When Gigi Coyle was invited to visit the USSR in 1982 as a citizen diplomat, part of the Esalen Soviet-American Exchange Program, the tensions between the superpowers were at a high point....
ALIF School of Harmonious Development The rise of neo-Sufi communities in Kazakhstan follows the USSR collapse,[1] marking a period of spiritual and cultural revival. During this transition, various missionaries arrived, and local...
New Thematic Series: The Introduction by the Guest Editor Oleg Yarosh Historically, Eurasia includes several Muslim-majority regions with a vibrant Islamic spiritual tradition that developed despite strict laïcité policies during the Soviet...
Date: Tuesday, January 13, 2026 Time: 6.15–7.45 pm (CET) Location: Big Seminar room, Hartmannstr. 14, Building D1, Erlangen Link for virtual attendance: https://fau.zoom-x.de/j/62556506187
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...
By Vladimir Wiedemann The Yogi commune in the upper reaches of the Siëma River (near Dushanbe, Tajikistan). The employees of the hydrometeorological station, together with guests from Estonia. Summer 1982. Unknown Photographer....
By Vladimir Wiedemann Vladimir, teaching in the Yoga group of the Avtotrans. Tallinn, 1981. Vladimir Wiedemann’s archive. I organized the yoga group Avtotrans in Tallinn in 1980 during my work as a...
By Guram Kochi, an ‘old sailor of the Ship of Fools of Master G’ The Way to Finding God Within Oneself At the beginning of the 20th century, Russian Christian Hermeticism experienced...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Author: Daria Shevtsova This article grew out of the research for my master’s thesis on the Soviet healer Evgeniia Davitashvili (1949–2015), also well-known to many Russian-speaking people as Dzhuna. What gave the...
