Gary Lachman - The Return of Holy Russia: Apocalyptic History, Mystical Awakening, and the Struggle for the Soul of the World

To Anja Flde Bjrlo, my guide, without whom I am lost.

THE RETURN OF
HOLY RUSSIA

The Return of Holy Russia gives us perspectives on Russias spiritual history we sorely need. It helps us understand why the Putin administration has trouble giving up its entanglements with Ukraine, why many Russians will match their claims of exceptionalism against Americas, why Russian thinkers reject Americas claim to worldwide moral leadership, and why transpersonal psychology is flourishing to a greater degree in Russia than it is in America where it was born. Today, as Russia and the West sink into confrontations that threaten the world with accidental nuclear war, we need the rich understanding of Russias culture that Lachmans book provides.

MICHAEL MURPHY,COFOUNDER AND CHAIRMAN EMERITUS OF THE BOARD OF THE ESALEN INSTITUTE

Gary Lachman is a writer with an elegantly readable style, a passionate interest in aspects of the world that history normally neglects, and a profound understanding of psychology. In The Return of Holy Russia he has found his ideal subject. Its an intoxicating examination of the intense and distinctive relationship between Russian culture and religious feeling, of the kind that flowered into exotic cults and occult beliefs in the late nineteenth century, seemed to go underground during the Soviet Union, and may now be emerging again in Vladimir Putins authoritarian regime. I read it with delight.

PHILIP PULLMAN,AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE TRILOGY HIS DARK MATERIALS

Russia is neither the West nor the East. It is both. And it participates in deep Christian mystical, indigenous, esoteric, and occult currents that were mostly lost or forgotten in Western Christianity and actively suppressed in secular modernity. In his new book, Gary Lachman shows us why the return of these esoteric currents via the new (and old) claim of a Holy Russia is so important, why such nationalist theologies cannot really be our answer, and why particular Russian thinkers can point us in the right directiontoward a third way beyond pure reason and past faith toward a new or future gnosis, or knowing within, that all is good. This sounds outrageous to many a modern ear of course. Hence the importance of this book.

JEFFREY J. KRIPAL, J. NEWTON RAYZOR CHAIR IN PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGIOUS THOUGHT AT RICE UNIVERSITY ANDAUTHOR OF SECRET BODY

This book seeks to frame Putins own political philosophy within that of his self-declared mentors in Russias pre-Soviet Silver Age of the early twentieth centuryand more broadly to the overarching spiritual history of Russia, neglected by mainstream historians but vital to an understanding of that countrys destiny in a post-Soviet world. The values of the Silver Age philosophers that Putin misapprehends and distorts, Lachman tells us, are the very ones the rest of the world might well adopt to ensure the future well-being of our planet.

VICTORIA NELSON,AUTHOR OF THE SECRET LIFE OF PUPPETS

In this unprecedented and gloriously learned book, Gary Lachman explores how Russia, the indestructible nation, is in many regards the historical repository for the mystical traditions of the East and West and, as such, harbors an unforeseen destiny in our world. The Return of Holy Russia is a startlingly brave and thrilling work of historicism and political-mystical philosophy. I found it absolutely enthralling.

MITCH HOROWITZ, PEN AWARDWINNING AUTHOR OF OCCULT AMERICA AND THE MIRACLE CLUB

This is Gary Lachmans most profound work so far, and the most topical. Like his admired Colin Wilson, he can convey in one book the harvest from a hundred others. The overview of Russian history here is an example, leading up to the Silver Age when the perennial search for national identity included psychic awareness and spiritual aspiration. Major players, many of them familiar from Garys other works, are Blavatsky, Steiner, Ouspensky, Roerich, Rasputin, Papus, and the Christian philosophers Berdyaev and Solovyov. The surprise is that a century later, under Vladimir Putin, the philosophies and ideals of that age are being revived and actively promoted. While the leading thinkers of the West deny any meaning to the cosmos or to human history, Russia seems to have taken a philosophical turn well worthy of study and respect.

JOSCELYN GODWIN,AUTHOR OF THE GREATER AND LESSER WORLDS OF ROBERT FLUDD

Gary Lachman has that rare ability of the best public intellectual, which is to redact and convey complex ideas without dumbing them down. In his new book, Lachman shows us again what he does best, pointing out the hidden significance of what most scholars have ignored. For nearly a century, Russia was largely cut-off from the rest of the Western world and consequently its spiritual heritage forms a blind spot in the minds of the reading public. What do Greek Orthodox Christianity, ideas of a Third Rome, medieval Russian paganism, 19th-century Russian Romanticism, the Silver Age at St. Petersburgs Stray Dog Caf, and Vladimir Putin have in common? Lachman not only tells us but also makes a strong case for why its important we should know.

DANA SAWYER,PROFESSOR OF RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY AT THE MAINE COLLEGE OF ART AND AUTHOR OF ALDOUS HUXLEY

A clear, accurate, comprehensive, and enjoyable exploration of a civilization that many know only through clichs. This may be Gary Lachmans best book yet.

RICHARD SMOLEY, AUTHOR OF A THEOLOGY OF LOVE

Acknowledgments

Many people helped to make this book possible. Id like to thank my old editor, Mitch Horowitz, for putting me in touch with Jon Graham, who commissioned it. As is often the case, my thanks go to the staff of the British Library and to that of my local source, Camdens Swiss Cottage Library; I hope my many requests for material stored in their reserve stock section have not prejudiced them against me. Many thanks also go to David Jones and the staff of New Dawn magazine, who supplied me with a wealth of material, only a fraction of which I was able to use. I would also like to thank Victoria Nelson for alerting me to sightings of contemporary Oprichniki. Writing a book is always a challenge and doing so while undergoing a personal crisis is doubly difficult. Id like to thank the friends who helped me through a very dark time: Ray Grasse, Helene Arts, Malcolm Rushton, James Hamilton, Lisa Jane Persky, and my sons, Max and Joshua. But my deepest thanks is reserved for my arctic flower and Sherpa, Anja Flde Bjrlo, who gave me more than she knows. That our paths had to divide is more painful than I can say.

Ever seen a leafa leaf from a tree?

Yes.

I saw one recentlya yellow one, a little green, wilted at the edges. Blown by the wind. When I was a little boy, I used to shut my eyes in winter and imagine a green leaf, with veins on it, and the sun shining....

Whats thisan allegory?

No; why? Not an allegorya leaf, just a leaf. A leaf is good. Everythings good.

Everything?

Everything. Mans unhappy because he doesnt know hes happy... he who finds out will become happy at once, instantly

When did you find out you were so happy?

I was walking about the room. I stopped the clock It was twenty-three minutes to three.

FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY,THE DEVILS

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to the Silver Age (18901920)