Channeling, Agency, and Strategic Information: The “Semiotic Ideologies” of New Age Culture

One important aspect of religious practices and representations concerns the way information is handled. This article understands religion as a form of imagination, giving human properties to “nonhuman” agents (and vice versa), and thus, the rules of communication and interaction with such agents play a special role in religious culture. Webb Keane’s theory of “semiotic ideologies” is one tool that facilitates the study of religious norms, expectations, and rules. In New Age culture, practices of “information exchange” with imaginary superhuman agents and transpersonal forces are based on specific psychophysical techniques, often called “channeling” or “contact.” The analysis of specific ethnographic examples related to ufological channeling demonstrates that this practice forms new types of collective agency, a distinctive feature of New Age culture itself.

Ethnography and Eroticism in Russian Turkestan

There are only a few studies of the Muslim peripheries of the Russian Empire that apply a gendered lens. This article explores representations of Muslim women in pre-revolutionary Turkestan. It focuses on the research and practices of colonial ethnography, which supplied the authorities with knowledge about locals. Images of Muslim women in the Turkestan Album, a state-sponsored photography project, and French traveler Hugues Krafft’s independent volume Through Russian Turkestan, are analyzed and compared to explore how external observers depicted Muslim women. In addition, the article examines how the observers assessed the morality of Muslim women, as well as the impact that male affinities for effeminate young boys (bachas) had on the segregation of women.

Technology and Its Representation as a Source of Religious Experience for Old Believers of Yenisei Region

The paper discusses an ambivalent interaction between Chasovennye Old Believers of Yenisei region and modern technologies. Old Believers must rely on certain technologies and equipment for survival in the severe conditions of taiga and mountains. Nevertheless, technology is strongly associated with Antichrist and signifies his imminent arrival. The paper is focused on the intensity of usage of certain technological devices by the Old Believers, and how these devices are interpreted in eschatological terms. Technical specifications of various devices therefore serve as mediators in expressing religious emotions and experience.

Leo Tolstoy’s Faith: The Equivalence of State of Mind and Content

This article discusses Tolstoy’s faith in the unity of its two aspects: as the state of mind of its carrier and in terms of its content and the life principles that flow from it. It is shown that at the same time and in the same respect Tolstoy was the bearer of the faith and its investigator; therefore, its adequate interpretation is possible only if the principles established by him for himself are taken into account instead of an abstract and outward interpretation of what faith should be. The article considers, first, Tolstoy’s explanation of faith in various works, letters, diaries, and the like during the last thirty years of his life; and second, his distinctive expressions of faith along with discussions of it. The article demonstrates the equivalence of Tolstoy’s state of mind and the content of his faith, as well as its purely individual character. The study concludes with a discussion of the significance of Tolstoy’s understanding of faith for us today.