Arab Palestinian Christians face many challenges living in the Occupied Palestinian Territory; restrictions of movement, a poor employment situation and rising emigration. According to previous research, religion and prayer provide strength and hope in the midst of the ongoing conflict. This research has used qualitative methods and the data was collected in the occupied Palestinian Territory in February–April and November 2017. Thirty-five participants were interviewed about their practice of prayer. The interviews were semi-structured. The aim of this paper is to examine how prayer is utilised among the Palestinian Christians to cope in stressful life situations and how prayer types are utilised across generations. Content analysis revealed four prayer types: petitionary, ritualistic, meditative and thanksgiving. The results suggest that prayer is major coping device and the utilisation of prayer varies across the generations.

Review of Anna Laestadius Larsson's Hilma. En roman om gåtan Hilma af Klint (Stockholm, Piratförlaget, 2017).

Review of Tobias Churton's Deconstructioning Gurdjieff: Biography of a Spiritual Magician (Rochester, Inner Traditions, 2017).

Within the past couple of decades, art-historical scholarship has developed a more acute awareness of the need to reassess and re-evaluate its dominant narratives. It has become apparent that the value judgements that have guided modernist historiography can no longer be taken for granted, and there has been an ever-increasing demand for more diverse perspectives. One central issue which has gradually surfaced into broader consciousness, is the impact of occult and esoteric ideas on artistic theories and practices since the late nineteenth century. This article looks into the background of this phenomenon, locating a point of culmination in the new Symbolist direction of art that emerged towards the end of the nineteenth century. The aim is to demonstrate that central Symbolist principles, such as inwardness, intuition, and dematerialisation are linked with popular esoteric beliefs, and that the late nineteenth-century aesthetic theorisations of these issues have had significant effects on later artistic developments. The artists of this new movement were no longer satisfied with the old ‘window on the world’ paradigm. Instead of copying a tangible reality as it appeared to their eyes, they turned inward, towards the world of dreams, fantasies and nightmares, visions and hallucinations, ancient myths and fairy tales. But they were not merely looking for new kinds of subject matter in order to ‘shock the bourgeoisie’. The innovative aesthetic attitude that they developed in both theory and practice rested on a philosophical foundation that was deeply rooted in occult and esoteric ideologies and their quest for new directions and forms of expression in art was paralleled by an intensive religious searching.

This article discusses the theosophy of Vera Hjelt (1857–1947), who was inspired by Annie Besant. Hjelt led an active life as a schoolteacher, factory owner, writer, occupational safety inspector and member of parliament. Hjelt experienced a theosophic-al awakening at the latest during the summer of 1894, after which her theosophical endeavours in Besant’s spirit and in imitation of her are revealed in Hjelt’s letters to her friend Cely Mechelin. These letters have not previously been used in scholarly study. The article argues that it is not possible to understand the underlying ethos behind Hjelt’s activities without considering her esotericism. In the worldwide unity of all creations, all bad deeds done to one were done to all. Thus it was essential to improve the working conditions of women in factories, for instance. When Hjelt experienced difficulties in her position as an inspector during the Voikka strike, and became an object of hatred amongst the workers against all her wishes, she was comforted by her theosophical thinking. This article for its part shows the many ways in which Western esotericism exerted an influence on late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Finnish culture, politics and policy making.

The study of Western esoteric traditions and practices has been a growing research field since the 1990s. This thematic issue aims at opening this field particularly in the context of Finnish cultural history, although the articles cover also other parts of the long tradition of Western esotericism in the history of Europe.

In the 1880s, the religious life in Finland was in the midst of a turbulent period which, for some, presented a threat to traditional moral values and social cohesion while for others it was the beginning of a new, more liberal era. During this period, new ideas and religious currents also stirred in the local milieu. For example, modern Western esoteric currents played a role in the process as well as many other ideological, scientific and religious phenomena. This article scrutinizes the period in question by focusing on a writing individual who entered the field of Finnish public debate somewhat suddenly. For him, the time was all about creating the best possible religion from all the ingredients that contemporary debate could offer.

This article aims at an integration of the topic of iconographic transformation processes into a wider context of meaning, in order to enhance its importance from a religious and cultural-scientific point of view. In this sense, my research is not interested in asking how a deity is depicted, but why it is depicted in a particular way; what conclusions can be drawn, and what factors might influence artistic work? Thus, the topic of the image’s context, its usage, and its meaning become the focus of attention. By taking the example of the god Vaiśravaṇa, my analysis of ‘religious images’ of him is composed of two interlinked parts: an exemplary study of a transcultural iconographic transformation process, as well as an analysis of the images’ context.

In this article we look at the printing and publishing history of the 1613 edition of the Mercator-Hondius Atlas. Our main focus is on the editions published by the Hondius family in the early seventeenth century. We take a closer look at the 1613 Latin edition, focusing on one specific, previously unrecorded copy currently held by the Donner Institute in Turku. We relate our findings to the more general issues concerning the production, context and history of the atlas.

The classification of Pentecostal currents and organizations has been widely debated within Pentecostal studies. In contemporary Sweden, the disintegration of historically important boundaries (denominational, practical and theological), as well as increased mobility between Pentecostal organizations, illustrates that the issue deserves further attention. If many of the old boundaries are being suspended, how may we distinguish between different Pentecostal varietie-s, and what role do such differences play for today’s mobile practitioners? The present article, which consists of a case study of Stockholm County, approaches the matter from a Bourdieu-influenced perspective, where differences are understood in terms of habitus. The study draws upon fieldwork in 16 congregations, carried out between 2009 and 2013, and concludes that three variations of the habitus can in fact be distinguished in the Pentecostal movement of Stockholm County; low key, grand and informal. The differences between these forms in fact impacts upon patterns of mobility among individual Pentecostalists; most prefer congregations of the same variety, even though there are examples of practitioners who visit other forms of organizations as well.