The paper offers critical reflections on the project of redefining the principles of religious and cultural studies proposed by Wouter Hanegraaff as part of his project of discovery of Western esotericism. The ideas of Hanegraaff’s most recent book “Hermetic Spirituality and Historical Imagination: Alternative States of Knowledge in Late Antiquity” are taken as a starting point. It is shown that this work has incorporated all the basic concepts developed by him since the beginning of academic career: the construction of academic knowledge; the problem of the marginalization of some forms of knowledge due to the fashion for others; altered states of consciousness; the great polemical narrative of monotheism; religious experience; gnosis; opposition to classical hermeneutics and postmodern deconstruction. A detailed outline of the new vision of hermeticism proposed by Hanegraaff is given. It is shown that Hanegraaff’s research does not create the picture of ancient hermeticism, but is a projection of fashions of the late twentieth century in religious studies. A detailed critique of the concept of altered states of consciousness and the related modern category of gnosis is given, its theoretical and empirical doubtfulness is highlighted. At the same time, the project of applying the category of altered states of consciousness to the religion of the ancient Greeks in Julia Ustinova’s monograph, on which Hanegraaff relies heavily, is being critically examined. The ahistoricity and tendentiousness of Hanegraaff’s reconstruction of spiritual experience have been highlighted. The idea of distinguishing three components in Western culture: religion, science and gnosis has been criticized. 

The article concentrates on the study of the historiographic concept of a dualistic religious tradition, embodied in the form of various heretical movements in Medieval Europe and the Middle East. The study focuses on the history of the Bulgarian Bogomil heresy, which played an important role in this historical concept as a link between the Eastern dualistic sects and the better known Western European Cathars. It is shown how in Bulgarian historiography this concept of continuity, while maintaining its general structure, get rethoughts in various ideological contexts. The analysis of the Bulgarian historians’ discourse is based on methodological positions formulated as a result of modern discussions among researchers of the Cathar heresy. The “Bogomil myth” of Bulgarian historiography is viewed as existing at the intersection of various discursive fields: religious, from which the model of the genealogy of heretical teachings was borrowed; academic, which included various ideological interpretations; esoteric, which is examined using the example of the adaptation of this concept by the Bulgarian theosophical community of the early 20th century – the World White Brotherhood, which used the image of the Bogomils to legitimize its teachings through the construction of a historical myth. 

The article focuses on the research program of the Russian Society of Experimental Psychology headed by the Russian biologist Nikolai Petrovich Wagner. The activity of the society is considered in the context of the formation of experimental psychology in the late 19th century. On the one hand, its emergence was due to Wagner’s scientific convictions, who believed that the study of the psyche with the methods of experimental psychology could provide new information about human nature. On the other hand, Wagner’s interest in parapsychological concepts, which defined a boundary area between physics, biology and psychology, was due to his spiritualist views on human nature. Adhering to the concept of spiritual evolution, which asserted the teleological nature of the evolutionary process, Wagner sought to identify human characteristics, that would argue in favour of preserving his individuality after the death of the biological organism. The Russian Society of Experimental Psychology should be considered as the first Russian parapsychological society. The research program of the Society, which considered the proof of human immortality as its final goal, is characterized as being at the junction of natural-scientific methodology and natural theology. This thesis explains the increased interest in the Society’s activities on the part of famous Russian religious philosophers, who were deeply interested in resolving problems of psychology from an idealistic point of view. The sources of the Society and, first of all, the archival sources of N.P. Wagner, who reflected on the creation of an original approach to the study of subjective phenomena of the psyche, shows the necessity for historians of psychology to turn to the history of religion, in particular, the history of esotericism, which can clarify the motives of some scientific searches within the framework of experimental psychology of the late 19th century.

