Kateryna Zorya

From Charm to Ritual: Transformations of "Magic" in the Post-Soviet Space

Kateryna Zorya - Member of the Association for the Study of Esotericism and Mysticism (Kiev, Ukraine), kzorya@gmail.com

The article examines the changing definitions of magic in the humanities and shows how many of these definitions are falsified. It proposes to view magic as an umbrella term, the use of which depends on cultural context, and thus the best approach the study of magic would be to define its boundaries for each particular culture separately, and to carefully examine whether a particular phenomenon belongs to "occulture" in each specific context. The article then turns to the interpretations of magic in the post-Soviet space, finding, in particular, how "magician" evolved from being a person of knowledge to becoming a person of power, and how once negatively charged terms, borrowed from the Western occulture, were redefined with positive meanings.

Keywords: folk magic, magician, witchcraft, ceremonial magic, anthropology, occulture, folk Christianity, Carlos Castaneda.

Again about the definition of magic: problems of essentialist definitions

Even ethnographers are often surprised by the prevalence of magic in their own field research experiences. For example, the author of the book "Sorcerers and Victims: the Anthropology of Witchcraft in modern Russia" Olga Khristoforova writes: "Of course, I read Afanasyev and Dahl, wrote about voodoo culture and shamanism, and my PhD thesis was devoted to the problem of mythological thinking, but at the same time I got used to placing these phenomena somewhere far away-

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co-in the historical past or exotic countries"1. A similar surprise is sometimes found among Western scholars who do not deal specifically with the topic of magic. Magic is perceived as a kind of exotic aberration of consciousness, a phenomenon that not only no scientist believes in, but also no basically reasonable person. For those who specialize in the history of esotericism, both in the English-language scientific discourse and in the Russian-language one, it is obvious that magic accompanies us throughout the history of mankind and is not going to disappear, despite the rapid secularization and "disenchantment" of the world, and that the word "magic" changes its meaning, not only in the Russian language, but also in the Russian language. in the case of modernity, but also with all other global civilizational shifts 2. These changes occur both in relation to the semantic content in the environment of the carriers of magical discourse (also known as the occult), and among scientists.

Thus, Randall Steyer begins his very important work on analyzing the history of definitions of the word "magic" in the context of the humanities with a quote from Bruno Latour: "Don't trust those who analyze magic. As a rule, these are wizards in search of revenge, " meaning that everyone who gives their own definition of magic is rather trying to fit a whole set of phenomena to their model, whatever it may be. The main point of Stiers ' book is that the word "magic "is a garbage concept that has served as the" shadow " side of three different phenomena for about a century and a half: science, religion, and morality. This means that when describing a generally positive phenomenon in their eyes, many researchers needed a word that would describe those features of the phenomenon that they thought were negative. In less than a hundred and fifty years of research on magic by anthropologists, historians, and religious scholars, magic has become an antisocial religion, a pseudoscience, and simply an immoral occupation, embodied by the thirst for power3. Even in cases where a third-party researcher correctly referred to the field material and adequately fit the findings into more general contexts, he still later extended his definition to everything

1. Khristoforova O. B. Kolduny i predshitsy: antropologiya koldovstva v sovremennoi Rossii [Sorcerers and victims: an anthropology of witchcraft in modern Russia]. Moscow: OGI, 2011, p. 9.

2. For more information, see Hanegraaf, W. J. (2003)" How Magic Survived the Disenchantment of the World", Religion 33: 357-380.

3. Styers, R. (2004) Making Magic: Religion, Magic & Science in the Modern World. New York: Oxford University Press.

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other cultures in which I saw something similar in appearance, and predictably got into a mess.

Why such ambiguity and complexity in determining the object of research? We believe that the crux of the problem is that magic is a phenomenon that is more or less precisely defined only in a specific historical context. As the broader cultural context changes, so does the concept of magic, and certain practices are absorbed into or discarded from occult discourse. Sometimes magical devices, once they disappear, are re-introduced into the discourse after historical information about them becomes widely available - for example, some of the texts mystifying the Necronomicon 4 are almost verbatim reprints from scientific translations of Sumerian texts, where names and some details are replaced, but the general style is preserved. Trying to find the essential connections between all the phenomena that have ever been included in the concept of "magic", the researcher gets into a mess. Many of these phenomena have no other relationship than that at some point they were placed under the same umbrella term.

Moreover, in many cases, such inclusion is only a product of forced co-existence in one social niche. So, for example, martial arts and occultism, which were equally banned in the Soviet Union, influenced each other much more strongly than the same subcultures, for example, in America. But with regard to America, Theodore Adorno wondered how astrology, legitimizing itself through science, could easily find connections with numerology, even if it did not claim to be a scientific method.5 In the meantime, the answer to his question is simple: numerologists and astrologers, for a number of reasons perceived by the public as one and the same, were in the same space, shared places and times of stay, actively interacted and, due to general pressure, both defended each other and shared ideas, hoping for "the enemy of my enemy - my friend."

