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Andrei Tiukhtiaev The second workshop of the German-Russian research group “New religious cultures in Late and Post-Soviet Russia” was conducted from 1 to 3 October 2019 at European University at Saint Petersburg. Each participant is currently working on an individualresearch project focusing on some form of “new”, non-institutionalizedreligiosity. Everyone presented his/her current state of research and preliminaryresults; theoretical and methodological issues were also discussed. Alexander Panchenko studies ufology as a religious phenomenon relying on the cognitive science of religion. In particular, he makes use of Pascal Boyer’s concept of “full access agents” that refers to all religious forms of life, including “traditional” churches as well as conspiracy theories. According to this approach, any kind of religion is based on the belief that specific agents exist in this world or another possessing strategically important information, while humans have only limited access to it. His research seeks to elaborate a common ground for esotericism and conspiracy theories as parts of a broader religious field. Other scholars of the projects attempt to analyze New Age spirituality in its cultural and historical specificity. Anna Tessmann has been dealing with Zoroastrianism and astrology in the USSR and Russia for many years. In 2012, she published a book on how Zoroastrianism is presented through different discourses in academic communities, religious practices, fiction, and media. Now, Anna focuses on the study of astrology in the late Soviet Union and contemporary Russia that implies the collection of various data, namely interviews, results of participant observation, current literature, Soviet underground compilations/manuscripts, as well as official print media touching upon astrological topics. Having shed light on the issue of sources, Anna shared her plans on the creation of a database about Soviet and post-Soviet astrology, which would be handy to deal with by using quantitative methods. Statistics can reveal some peculiar linguistic and discursive features of Russian astrological schools in comparison with Western branches of astrological thought.&#160;&#160;&#160; Andrei Tiukhtiaev presented some of his preliminary research results concerning pilgrimage to archaeological sites in Southern Russia established by followers of the new religious movement “Anastasia” at the end of the 1990s. There is a well-developed pilgrim and tourist infrastructure near the dolmens (megalithic burial sites of the Bronze era) today supported by various esoteric groups, attracting people of different social and cultural backgrounds. What unites pilgrims with sometimes radically opposed views is a “culture of authenticity” – an attempt to construct subjectivity independent from the experience of socialization in mainstream institutions. This common tendency of contemporary tourism presents one of the features of modern individualism when a person tries to be free from external authorities, while such a language of modern individualism turns out to be a result of specific religious socialization. Our German colleagues paid attention to the fact that theidiom of so-called self-spirituality, well-spread in the West, usually refersto the liberal ideals, while in Russia it expresses conservative politicalvalues. The discussion revealed that the reason for this lies in the genealogyof Russian New Age. Post-Soviet esotericism stems rather from the late Sovietintellectual underground than from the Western counterculture. Participants ofunderground esoteric groups opposed themselves to everything associated withSoviet official ideology, including internationalism, gender equality or socialjustice agenda. As a result, contemporary Russian New Age followers share ideasof ethnic nationalism and patriarchal values.&#160;Conservative attitudes of adherents of Russian new religious cultures had been discussed in other presentations as well. Julia Andreeva’s research is devoted to the so-called courses of femininity, where entrepreneurs suggest that women cultivate traditionalistically understood gender roles following the images of ancient Slavic and Vedic cultures. This is a fast-developing segment of the business, products of which include seminars, training, lectures, publishing, films and so on. Julia’s research is based on ethnographic methods, and the collection of field data is an on-going process. Sergei Shtyrkov’s presentation was about ethnic activism and conservative political movements in the republic of North Ossetia-Alania. Typologically, traditionalism in Ossetia can be described as neopaganism, wherein some elements of the idiom applied by traditionalists to express their views remind of the language of New Age spirituality. In his talk, Sergei had drawn attention to the phenomenon he is calling “practical religious studies”, academic or quasi-academic activity aimed to legitimize ideas of ethnic traditionalism. Apologists of “practical religious studies” tend to adopt concepts from academic as well as esoteric discourses. Special attention was paid to the case that ideas from Stanislav Grof’s transpersonal psychology of Stanislav Grof borrowed from the texts of the Russian buddhologist and historian Eugenii Torchinov. The connection between specific forms of esoteric religiosity and intellectual classes, especially artistic and scientific circles, throughout various epochs is a significant topic that has frequently been touched upon during discussions. Svetlana Tambovtseva presented the results of her study of neopagan aesthetics’ genealogy, dealing with the case of amateur linguistics. The alphabet “VseYasvetnaya Gramota” was invented (reconstructed, from an emic point of view) by neopagan activists in Soviet times to find mystical meanings in traditional culture, and it had become especially popular after the collapse of the Soviet Union. This alphabet is not necessarily used in order to write texts, the aesthetics of its lettering is much more important. The letters’ stylistics embodies the protest against the contemporary “simplified” Cyrillic alphabet, and it stems from, as Svetlana demonstrated, the art of Russian modernism. The latter proves the modern status of traditionalists’ revivalism, but it also shows how intellectualists’ interpretations of traditional culture appear to be a part of modern mass religious culture. It is well-known that esoteric ideas were popular mostly among Russia’s academic and artistic intellectuals for many years, taking effect on some philosophical and political teachings. One of them is the teaching of “mystical anarchism" representing the object of study of Romina Heim. Romina raised a question concerning the reliability of sources, especially in the case of memoirs, diaries and other first-person accounts. One of the possible methodological decisions suggested during the discussion is to find texts about mystical anarchists created outside this movement, not coming from its direct followers. Interesting data can be derived from sources of personal origin produced by people of art, for example, Russian symbolists, who were interested in mystical and esoteric ideas and practices.&#160;&#160;&#160; Relationships between intellectuals who shared New Age beliefs in a different country is a primary concern in Birgit Menzel’s research. In the presentation, she described how so-called “citizen diplomats” and adherents of the Human Potential Movement from the USA and the USSR had been collaborating during the Cold War. Various people – journalists, scientists, writers – from both sides of the iron curtain believed that the end of the conflict between the socialist and capitalist world would contribute to the breakthrough in human spiritual development. Quantitative methods appear to be relevant for such kind of research, enabling to accumulate and visualize a huge amount of data for the further network analysis.It has been more than a year since our project group has taken up work which is now increasingly taking shape. The results of our research will be published in academic sources both in English and Russian. If you are interested to read about our project, events, and research activities in more detail you are welcome visit our homepage. Photo credit: Anna TessmannThis blogpost in Russian