Astrology in Communist Poland
By Rafał T. Prinke Modern interest in astrology, revived in Victorian England, slowly spread to the Continent during the early decades of the 20th century[1]. In Poland, first symptoms of it appeared...
Category: New Age in Russia
Entangled Late Soviet Sufism
The complex esoteric milieu in Soviet society, although centered around influential figures and groups in major cities of the European part of the USSR, was not homogenous. Less noticeable peripheral areas in...
Report on “Observations of Unusual Atmospheric Phenomena.” Memoirs of an Employee of a Secret Soviet Design Bureau
Unidentified flying objects (UFOs)[1] were one of the key themes of the Soviet paranormal discourse – the “Soviet improbable” (Konakov 2022, 7) or “the unknown”[2] – along with psychics, Bigfoot, telepathy, and...
Reading Fever and Samizdat Translations
The photograph of me and two other yogis sitting in the Lotus position on the shores of the Black Sea in Crimea is a document of my youth. Like my photo portrait,...
New Age and Esoteric References in (Post-)Soviet Films
While preparing the conference “New Age Cultures in Late and Post-Soviet Russia” in June 2022 with recommendations of films to watch, we realized that so far no one has examined a single...
Eurasian Alchemy as an Anti-Authoritarian Form of Esotericism
Author: Nikolay Smirnov Now, when I hear the term ‘Russian New Age’ in the context of the war in Ukraine with the ongoing transformation of Russian society into something more and more...
Baba Vanga’s Afterlife in Russia: Reception, Construction, Instrumentalization
Author: Viktoria Vitanova-Kerber The “Bulgarian Nostradamus,” the “Pythia of Petrich,” or more conventional “Grandmother Vanga” (Baba Vanga) – many names have been attributed to the clairvoyant, healer, and recent internet celebrity Vangeliya...
M.I.C.E. – the KGB, the FBI, and Me. Part 2
Author: Jim Hickman The John Denver adventures began in 1984, shortly after the first meeting of the ASE in France. Through a mutual friend, John asked me to arrange a series of...
M.I.C.E. – the KGB, the FBI, and Me. Part 1
Author: Jim Hickman Beginning in the late 1970s and ending as the 20th century came to a close, I traveled extensively between the US and the USSR. For seven years, I was...
An’ It Harm (None), Do What Ye Will: Russian Wiccan and Theosophical Communities Reacting to the Russian Invasion of Ukraine
Author: Margarita Meshkova As it may suggest, the occult landscape of Russia is heterogeneous, and occult communities are not monolithic. So, the perception of the Russian invasion of Ukraine varies from group...
Bata Chygaruu Ritual in Kyrgyzstan: From Traditional Practices to New Age Spirituality
Author: Nestor Manichkin Formulas expressing good wishes spells and blessings have long become one of the traditional objects of scientific attention. While folklorists consider these ethical or religious speech formulas a ritual...
Books Instead of Lineage: Mystic Underground in the USSR (1960s–1980s)
Author: Boris Falikov The re-enchantment that started in the USSR after many years of forced secularization was unique as the continuity from pre-revolutionary Russia was mainly broken, and the iron curtain separated...
Report from Conference „New Age Cultures in Late and Post-Soviet Russia,” 16.-18.6.2022, Germersheim
Eleven international scholars presented their current research at the conference „New Age Cultures in Late and Post-Soviet Russia,” held in hybrid form. Two roundtable discussions addressed the global perspective of esotericism in...
International Conference “New Religious Cultures in Late and Post-Soviet Russia: Ideologies, Networks, Discourses”
The New Age research project team would like to announce International Conference, which will take place on June 16th–18th, 2022, at the Faculty of Translation Studies, Linguistics, and Cultural Studies in Germersheim....
Tatar New Age in a Muslim Shop
Author: Agnès Kefeli I entered the field of New Age spirituality by accident. For years, I focused on the history of conversion to Islam in Eurasia. Then, an encounter with one particularly...