There are definitions of magic that seem universal at first glance. But upon closer examination, it turns out that some phenomena that are recognized or recognized by the-

4. Being a grimoire invented by H. P. Lovecraft for his prose, the Necronomicon proved to be such a powerful and interesting concept that there are several versions of it written as early as the 20th century. These versions are found in magical practice, including in the former Soviet Union.

5. Adorno, T. (2002) The Stars Down to Earth. Taylor & Francis.

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However, the definitions used by informants as magical simply fall out of these definitions. Magic - an attempt to force something supernatural to do the will of the magician? Then there are rituals based solely on benevolent two-way communication between the magician and the supernatural, not to mention such magic that does not recognize the existence of spirits at all. Is magic a protoscience that deals with what we classify as the supernatural? But what about the fact that for a significant number of informants, "supernatural" is an empty concept altogether, and that a fair share of the pathos of magical discourse consists in forcing more people to accept "magical" phenomena as natural? Magic - a system of correspondences, knowledge about the natural hidden properties of things? But what about those magicians who come up with matches according to their own understanding, regardless of tradition? Magic-ritual behavior, a subspecies of social practice? What about the fact that some magical rituals are generally performed exclusively in the mind and do not require any external behavior or manifestations? Except to expand the concept of ritual. Magic - a way to find the culprit, to remove social anxiety? What about generally well-off practitioners who are generally principled loners and engage in magical experiments only out of curiosity? There is no number of definitions and no number of refutations received in the field.

When we try to use such definitions without regard to context, we stop describing reality and start creating it. We become sorcerers, not scientists. In order to remain scientific, we have to constantly rely on field material and primary sources, as well as look back at the boundaries of the concept of magic and related concepts at that time. It may be that they do not include the activities that we are accustomed to associate with magic.

So: magic is not a phenomenon, but a complex of phenomena, an umbrella concept. It is not inherently anti-moral, anti-religious, or anti-scientific, but it is not a subspecies of any of these three categories-precisely because it does not have an essence as such, but has a historical fact - that certain practices, ritual and social, as well as philosophical approaches, have been classified by society at one time or another like magic. Some of these practices, etc., were subsequently adopted

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in other discourses, some disappeared and some persisted. Thus, we can use the concept of "magic" only as a construct, indicating that one or another phenomenon is, from our point of view, related to another in historical continuity. We can find a lot in common in the application of ancient folk magic and modern folk magic, because folk practices exist in the context of universal experience and the laws of behavior of small groups; we can also find common formulations from a magician from ancient Sumer and a magician who read a scientific text on Assyriology and incorporated some elements of Sumerian rituals into his practice, - but in all four cases, we will deal with fundamentally different ontological and epistemological schemes.

Thus, Tylor's old question about why such "remnants" as magic still exist can be restated as follows: why is it that this particular set of phenomena adapts, losing and acquiring elements and even its semantic content, and does not disappear completely? There are already many hypotheses about this, which we will not go into in detail now. At the moment, the prevailing view is that the practices that we call "magical" are related to the fundamental mechanisms of the functioning of the human psyche. For example, Wouter Hanegraaf believes that the most important thing here is Levi-Bruhl participation, but there are other equally important mechanisms.6 The ability of a person to understand from external signs that another person may have reason and the will to act inevitably leads to the fact that a person is able to find reason even where there is none. The ability to search for and find patterns in our environment is so strong that the patterns are even in white noise. The fewer landmarks a person has, the wider the boundaries within which they are looking for a pattern are pushed. And even if he finds ten wrong patterns, the chance that he will find the right one to solve the situation is more important.

Therefore, the practices traditionally associated with magic are unlikely to disappear. But in a particular society, they can be included in the concept of "magic", or they can be found in some other discourse. Therefore, at the moment the most successful

6. Hanegraaf, W. J. "How Magic Survived the Disenchantment of the World", p. 373.

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The approach to magic research is the following sequence:: 1) find out what are the boundaries of the concept of "magic" in the time period and culture that we study; 2) choosing the object of research - a particular practice, social element or philosophy-to identify its exact connections with the concept of "magic" - where, when and why the object was called "magic", and find out what related ideas this object brought to the discourse with it. When considering any magical practice, it is necessary to put it in the appropriate context, which we will do in the next section with the general concept of "magic" in the post-Soviet space.

