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,...
Tagged: Post-Soviet Russia
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...
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...
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...
Leader of the Last Testament Church Vissarion arrested
Author: Alexander Panchenko On September 22, 2020, Sergey Torop (also known as Vissarion Christ), Vadim Red’kin, and Vladimir Vedernikov, the leaders of the Last Testament Church (the LTC), were arrested in the...
New Forms of Spirituality in Russia: Notes from a University Course
text: Birgit Menzel, Anna Tessmann & Romina Heim wordclouds: Daria Shevtsova in collaboration with Amelie Hahmann, Daniel Drosdezki, Anna Manukyan, Yuliya Folschette, Swetlana Ostrowski, Melis Sari, Evgenia Schäfer, and Laura Hülsenbeck In...
The Role of Eastern Religions in Spiritual Quests of Young Orthodox Converts in the Late Soviet Period
Author: Barbara Martin The religious revival characteristic of many post-Soviet societies is usually dated back to the Perestroika and the liberalization of legislation on religious cults after 1988. In fact, however, interest...
“She Was Awakened by a Tall Humanoid”: Why People Need Alien-Abduction Narratives
Author: Alexander Panchenko Whether we consider New Age ontologies to be “religious” or not, we still need to analyze which super- or non-human intentional agents are involved in New Age beliefs and...
A Short History of Yoga in the USSR
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...
New Worldviews at the Soviet Collapse and Transition
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...
Report on the Annual Conference “Faith and Play” at European University at St Petersburg
Author: Andrey Tiukhtiaev On November 15–16, 2019, European University at St Petersburg hosted the annual conference “Exhibition of Academic Research Achievements”. This event, which has already become a tradition, is intended to...
New Age Astrology in the Time of Computer Technologies
Author: Anna Tessmann Occult knowledge transforms itself quickly, responding to the technology and the commercial spirit of the time. One of the most obvious beneficiaries of the recent technological achievements in the...
George Gurdjieff in post-Soviet Russian Mass Media
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,...
Alexander Panchenko on the New Age Project
In this interview with Alexander Panchenko, the head of the Russian project team, we learn about his understanding of New Age culture, his personal connection to our object of research as well...
Birgit Menzel on the New Age Project
Birgit Menzel, project leader on the German side, has been asked about her views on New Age in general and on Russia in particular, which represents the main focus of our international...
