Traces of a Magical Class Struggle

The Tattarisuo Mystery was a sensationalized witchcraft case in Finland in the early 1930s. At its centre was a group of displaced working-class individuals, called by the press the Tattarisuo coven, who sought through magical rituals to remove injustice from the world, wage a war against Freemasons and radical nationalists and solve a legal battle over a disputed inheritance. The contemporary press dubbed their motivations superstitious and religious delusions without any political implications. In this article I examine questions of class and previously overlooked factors around the Tattarisuo incident and place the coven’s actions in the wider socio-political context of the inter-war period. The article focuses on how the previous court experiences of Ida Viden, the medium of the coven, impacted the later objectives of the group. Through recently discovered court transcripts I aim to show hidden political agendas behind the Tattarisuo coven’s actions, examining the coven’s last magical ritual as a disguised form of resistance, fuelled by Civil War grudges and targeted at rising right-wing radicalism.