About magic as it is understood in the post-Soviet space

We have considered the basic paradox of occultism: on the one hand, archaic elements are everywhere traced in magic. Sometimes they are deliberately introduced by magicians: such cases include borrowing from spells, reading the works of anthropologists to search for new forms of magical texts or magical animals/plants/substances. But sometimes they are simply passed along with the folk tradition and borrowed uncritically. On the other hand, magic constantly borrows more and more elements from larger discourses, and they quietly coexist. It is impossible to talk about magic as a whole phenomenon that does not depend on the context. Thus, our task now is precisely to consider the change in the magical discourse, to indicate which elements in it are archaic, and which are the product of more recent times, with special emphasis on the post-Soviet space.

In this section, we will talk about what can be found "in the field "called " magic". That is, what exactly practitioners call this term, from what sources they draw their ideas, and how what is meant by this word changes over time. We will also outline a number of concepts that occur in occult discourse, the mention of which in conversation should at this point indicate to the ethnographer that he is interacting with a participant in a magical discourse or occult culture.

If we look at the market of magic texts, we will find translations for the most part: the share of original Russian-language texts-

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there are significantly fewer available texts. These translations fall into two broad categories: reprints of texts that were translated at the beginning of the last century or were distributed by samizdat in the late Soviet Union, and recently translated ones. Reprints dominated the market in the early ' 90s, and because they are so ubiquitous, they are still often used as a starting point. So, in the English-speaking world before Gerard Ancosse (Papus) only people who are very seriously interested in the occult get to Pierre Piobba; Eliphas Levi is a little more famous, but he also did not have a particularly significant influence. In the Russian-speaking occult subculture, these texts are found at every turn, and anyone who has been even slightly interested in magic is still familiar with them. Their influence can also be seen in the vocabulary: so the French word envoutement (corruption, enchantment, witchcraft) took root in Russian in the form of "envoltation" and, apparently, came precisely from the early translations of Piobba (although the concept of "volt", that is, the image or doll itself used for magical operations, seems to have already appeared in the Russian-speaking space - at least at least, I could not find its analogs in French texts). Having seen in the vocabulary of a magician or sorcerer who stylizes his activities as purely folk, "envoltation" or "volt", one can be quite sure that he or she used not only oral sources, but also focused on printed ones (at least on popular newspapers "Magic" or local analogues, which often do not disdain to take reprints of the 90s as materials). The concept of "animal magnetism" also came from French sources, but unlike envoltation, it is almost impossible to find it in live use.

At the same time, the frequency of pre-letter use of recipes from the beginning of the XX century and earlier, judging by several factors, is quite small. So, in the Western magical subculture, which is currently experiencing a period of turning to Renaissance magic, quite a lot of magicians supplement their earnings by making authentic magical tools. And although the production of talismans for money is still common today, but in all the time of my field work, I came across only one lamen taken from Papus ' work, which was at least made on metal, and then - not in full accordance with the text. Thus, the Papyusov talisman for taming spirits was made "on the day and hour of the Sun, during the first ten days of August [ ... ]

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depict on a gold, very thin plate"7. At the same time, the text on the manufacturer's page reads: "Made of fine bronze on the day of the Sun-Sunday. First Quarter Moon"8. Correspondences are indicated, but not those that are replaced, which the manufacturer considers equivalent.

In general, we have much more popular amulets of our own, intuitive design, which, if they use elements of ceremonial magic, then, as a rule, separately: this or that sign, planetary clock, materials. But much more often, the amulet is simply created in accordance with the aesthetic preferences of the magician (and with his concepts of correspondences), and only then the intention is "invested" in it, that is, it is adjusted to one or another result.9
This is a direct approach to one of the major changes in occult discourse in the twentieth century: the idea that the meaning of an action is more important than the form of action. This change is part of a gradual voluntaristic turn in Western magic. If we pay attention to folk sources, we will see how much magic depends on knowledge. Conspiracies are "transmitted", a significant part of traditional healers believe that the text loses its power, being told. The healer himself is not a man of power, but of knowledge, his strength is borrowed, the healer turns to God, gods or saints. He can justify the right to this appeal or apply an analogy (the classic formula " both [ ... ] and [ ... ]"), but he himself is only a guide. His knowledge is equal to his power, and together they are equal to his power over nature and the supra-natural - as is virtually everywhere else in folk magic, which tends to be less differentiated than urban magic. He does not have the concept of personal power, which, as we will see later, came from Castaneda and is common in modern urban magical discourse. He has knowledge that is equal to power.

Ceremonial magic that came to modern discourse from the Archaic period through the Middle Ages and, consequently, through the integration of man into the developed hierarchy of God-created beings,

7.The preferred material for making is virgin parchment; I haven't come across any of these either. Papyrus. Black and white magic. Dushanbe: Donish Publ., 1992, pp. 239-8.

