Modern Occultism in Late Imperial Russia

Introduction

Introduction i n the early 1890s, the symbolist poet Valerii iakovlevich Briusov discovered his enthusiasm for the occult, and by the early months of 1893, he was regularly attending spiritualist séances. several times a week, he joined a circle of acquaintances who gathered in darkened rooms to experience uncanny , supernatural occurrences.1 These assemblies were so important to Briusov that he noted them in his diary, recorded them in a black notebook with the inscription “spiritualist séances,” and mentioned them in letters.2 Judging by these accounts, séances not only provided Briusov with playful entertainment and a chance to engage in mischievousness and in amorous adventures, but they also engendered philosophical and artistic contemplation about reality and were a source of creative inspiration. so deep was Briusov’s emotional, artistic, and intellectual investment in spiritualism that, bedridden in 1895, he longingly begged his friend aleksandr lang (Miropol’skii) to visit and to entertain him: “bring the planchette with you; we’ll write and hold a séance.”3 eventually, Briusov’s séance experiences provided the basis for a novella and influenced his poetry and his self-perception as an artist. Briusov, of course, was an outstanding poet, but his enthusiasm for spiritualism was far from exceptional. ideas about mystical and supernatural powers played a prominent role in the cultural imagination of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century russian society. While Briusov was walking the night streets of Moscow to join his fellow séance participants, many of his contemporaries were engaged in similar activities. no statistics are available that could shed light on the absolute numbers of those who, alongside Briusov, were drawn to occult rituals during the last decades of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth.4 Those who recorded occult activities in 4 MODERN OCCULTISM in LATE IMPERIAL RUSSIA their letters, diaries, notebooks, or memoirs were predominantly highly educated men, but a significant corpus of sources indicates that many more contemporaries shared these interests. The widespread fascination with the occult was mirrored in, among others, the sphere of publishing. Between 1881 and the end of the empire, over 30 periodicals devoted to the invisible world appeared in russia, but the occult was also a prominent topic in mainstream publishing .5 Cheap pamphlets extolled occult techniques and standard newspapers frequently reported supernatural occurrences. in February 1893, at the time when Briusov was attending séances in Moscow, the popular st. Petersburg daily Peterburgskaia gazeta (St. Petersburg Gazette) ran a series of articles on spiritualists in the northern capital entitled “Peterburgskie spirity.”6 Over the course of two weeks, the broadsheet informed its readers about some of the capital’s most famous occultists, about ghostly apparitions, reincarnation, spirit guidance in fiction writing, hypnosis, spirit photography, the importance of religion for all these phenomena, and the close relation between occult phenomena and the sciences. The series began with an interview of Viktor ivanovich Pribytkov, and it is indicative of the allure of spiritualism that Pribytkov, “the ‘official’ St. Petersburg spiritualist, editor and publisher of the [spiritualist ] journal Rebus,” needed little introduction. he and his journal were well known to the newspaper’s readers.7 By the beginning of the new century, Briusov was moving confidently in the circles Peterburgskaia gazeta described. he made the acquaintance of Pribytkov in 1900, contributed articles to Rebus, and presented the journal’s editor with “a small book of my poetry that has just come out.” Briusov hoped that Pribytkov might find “in the last section, where I speak openly about my cherished beliefs [...], poems [whose themes] are not entirely unfamiliar to you.”8 Before entrusting his letters to Pribytkov to the post, Briusov carefully composed draft versions, which underlines the importance he attributed to this correspondence.9 Three years later, and more than a decade after he first took an interest in séances, Briusov had gained such high regard among russia’s leading spiritualists that he offered the gravesite obituary of aleksandr nikolaevich aksakov, the man who had done more than anyone else to propagate spiritualism in russia.10 Briusov’s interest in the occult and his friendship with authors, editors, and protagonists of publications dealing with the supernatural illustrates several themes that are at the center of this study. The significance of the occult in the private lives of contemporaries and its role in mass culture are the subjects of this book. The history of late imperial occult thought and practice are traced [3.133.79...