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THE RUSSIAN THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN CHINA: SPECIFICS OF THE PRINT AND ELECTRONIC SOURCES
Abstract
This article is devoted to the problem of revealing and interpreting sources of the history of international esoteric organizations in the 20th century, using the example of the Russian Theosophical Society in China. The authors emphasize that in recent years the interest to the problem of the birth and development of the occult currents which are not related to traditional religions is growing in Russia. Last years the religious situation in Russia has changed, the freedom of religion was established in the country, all formerly operating religious organizations in the country revived their activity, many new denominations appeared, and organizations that had been banned in the Soviet period returned to the country. Activity of members of such organizations encourages researchers to study their history. Special attention is paid to mystical movements of institutional type, whose activities affect the public consciousness, destroying the traditional mental attitudes. These societies originate from the beginning of the 20th century including the most famous organization, the International Theosophical Society. The leaders of this movement E. Blavatsky, A. Besant argued that the spiritual vacuum of the West could be filled with wise Eastern religions mixed with magic and occultism. The work on the reconstruction of the history of the Russian branch of the International Theosophical Society showed that it is possible to single out a number of groups of sources on this topic. First, these are the materials which were published in print version; second, there is a number of sources, especially digitized, antiquarian which are not available to researchers in print version and which are placed on the following portals: http://www.theosophical.org/; http://theosophy.net/; http://www.theosophy.ru/; third, the materials of archives, first of all, of the Russian State Archive of the Russian Federation, which include the collections of the Russian Foreign Historical Archive of Prague. The authors of this article reconstructed the history of Chinese lodges of the Russian branch, based on these groups of sources. The study of the history of the theosophical movement as a phenomenon of the social and cultural life of Russia and Europe at the end of the 19th and 20th centuries helps to understand the processes taking place in the sphere of modern social consciousness deeper.
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