8. Auction-a talisman for taming spirits. 2012 [http://aukro.dp.ua/talisman-dlya-ukroshheniya-duhov-tonkaya-bronza-item2 491118 483.html, доступ от 01.09.2013].

9. Note here that intent is a term written by Carlos Castaneda, intent, and that it will be discussed further.

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he pays great attention to establishing his authority, that is, to explaining who the magician is, who he is to the summoned spirit, and why it is he who has the right to order. It is known that medieval magical formulas of submission are virtually indistinguishable from those of exorcism10. The magician is not a power bearer himself, but he is granted power - primarily social, although not only. Having passed the appropriate purifications and, possibly, initiations, he gets a higher place in the sacred hierarchy and therefore can summon a demon and with full right command it. But it should be noted that this power is mixed, both diplomatic and physical. The border here is again very conditional and blurred. A summoned demon will not dare to step outside the protective circle because he fears God , both as a higher being in the world order and for fear of the purely physical pain that contact with the sacred can cause him.

This is also the case in modern ceremonial magic, which gives essential meaning to all elements of rites and rituals. Moreover, there is a test of spirits "for authenticity" (that is, whether what the magician has called has come, and not something completely different), based precisely on the premise of their essential kinship with certain concepts. For example, the elemental spirit of water must react badly to divine names and symbols associated with the element of fire, because they are deeply alien to it. In this case, all correspondences are closely related to the ontology, and the magician himself can "tune in" to this or that element of the world with the help of correspondences, in fact, connecting himself with it and replacing this or that correspondence.

The idea that matches are substitutable is not new. The very founder of the use of hermetic correspondences as we know them, Marsilio Ficino, points out some freedom of maneuver in their selection, but probably the idea of substitution reached the scale that is visible now in the twentieth century. By substitution, we mean that you can use color or sound instead of grass, or that you can use stones instead of part of an animal. In fact, the principle of substitution allows you to perform even the most complex ritual, using only what is at hand. But the next step on this path is that instead of a complex cor system-

10. See Kieckhefer, R. (1998) Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer's Manual of the Fifth Century. University Park: Penn State University Press.

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respondents can be used by a person who is sufficiently attuned to the desired element - it was made in the late XIX-early XX century. And then there was the logical question: why do we need physical components, if everything can be replaced by a person and his amazing ability to imagine? If the element of ritual imagined with sufficient intensity is no worse than the real one, then why do we need real correspondences? This approach is quite common in modern magic and is closely related to the concepts of personal power and magical imagination. Thus, a change in practice gradually led to a change in ontology.

The roots of this can be seen already in the Papyrus itself. Although ritual is still important for Papus, he already distinguishes between "impulsive man" and "strong-willed man"and considers it the task of the magician to control the" man-machine " through imagination. 11 Imagination is the medium through which the magician interacts with the world, but it is understood not in the ordinary sense, but as something much more influential on the physical world than it seems to the uninitiated. As a follow-up to this idea, there are now common explanations that the notorious astral travel and out-of-body experiences are simply a transfer of attention to the sensory sphere and the process of thinking, and should not be expected (at least at first) those amazing sensory sensations that Robert Monroe described, for example, but the effectiveness in terms of influencing the world remains. This is how a change in ontology translates into a change in practice.

Last of all, on the subject of the program, it should be noted that its elements have been preserved in modern magic, but not in relation to actual knowledge. Not only and not so much knowledge, information about the correspondences and names of spirits and demons is transmitted, but rather power and/or lineage (lineage). Face-to-face training often involves joining a group, sharing its earlier arrangements with the otherworld. Belonging to a group adds "magical authority", that is, power. This is one of the possible meanings of initiation: initiation can mean not only the beginning of a certain path, but also the recognition that a person has already passed a certain path and has the right to this or that power. It is also considered possible to transmit not information, but the method of its application - that is, the tone of the message.-

11. Papyrus. Black and white magic. P. 14-28.

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These are the feelings that should be present when performing the practices. It is considered possible to show exactly how the practice is done, including in a time-deferred way, when information and / or demonstration is transmitted in an "energy package" and "recalled" in the required time.

