If One Knows Where to Look, Fiction is Magic: Reading Fictional Texts as Manuals of Magic in Post-Soviet Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus

Kateryna Zorya

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Chapter 11 If One Knows Where to Look, Fiction is Magic

Reading Fictional Texts as Manuals of Magic in Post-Soviet Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus

In: Fictional Practice: Magic, Narration, and the Power of Imagination

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Kateryna Zorya

Kateryna Zorya
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 261–288

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004466005_013

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The fall of the Soviet Union led to an influx of ideas, including religious and esoteric ideas, from the West to former Soviet Union countries. One of the major and underexplored lines of transmission for esoteric currents was via works of fiction, both translated and original, which were published in great amounts following the disintegration of Soviet censorship. Post-Soviet readers—particularly those involved in fringe milieus, including esotericism—retained the habit of perceiving fiction as a way to bypass censorship, and often took fictional descriptions as hints at real practice, which was helped by the early reception of New Age fiction such as R. Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Post-Soviet writers, in turn, continued to write fictional texts in order to transmit information they could not or did not want to write plainly, or illustrate ideas in an easy-to-digest way (“instructive esoteric fiction”). The chapter examines how texts of instructive esoteric fiction are composed, what purposes they served in the post-Soviet esoteric milieu, and lists several notable works that were received by post-Soviet esotericists as instructive, whether the author intended them to be or not.

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Fictional Practice: Magic, Narration, and the Power of Imagination

Series: Aries Book Series, Volume: 30

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004466005

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 13 Sep 2021

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Chapter 11 If One Knows Where to Look, Fiction is Magic

Reading Fictional Texts as Manuals of Magic in Post-Soviet Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus

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Fictional Practice: Magic, Narration, and the Power of Imagination

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