Category: New Religious Movements
This next part further develops the themes addressed in my previous blog post, focusing on the reciprocal dynamics involving popular Sufism in Central Asia. Entanglement: Western Esotericism under the Shadow of Sufi...
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...
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...
Author: Sergey Pakhomov There is a huge empirical material on the topic of the history of yoga in the USSR, i. e. memories of contemporaries, photographic and film documents, various articles, and...
Author: Joseph Kellner At the twilight of Marxism-Leninism, some Soviet citizens, mostly of the educated urban middle class, accepted Western-style liberal democracy and capitalism as the only worldview still worthy of the...
Author: Julia Andreeva For many religious groups in Russia references to “folk,” “traditional,” and “heritage” play an important role in their popular theology. Usually, these markers allow them to emphasize the antagonism...
Author: Birgit Menzel The Greco-Armenian spiritual teacher, philosopher, and composer George I. Gurdjieff (1866–1949) has remained one of the major figures in 20th-century Western esotericism. Both the Enneagram and New Age Sufism,...
Andrei Tiukhtiaev takes a close look at the practice of pilgrimage in New Age spirituality, focusing on the issues of sociality and performance. In the following article, Andrei shares his personal experience...