Project of an «esoteric» charter of the Russian spiritualist society

Abstract

The document published here is entitled «on the question of organization. the project». According to our assumption, the document appears to be a draft of an «esoteric» charter of Russian spiritualist society. The peculiarities of the script let us assign the authorship to P.A. Chistiakov, who is mostly known as the editor of the spiritualist periodical «Rebus». The present document describes the structure of the Society, the rules regulating the relationship between members, the procedures by which the leaders are elected and new members are recruited and kinds of possible violations as well as the ways of resolving the conflicts. the document was intended only for internal use in the Society and that’s why it provides data that could help us clarify the specificity of the ideology of the Society, particulary the information concerning the role of the «spirit-controles» and the attitude of the Society towards the other religious doctrines. the published text is accompanied by the introductory article which demonstrates the significance of the publication for the study of the history of spiritualism in Russia. the published document could be of interest for the historians of religion, sociologists and researchers of the Silver Age culture.