Returning to the sources: English-language texts were not translated much at the beginning of the XX century. This gap was partially filled during the time of samizdat and after the abolition of censorship. Among the sources frequently found in samizdat are theosophical (specifically on magic, these are primarily the works of Annie Besant) and the first books of Carlos Castaneda. Castaneda's techniques were more popular, and the 1990s and early 2000s were the time of stalker12 and dreamer techniques. From Castaneda came two important concepts that are now familiar to virtually everyone in the occult. The first is the concept of personal power, which denotes a pure potential for action, akin to the concept of luck among the Scandinavian peoples. A mage with personal power is capable of anything, and the circumstances themselves will turn in his favor. A mage who does not possess it is doomed to defeat, no matter how much theoretical knowledge he has in his luggage. The second is the concept of intention, that purely volitional effort that is necessary and, most importantly, sufficient for magical action.14 Castaneda and his phenomenological legacy focused practitioners ' attention on the idea that the main tool of the magician is the magician himself, and any auxiliary means are only auxiliary means, in principle useful, but in fact completely unnecessary.

Existing simultaneously, these two concepts gave rise to a specific subspecies of magical elitism, applied only in the internal reference group. This is an opportunity to explain any failure with a lack of personal strength or poorly constructed intent, he also "jumped badly". A person who does not live properly, is not magical enough, is doomed to failure or, at best, to significant difficulties. Occult culture in the post-Soviet space is quite close, in fact, everyone is familiar

12. Stalker - a person who tracks down himself. In fact , it constantly pays attention to what it does and why. This is a kind of self-discovery technique.

13. The concept of dreaming is based on the fact that dreams and reality are two sides of the same coin, and the dream world is as real as the manifest world. That is, both worlds are subject to change by willpower.

14. Castaneda K. Skazki o sila [Fairy tales about Power]. Perev. translated from English: "Sofia", 2003; Moscow: Publishing House "Sofia", 2003.

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with everyone through one or two people, and here again we see the revival of the social role of magic, which was key in the village: the ability to explain failure by someone's will, to find the culprit. But in contrast to the village situation, it is not uncommon for the magician himself to be blamed. The one who can determine guilt in the magical community becomes an authority in it. Those who allow themselves to be defined become junior, often eternal students. Thus, identifying the culprit is not only and not so much a means of relieving anxiety, but also a matter of status. That's why magical conflicts and duels are so fierce: it's not just a duel of skills. This is a duel of identities, worldviews: the winner is not just a better magician - he is also a better person than the loser.

In this context, the text of Alexander Sekatsky "Mogs and their Powers"is extremely interesting15. Sekatsky - St. Petersburg academic philosopher, Associate Professor of the Department of Social Philosophy and Philosophy of History of St. Petersburg State University. "Mogs and their powers" reveals the author's close acquaintance with the occult - in particular, the text begins with a description of the very common practice of throwing an energy ball. Moreover, as far as can be judged, this text significantly influenced the self-perception of post-Soviet occultists. "Curiosity and audacity" as values, life among ordinary people and imperceptible but tangible influence on them, altered states of consciousness of the OS (the main state, the key characteristic of which is "I can")16 and SP (reception status, t.E. supersensible perception) - all this is also present in the occult, and the dialogues given in the text are so typical that it is safe to assume one of two things: either Sekatsky spent quite a long time in the occult and then used the material, or from pure reading experience he got so caught up in the context of practitioners that his text turned out to be absolutely correct. accepted in the occult and used as a grimoire proper 17.

But already in the 90s, a wave of English-language literature flooded into the market, although often with a lag of fifteen to twenty years. Through the works of Paul Hason, Laurie Cabot and Scott Canning-

15. Sekatsky A. Mogs and their powers. St. Petersburg: Mitin zhurnal; Azbuka Publ., 1996.

16. Ср. викканское "To will, to know, to dare, and to be silent".

17. By a grimoire in the broadest sense of the word, we mean any text containing instructions for magical actions.

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ma magic subculture introduced to wicca: so the "witch" boom was born. Until the early 1990s, in the post-Soviet space, the word "witch" was used almost exclusively in a popular context, that is, it had exclusively negative connotations. The folk witch, as you know, is a character who does not always consciously control her own gift to cause harm, she is a very conditionally conscious being. You can turn out to be a witch or a sorcerer against your will, no one is consciously called that. In this regard, Alexander Aksenov's series "I'm not a sorcerer, I'm a witch doctor", which was popular in the 90s, is quite clearly focused on those who grew up in the space of folk magic. The books contain all the markers: the focus on Christians of the "national" flood, the damage that anyone can cause (both consciously and simply through envy or the evil eye); the author fights with witches and sorcerers, using the classic phrase from the narratives about witches - that if the curse is lifted, the witch herself suffers, up to the point of death. Aksenov positions himself as an exorcist, his demons (of course, sent by sorcerers and witches) speak deliberately folk language18, are familiar and recognizable to any native of the village or small town.

