialogue between disciplines and expand our common ground in studying past and present identities and their significance.
This review article explores the applicability of the Social Identity Approach (SIA) in historical research, focusing on research and sources from the Early Modern era, particularly the context of the Lutheran Reformation. The study argues that while identity is often treated as self-evident in religious historical research, SIA offers conceptual tools that can enrich historical interpretation. Using examples from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century writers’ texts, the article demonstrates how boundaries of “true Christianity” were negotiated and maintained, and how the conceptualizations of SIA could be used in these discussions. It also highlights methodological challenges: historians lack direct access to human cognitive processes and must rely on mediated, fragmentary sources, which necessitates contextualization and source criticism to avoid anachronism. SIA should therefore be employed as a heuristic framework rather than a predictive model. When applied critically, it enables nuanced analysis of identity construction and group dynamics, fostering interdisciplinary dialogue between history and social psychology.
This article critically reassesses the accounts of the supposed custom of infanticide, particularly female infanticide (in Arabic, wa’d al-banāt), among pre-Islamic Arabs, arguing that this notion emerged during the Umayyad era as an imagined aspect of the so-called pre-Islamic jāhiliyya (“age of ignorance”). Both noble aspects, such as valour and esteemed poetry, and debased ones, such as polytheism and immorality, were ascribed to pre-Islamic Arabs, thus encapsulating a troublesome heritage. Additionally, this article explores some aspects of the Islamic-era political dynamics, particularly the polemics between various Arabian tribes. The case of the tribe of Tamīm—who are said to have been the main perpetrators of infanticide—is examined, highlighting how inter-tribal polemics influenced the birth and popularization of tales depicting the Tamīm as engaged in the brutal practice of daughter-killing. In my interpretation, the Tamīm became the butt of these polemical attacks because they fought on the losing side during the second Muslim fitna, “civil war” (680–92 CE). I argue that the sustained recollection and retelling of the jāhiliyya narratives served not only to forge a new Muslim identity and self-assertion of moral reformation but also to facilitate intra-Arab distinctions in Islamic times. Social Identity Theory (SIT) serves as the interpretive framework of the article
The aim of this article is to synthesize existing knowledge in a novel way by looking through a social psychological lens at historical manifestations of antisemitism and its most recent variant, presented as a case study which tracks its development and compares it with the core demonology of antisemitism. By reviewing literature representing many different disciplines, focusing particularly on history, theology and social psychology, the article aims to bridge disciplinary gaps, making social psychological insights on inter-group relations and social identities accessible to scholars in other fields and thus foster a cross-disciplinary dialogue on antisemitism. Linguistic "innovation" has been needed whenever an existing variety becomes politically incorrect, which, on the individual level, may give rise to a denial that the new variety is antisemitism. It is concluded that compared to other racisms applied research is still needed to fill the existing lacuna to find remedies for antisemitism.
Identity is a key concept in practically all fields of the humanities and social sciences. However, different approaches diverge dramatically in their conceptualization of identity, which makes mutual dialogue and integration markedly challenging. In this article, I present two key approaches to identity-Social Identity Theory (SIT) and Dialogical Self Theory (DST)-and discuss the possibilities of combining them. While the two theories stem from different subfields of psychology, I argue that their key concepts can be meaningfully mapped onto one another. In particular, I argue that the I-positions and we-positions of DST can be understood as the personal and social identities of SIT, respectively. Combining DST and SIT terminology in this way helps to address the blind spots of both theories. What SIT adds to DST is a detailed outline of the causes and consequences of we-position activation. What DST adds to SIT, in turn, is a more elaborate conceptualization of intrapersonal identity work. While the integrated approach I propose here is useful for the study of identity in general, I argue that it is particularly beneficial for the psychology of religion. Unlike mainstream psychologists, psychologists of religion have been especially interested in investigating the identities of people long since dead. Biblical scholars in particular have employed SIT in their investigations. In this article, I suggest that a dialogical (or more broadly narrative) conceptualization of identity is more readily applicable to the textual sources used by biblical scholars than the more mainstream SIT approach.
This article examines how identity motives shape siblings' disaffiliation from the Conservative Laestadian revival movement a Sweden-Finnish context, highlighting apostasy as a multifaceted identity process marked by renegotiation between inherited and emerging identities. Drawing on life-story interviews, the study shows that religious exit is influenced by age, motivational structures and family relations: adolescent departures were accompanied by destructive behaviour, while adult apostasy involved reflection and negotiation within the family. Although the siblings left Conservative Laestadianism, some retained elements of Christian faith, suggesting reformulation rather than outright rejection. By situating these narratives within Identity Process Theory and Motivated Identity Construction Theory, the article demonstrates how motives such as continuity, belonging and psychological coherence shape religious identity processes. The findings also reveal the risks of marginalization and the vacuum state described in role-exit theory, where individuals feel suspended between identities and struggle to establish new roles. By foregrounding sibling dynamics and motivational structures, this article contributes new insights into how religious disaffiliation unfolds as an ongoing negotiation of continuity and belonging.
