MARTIAN THEME IN RUSSIAN MODERN SPIRITUALISM MOVEMENT IN THE LATE 19TH - EARLY 20TH CENTURIES

Abstract

The paper investigates spiritualistic perception of Mars by Russian spiritualists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It determines historical and cultural specificity of spiritualist attitude to Mars and its Russian background enrooted in the orthodox tradition. The paper overviews popular scientific concepts, which made probable the existence of a highly developed civilization on Mars; it indicates the authoritative spiritual works, which influenced the interest of Russian spiritualists to cosmological problems; it reveals spiritualistic interpretation of spirit messages about the existence of a highly developed civilization on Mars; it considers the cosmological Martian theme in the works of Russian spiritualist I.A. Karyshev. The author argues that the interest in Mars should be explained by the similar nature of epistemological problems encountered by both spiritualists and astronomers. Elusiveness of natural phenomena in positivistic age was the reason that secured Mars a certain place in popular scientific, artistic and spiritualist literature. Аlthough the fideistic view was common among spiritualists, the author claims, that some of them argued for the need to demythologize the spirit messages. I.A. Karyshev’s cosmological system is of interest to the historian of religion as an example of spiritualist construction of Russian planetary utopia and can rightfully take its place in the history of Russian utopian literature.