Not so witchcraft, which came from England and America. Immediately note that in the West itself, witchcraft can be very roughly and approximately divided into two large currents: Wicca and witchcraft (wicca and witchcraft, respectively). Wicca is primarily a religion, although it emphasizes that it is a "religion of the clergy", that is, that every Wiccan is his own priest. With the deities and the divine, everyone contacts themselves, although more experienced priests and priestesses help and teach. It is also convenient that the basic Wiccan rituals are very simple, and magic for the most part is based on simplified versions, respectively.-

18. "He told me: "Sanek, I'm a complete general. I have six shoulder straps on each shoulder and six skulls on each shoulder strap. After all, I sent about 500 human souls to the other world in my life. I've been in a lot of places in my life. During the war, he served in the German Oberleutnant. Do you know how many people he and I shot?! And after the war, his wife Elsa, who was a witch, and I quickly sent him to his ancestors. The last time I sat in a woman who lived in the Smolensk region. I removed it literally in a year, she loved to drink very much." Vaska often said: "I am a noble demon." He also told me: "And you know that we were looking for you, but we didn't find you. We watched both believers and monks, and among the priests - you were nowhere to be found "" (Aksenov A. Complete encyclopedia of the healer [http://lib.rus.ec/b/243931/read#t1, accessed from 01.09.2013]).

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some of the most important elements of ceremonial magic. Due to the borrowing of Masonic rituals by Gerald Gardner, the founder of Wicca, Wicca turned out to be a religion that is very focused on micro-communities and well-established social procedures related to the management of small groups. So, for example, I don't know any other religions where a new group would be put on stream when the critical number of members reaches 19. Wicca is a duotheistic religion that proclaims the essential binarity and equality of the creators of the world, God and Goddess, and all other manifestations of the divine are their manifestations, guises and masks that have no meaning other than aesthetic. So here you can find a Roman Mars and an Irish Morrigan, a Virgin Mary and Odin in the same ritual, and the Wiccan will not see any contradictions in this.

The so-called "family" witchcraft (fam trad, abr. family tradition) - other. Here the emphasis is on the continuity of the family magical tradition, on the perfection of craft ,on the accumulated "folk" methods. I say "people's" because there are few places in England and America where the connection between the countryside and the city is as close and strong as in the former Soviet Union. And although there are already second or third generations of witches simply because of the existence of Wicca, but when comparing the materials of ethnographers and anthropologists (and in America also the direction of folk life), it is clear that in most cases family witchcraft borrows more from a more general magical culture, from ceremonial magic, than from folk magic. In any case, such witchcraft is more often a practice than a religion, and is focused primarily on the success of rituals, and not on interaction with the gods, although the line is very thin here anyway. Among the fam trad, there are more rigid polytheists or those who devote their worship to a limited number of deities.

In the post-Soviet space, there is a certain mixture of these two approaches. For example, the feminist reception of Wicca has not taken root here. If in the United States and Britain, a fair part of the primary popularity of Wicca was provided by feminists and women's rights activists (for example, the well-known Star-

19. This process is called hiving off in Wicca. When a group reaches the sacred size of 13 people-a number close to the threshold at which a small group becomes a medium - sized group-it is considered that by that time there must already be a priest and priestess competent enough to lead a new group. This is considered a natural process.

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If there are purely female covens (religious and magical groups), as well as groups that worship only the Goddess in its various aspects, then I do not know of any such groups in the post-Soviet space. The refined duotheism, where the appearance of the deity does not matter, has not taken root here either: local witches still perceive gods and goddesses as separate entities - or rather, no less separate than people, since people are also often perceived as embodiments of the divine. Most witches are pagans who worship a particular pantheon (ranging from Greek - Roman deities to Slavic pantheons), but not all pagans are witches or sorcerers.

Among the translations of English-language literature, we should also mention translations of texts devoted to ceremonial magic. The earliest text I know of was the book "Modern Magic: Eleven Lessons in the Higher Art of Magic" by Donald Michael Craig, published in 1991year in St. Petersburg. Donald Craig is a member of one of the many orders that are inheritors of the original Golden Dawn, and Western ceremonial magic came to the post-Soviet expanses precisely in the interpretation of the Golden Dawn - primarily in the interpretation of Israel Regardie. For us, this means that the following topics were included in the works of those who learned magic from his book and then continued to teach themselves:: 1) emphasis on power over the elements, including in the aspect of power over oneself; 2) some basic structures of rituals-for example, the Small Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram (LBRP), the most basic ritual of the Golden Dawn, exists in countless variants, and the Ritual of the Middle Pillar, although more often used in variations of the seven chakras instead of the five sephir, and without a name at all, it is also known to almost all practitioners I know; 3) the four ritual instruments-the wand, dagger, cup and pantacle; 4) and, of course, sexual magic, because where power is, there is also the theme of sex, and magic almost always concerns the theme of power 20.