This study investigates polemical representations of enemies in early Christian Greek literature (1-600 CE) through the framework of Cultural Attraction Theory. It begins with the identification of recurring categories of accusations-such as heresy, hypocrisy, arrogance, immorality, strife and associations with dubious characters-and, through a combination of close reading and extensive computational analysis of the GreLa corpus, finds that they exhibit both structural stability and diachronic transformation. Comparison with pagan corpora reveals shared reliance on Graeco-Roman rhetorical topoi, while also highlighting Christians' increasing focus on heresiology after the Constantinian turn. The findings suggest that enemy depictions can be understood as cultural attractors, stabilized by cognitive mechanisms (such as negativity bias, moral disgust and categorization) and influenced by ecological factors (rhetorical conventions, persecution discourse, institutionalization and doctrinal consolidation).
In this article I examine how ecological and esoteric knowledge intersects in the works of the contemporary Icelandic artist Gabríela Friðriksdóttir. Drawing from diverse traditions and practices, such as alchemy, Neopaganism, tarot, numerology and animism, she uses and reinterprets esoteric knowledge and iconography to build her own worlds. Following this analysis, I place Gabríela’s works within art history, notably in relation to the esoteric and ecological perspectives found in Surrealism. Here I specify this investigation by examining her fusion of interior life and exterior worlds through the lens of the surreal marvellous. Gabríela proposes expanding our perspectives on humans, non-humans and the environment we share, exploring new forms of interconnection between these actors. This is a recurring formal and textual theme in her art, one that negates the Western binary systems that have long been implemented to categorise and control the environment and its inhabitants: human/nature, nature/culture, human/non-human, man/woman etc. Gabríela’s creations trouble these boundaries, in particular her hybrids that blend human and other-than-human qualities. I further relate this to the lineages of Surrealism and their critique on Western ideologies and systems.
The essay considers the seeker as weaver and positions relationality as central to the experiences of many at the intersections of esotericism and modern art. It invokes the metaphor of weaving to envision a non-static, dislocated and liminal relational positioning by which the seeker weaves worlds: the visible and invisible, material and immaterial, self and other, public and private, and past, present, future. It refers to a relational approach within broader practices around art including art-making, curating and viewing and for which certain forms of art are intertwined with notions of futurity and the potential for societal and spiritual renewal. In doing so, it considers a possible feminine praxis of seekership that connects recent scholarship on seekership with notions of praxis and feminist theory with regards to the relational on the double axis of the social and psychic. It takes as its case study the American artist Paulina Peavy (1901-1999) whose feminist praxis of art-making and curating was guided towards collective change on both a social and spiritual level. Resisting the temptation to conceive of the artist as lone visionary, it establishes her networks (psychic and social) as productive spaces through which she navigated her praxis.
This article explores the intersections of clairvoyance, mediumship and gender in early-twentieth-century art through the case of the Finnish artist and occultist Meri Genetz (1885-1943). While esotericism has played a pivotal role in modern art, visionary and mediumistic practices are still often seen as marginal phenomena within mainstream art history. This article traces Meri Genetz's spiritual journey from the 1920s to the 1930s by analysing her archival material and art- especially self-portraits. In doing so, it underscores various factors that have contributed to the marginalisation of mediumistic and visionary art. The article posits that conceptual ambiguities, discursive demarcations and gender bias have all contributed to this marginalisation. Moreover, the significance of bodily and artistic practices is emphasised. Genetz's case demonstrates that even a profound engagement with occultism does not necessarily manifest in an easily identifiable way in the artworks. Consequently, archival research and familiarity with prevailing esoteric discourses (i.e. occulture) are instrumental in identifying mediumistic and visionary phenomena. By situating Genetz within her own historical context and esoteric discourses, the study challenges the male-orientated narratives of modern art and highlights the need to reassess mediumistic and visionary phenomena as a vital part of twentieth-century art.
In this article I examine how ecological and esoteric knowledge intersects in the works of the contemporary Icelandic artist Gabriela Fri & eth;riksd & oacute;ttir. Drawing from diverse traditions and practices, such as alchemy, Neopaganism, tarot, numerology and animism, she uses and reinterprets esoteric knowledge and iconography to build her own worlds. Following this analysis, I place Gabriela's works within art history, notably in relation to the esoteric and ecological perspectives found in Surrealism. Here I specify this investigation by examining her fusion of interior life and exterior worlds through the lens of the surreal marvellous. Gabriela proposes expanding our perspectives on humans, non-humans and the environment we share, exploring new forms of interconnection between these actors. This is a recurring formal and textual theme in her art, one that negates the Western binary systems that have long been implemented to categorise and control the environment and its inhabitants: human/nature, nature/culture, human/ non-human, man/woman etc. Gabriela's creations trouble these boundaries, in particular her hybrids that blend human and other-than-human qualities. I further relate this to the lineages of Surrealism and their critique on Western ideologies and systems.