The article discusses the reasons for the wide popularity of entheogens among representatives of occultism of the late 19th – early 20th centuries, and the role they played in their theories and practices. It is hypothesized that the appeal of occult authors to entheogens should be considered in the light of the conflict between science and religion, which sought to overcome the representatives of occultism. Entheogens in their theories served primarily as means of achieving experimentally verifiable religious experience, thus presenting themselves as instruments of scientific approach to religious phenomena. The first part of the paper takes up theoretical issues in the study of the occult, and its place in the history of the study of Western esotericism. The second part examines a series of theological controversies that developed in the 16th century around witches’ ointments in Europe, and peyote in the New World. According to the author, it was in these controversies that the type of rhetoric inherited by the occultists of the 19th century was formed. The third part of the article is devoted to analyzing the works of Louis Alphonse Cahagnet and Aleister Crowley, in which entheogens are considered as scientific means of obtaining evidence for the existence of religious phenomena. While the idea of using entheogens as scientific tools for the study of religion unites the works of Crowley and Cahagnet, there are a number of significant differences between them, primarily due to the development of psychology. If for Cahagnet the visions experienced under the influence of entheogens, provided that they can be reproduced, confirm the objective existence of the world of spirits and immaterial reality, Crowley’s interpretation of entheogenic experience takes place in a more psychologized way, referring primarily to the fact of religious experience and higher states of consciousness. The latter reflects the inclusion of occult authors in the current scientific rhetoric of their time, where the reference to entheogens, and the way they are treated as scientific means of verifying religious phenomena, is constantly reinterpreted through the lens of changes in modern science. 

The synthesis of evolutionary theories and esoteric teachings is a significant example of the contact between science and esotericism. The article examines the ideas of British biologist Julian Huxley and his brother Aldous Huxley on the subject of their correspondence to the concepts of evolutionary esotericism (E. Prophet, V. Hanegraaff, J. Kripal). A distinction between the concepts of “evolutionary esotericism” and “evolutionary mysticism” is introduced. The following ideas are proposed to be the key elements of “evolutionary mysticism”: the recognition of the possibility of human transition to a new stage of evolution; the active role of man in evolution and his consideration as an engine of its development; the primacy of mental evolution in relation to physical evolution; the need to develop “supernatural abilities” as a condition of evolution. The correspondence of J. Huxley’s project of “Evolutionary Humanism” and A. Huxley’s views to the concepts of evolutionary esotericism (E. Prophet, J. Kripal) is established. The article demonstrates the similarity of the Huxley brothers’ views on evolution, in particular, their belief in the possibility of group progress through individual self-improvement, and argues that it is possible to study their ideas about evolution as part of evolutionary esoterism. 

The paper considers how Old Believer media field on the Internet was created and expanded. Based on interviews with clergy and active representatives of different communities involved in the development of the Old Believer Internet, as well as observations in the digital environment, the origins, main stages and features of the media policy of Russian Old Believers are traced. The starting point can be considered the appearance of email newsletters in the late 1990s, and already at the turn of 2000–2001 young Old Believers, representatives of the Russian Orthodox Old-Rite Church and Pomorian Old-Orthodox Church, came up with the idea of a website for the Old Believers of all denominations. The article examines the processes of the emergence and expansion of the Old Believer presence on the Internet, which were accompanied by discussions related to legitimizing the use of new technologies, negotiations concerning the boundaries of what is permissible, and the development of one’s own media policy and behavior strategies on the Internet. Throughout history, attempts have been made to create general resources for Old Believers of all denominations, which turn out to be short-lived due to competing logics in views both on the development of the Old Believers in general, and on the functions of media platforms, content selection, personal preferences, etc. As a result, media field is fragmented, there are a large number of platforms on which representatives of different denominations communicate, conduct educational and missionary work separately from each other. 

The article is dedicated to the evolution of the strategy of the new evangelization, one of the key categories of modern missionary activity and social doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. The study analyzes documents of the Second Vatican Council, apostolic letters, and encyclicals of the Roman Pontiffs Paul VI, John Paul II, and Francis I. Missionary activity, in the classical sense of the word, is experiencing a crisis in the conditions of the globalized world society and the associated processes: secularization, mass migration, urbanization, poverty, and inequality issues. Given these circumstances, it is deemed necessary to document the form and nature that the Church’s mission has taken in the evangelizing apostolic exhortation of Francis I, “Evangelii Gaudium” (2013). Based on a comparative, genetic, systemic, and structural analysis, the author traces the trajectory of the concept of “new evangelization” from the “re-evangelization” of traditionally Christian countries to an integrating strategy that all church structures should strive for, focusing on the entire earthly activity of the Roman Catholic Church.