Of course, Craig's book has long ceased to be the only source. Zolotaya Zarya did not take root in the post-Soviet space, although a number of texts of this trend were eventually published - such as the above-mentioned Re-

20. Craig D. M. Modern magic: eleven lessons of higher magical art. St. Petersburg: KITIS Publ., 1991.

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Hardy. But Thelemitic texts and translations are much more influential at the moment, simply because the Ordo Templi Orientis (Order of the Eastern Templars) is the only major Western magical order that actively and openly functions in the post - Soviet space. GR has several large and active translators, which allows them to publish high-quality texts on magical topics. Aleister Crowley's treatises and reprints of important Thelema grimoires, such as The Sacred Magic of Abramelin, are now known in their translations and interpretations.21
It remains for us to consider what was not borrowed, but original in the development of post-Soviet magic, and how this originality interacted with borrowings. The researcher knows about magic in the 90s and beyond from three main types of sources: 1) archives of the Internet and fidonet, where a huge amount of printed material has been preserved and the formation and destruction of certain groups is well traced; 2) from relatively smaller paper publications - magazines and books; 3) from ethnographic interviews themselves. The third source is the most difficult to obtain and interpret, since it requires a certain level of equal participation in the field in order not only to get at least some answers, but also to be able to ask a question. Print sources are more reliable, but quite a few authors prefer the freedom of the Internet to contracts with publishers, where they themselves regulate which texts to make representative, and which ones to say: "the text is old, requires improvements, do not focus on it." Thus, the network material is currently the richest and still far from exhausted set of primary sources.

Original for the post-Soviet territories is a much more frequent appeal to truly popular practice. The works of ethnographers serve as a source of conspiracies, formulations that in some cases are used in the form in which they were found by the practitioner, and in some cases - the basis for their own modifications. So, for example, in most conspiracies, they try to leave archaic elements, and replace Christian ones with neo-pagan ones. "Christian witches" seem to exist exclusively in magic parlors. At least in the occult subculture, I didn't have to face a lot of people.-

21. Books are published in the publishing house "Ganga", the work of the creative group "Telema".

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However,most of the classical texts of ceremonial magic are designed primarily to indicate that the practitioner is a Christian. But the parlor Christian sorcerer does not rely on any dogmas or theological discourse, but on popular Christianity. For non-Christian witches and wizards, as well as for ceremonial magicians, such a salon magician is usually skeptical: as the sorcerer V. P. Khazan put it, "[ ... ] a completely harmless" Practical magic "by Papus or another similar work: interesting written, but practically completely useless"22. The example of Papus is also interesting here because Papus also collected folk recipes, but Khazan does not refer to these texts. The clash of popular and Western practices is also expressed in relation to money. If in popular practice it is not uncommon to help with barter, even to the point that sometimes it is considered that taking money for using God's gift in someone's favor is a direct path to loss of abilities or other problems, then in urban witch culture we see the exact opposite. It is widely believed that a person who does not charge for work risks complications in interrupting communication between themselves and the client - for example, they can "take over" their problems. Payment is also carried out by traditional barter, but money is widely considered the simplest and most convenient means of reimbursement. Apart from this is "salon witchcraft", the commercial provision of magical services. Although many representatives of the witchy part of the occult subculture accept clients and charge money for it, there is a certain contempt for those who put such work "on stream", that is, earn money from as many clients as possible. It is believed that with this approach, quality suffers greatly, and the most famous witches choose their clients no less than the client chooses them. Therefore, witchcraft work is often not the only source of income. Thus, Dina Shi's succinct phrase "a clumsy witch can't be a witch"23 has entered subcultural usage, meaning that there can't be a witch who doesn't have at least one craft under her belt. And although in practice-

22. Khazan V. P. Privoroty [Love spells]. Damage. Curses. Donetsk: Publishing House of State of Emergency "Magic", 2008. P. 8.

23. Dina Shi Magic of the Celts / / Clann De Sidhe [http://daenesidhe.narod.ru/Magic/Evrd ay/CelticMag. html, accessed from 01.09.2013].

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kyo is more of an ideal that people are guided by, but the image that witchcraft is a craft, a craft, and an artisan should understand other crafts, is currently very firmly rooted in the subculture. A witch, sorcerer, or magician must be able, able, and not just know. The most popular crafts are those with a romantic aura and elements of tender coloring: sewing, weaving, cooking for women, blacksmithing for men, fine arts and creating jewelry-amulets - for both sexes.

