Häxan på Instagram: Samtida religiösa världsbilder i sekulära Sverige

Abstract

This is a study of contemporary Swedish witches on the social media platform Instagram. The purpose is to analyze the conveyed religious worldview in relation to the larger, more dominant secular Swedish worldview. This is done by identifying religious elements within the framework of what Paul Heelas calls the transgressive thesis, which describes a movement from the secular to the religious, via religious ”lures”. The material consists of 200 posts from 20 different accounts. This material is collected and analyzed following Robert Kozinet’s Netnographic method. It is also coded and themed with thematic analysis. The result shows a worldview dominated by self-care, enchanted nature, ceremonies, and a lack of commercialism, feminism, and environmentalism. This worldview has strong relations with the Swedish secular one in some regards, most noticeably self-improvement and open discourse of mental illness, but lacks in others connected with religious practice and beliefs. 59 % of the total codes account for a religious element, which makes the conveyed worldview truly religious. The most frequent religious elements involve tarot readings, crystals, and essential oils.