This article explores a group of contemporary magical artists who are inspired by feminist new materialist thought. In the work of these contemporary artists, magic is defined less by the transmission of traditions and initiatory wisdom or revelations about truth, and more by the ways in which artists can initiate change by shifting perspectives and orientations through creating inspiring, affective, embodied experiences. I argue that the philosophical shifts that are emerging from feminist philosophies and feminist fiction are also helping to create a cultural space for wider discussions of magic, particularly among artists, who are reconfiguring ideas about nature and being, erasing the distinctions between the human and non-human worlds, highlighting the deep connections between the material and immaterial.
Seeking to establish "psychical history" as a category of Victorian occult science, this paper explores the consequences that emerge when belief in spirit phenomena converges on the historical imagination. To do so, a study of the Bygone Days watercolour series by Scottish Spiritualist and artist, Jane Stewart Smith (1839-1925), explores the shifting layers of meaning in her paintings by looking at three important inter-related aspects of her career: her artistic efforts to picture Edinburgh's old town, her belief in Spiritualism and her interests as a psychical investigator. Rather than viewing these watercolours as simply illustrating the social reality of the nineteenth-century old town, this paper explores the ways in which Smith was deeply concerned with esoterically perceiving and engaging history. In playing with the boundaries of history and the present, the seen and the unseen, Smith's images engage questions about how to connect with the past and reveal complex relations between her art-making, spirituality and historical inclinations. Establishing psychical history as an important category provides the theoretical framework for the discussion of Smith's idiosyncratic worldview in relation to the occultural context of scientific ideas originating from the field of psychical research. I argue Smith's deepening esoteric interests in psychical history inspired her own endeavours at both history-writing later in her career as a form of generative knowledge production and repicturing her series not only as illustrative material but also as simulations of clairvoyant insights.
This essay revisits art as an alternative epistemology that probes the parameters of the real and the complicated entanglements between humans and non-humans from an eco-feminist perspective. It builds upon the work of Leonora Carrington and her deployment of the Surrealist marvellous fuelled by her engagement with occulture and explores, its ecological and feminist implications. It also comments on the multiple responses their legacy has engendered in the contemporary artistic scene, especially by artists such as Emma Talbot, who responds to the current sociopolitical and ecological crisis. The discussion is framed by an eco-feminist reconfiguration of aesthetics as feminist eco-aesthetics that can be used for shedding light on the various discursive strategies at work in artistic practices in which eco-occulture and the gender-political crossover. Premised upon reflections on the artwork by women Surrealists and insights drawn from eco-feminism, eco-criticism, feminist post-humanities and new materialism, feminist eco-aesthetics is defined as a set of radical visual strategies and modes of learning predicated upon multi-species interdependence, symbiotic being and ethics of care. This is a non-dualist aesthetics that offers artists a more efficient strategy to unsettle hierarchical images of the world and touch upon the socio-political oppression of women and of the entire web of interconnected non-human beings.
This article explores a group of contemporary magical artists who are inspired by feminist new materialist thought. In the work of these contemporary artists, magic is defined less by the transmission of traditions and initiatory wisdom or revelations about truth, and more by the ways in which artists can initiate change by shifting perspectives and orientations through creating inspiring, affective, embodied experiences. I argue that the philosophical shifts that are emerging from feminist philosophies and feminist fiction are also helping to create a cultural space for wider discussions of magic, particularly among artists, who are reconfiguring ideas about nature and being, erasing the distinctions between the human and non-human worlds, highlighting the deep connections between the material and immaterial.
This article examines the trans-disciplinary œuvre and hosting activities of the Swiss-based artist and archivist, Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn (1881–1962), founder of the Eranos Conferences and creator of the Eranos Archive. Drawn from my doctoral project’s findings, the text argues that Fröbe’s self-identification with the “Great Mother archetype” functioned as a strategy of feminine spiritual authority at Eranos—expressed through practices of conference-hosting, image curation, archiving and visionary art-making. Through unpublished correspondence, Eranos-Jahrbücher texts, and visual analyses of Fröbe’s Visions drawings (1934–37) and “Great Mother” Archive images, Fröbe is situated within 1930s New Age esotericism. Drawing on religious studies concepts and art-historical methods, her “mythopoetic performance” of the Great Mother is interpreted as a mode of both institutional and visionary authority. Fröbe’s opus exemplifies how fin-de-siècle women mobilised visionary experience and archetypal symbolism, constructing autonomous modes of spiritual and epistemic leadership within modernist intellectual cultures.