A considerable influence on the magical practice of the XX century was also exerted by fantastic literature, both in the English-speaking magical environment and in the conditionally Russian-speaking one. Thus, the use of the Logrus and the Image (Labyrinth) from Roger Zelazny's "Chronicles of Amber" in magical practice is found from St. Petersburg to Kiev, and those who use these concepts have not even been in contact with each other indirectly, 24 and there are widespread (although mostly English-language) discussions on the Internet about how much real elemental magic is made up of elements. The children's cartoon Avatar: The Legend of Aang is based on very real martial arts, and Mercedes Lackey's fans write her letters about how to connect with the characters of her books written in the urban fantasy genre. Images taken by writers from the world's culture flow back into it and influence the already existing magical practice. The more complete and original the fantasy world, the more firmly it is rooted in real practices, the more likely it is that someone will try to reconstruct the practice in its likeness. The less tenacious the text, the less tenacious such bursts are-for example, after the release of Sergey Lukyanenko's "Watchers" there were "Light" and "Dark" watchers, and those who were afraid of the Inquisition stood out, but the author had not met them for about five years.

There are also frequent cases of remembering "past lives", but those related not to our world, but to fantastic worlds. Such are the inhumans, they are also azerkin (otherkin)25-synonymous concepts,

24. In the first case, the author heard mention of the Logrus in 2000 - that it is possible to pass the Logrus as a real magical initiation. The author had a chance to meet a native of St. Petersburg who presented similar theories in passing in 2005, but since then contact with both informants has been lost.

25. See intrasubcultural text-Lupa (2007) A Field Guide to Otherkin. Immanion Press-for the most complete collection of field materials known to me.

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meaning non-human essence in the human body 26, although the English-language borrowing appeared in use at best in the late nineties (but rather in the early two thousandth). Along with non-humans, there is also the concept of anhuman, which appeared in the context of Satanism, 27 the bearer of which opposes himself to human as a person in his worst manifestation. The choice of ontology here is related to ethics. The one who calls himself anhuman says, " If this is a man, then I am not him." The concept of inhumans in every sense in the urban magical discourse has changed its connotation, like the concept of witches, from negative to rather positive. A non-human is a creature that by nature has a connection with other worlds. "Innate" property in social terms serves as some protection against the internal skepticism of colleagues (which is much more important than external skepticism). The most common are various elves, both as a collective image and as specific elves of J. R. R. Tolkien, but there are many other romantic creatures - for example, dragons, angels and demons. The so-called universes, that is, combined personalities, are widely distributed. The word itself most likely comes from the intersection of occult and informal subcultures. A person with an invader is a person who believes that not only an ordinary person lives in his body, but also another being with its own will and goals.

The image of the vampire in magical discourse deserves special mention because of its rare ambiguity. A vampire in this context is a creature that feeds not on blood, but on "energy", that is, a collective name for the general state of health and the possibility of action in a person. A vampire can be considered as a non-human, a representative of a different race (and then such a person can be considered a non-human, a representative of a different race).-

26. The concept of essence itself is quite multifaceted and deserves a separate consideration in the Russian-speaking magical context (in the English-speaking similar term was not formed). Traditional terms denoting the eternal, spiritual essence of a person are hardly used in a specialized magical context, due to the influence of theosophy and the system of" seven bodies "(the so-called etheric, astral, mental, etc. bodies), some of which are understood as "soul in the vulgar sense "(these are" mortal " subtle bodies), and a part-as " spirit "(respectively, the bodies are "immortal"). Essence is most often a synonym for "spirit", a collective image of that eternal core hidden under the husk of personality, which is reborn and takes with it the experience accumulated in a previous life. There are different types of entities, not just human ones: starting from animals and ending with all sorts of angels, demons, fairies and other folklore characters.

27. See the controversy in fido.ru.unhuman, saved on the Varrax website.

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it may be a skilled sorcerer who uses others for his own purposes, it may be a stupid sorcerer who does not know how to support himself, or it may be an echo of folk stories about the evil eye and corruption in the case of "spontaneous vampirism", when the aggressor himself does not realize that he is the aggressor. Indeed, if we compare intra-discursive descriptions of vampirism with folk descriptions of the "evil eye", we will get almost identical narratives 28. Finally, in the context of non-humans, we should mention werewolves. This concept also has many meanings: it means self-perception of oneself as an animal in a human body, or simply a close connection with some totem that allows one to" turn around", at least astral (that is, to take an imaginary animal form and thereby receive certain advantages).

The concept of totem or animal power came to our territories, as you can see from the etymology of the terms, not from Siberia, but from the works of the anthropologist Michael Harner, the founder of neo-Shamanism, whose works were translated already in the late eighties and reprinted by samizdat. Here it is necessary to note the huge role of anthropologists and ethnographers in the reintroduction of shamanism into occult discourse, both in the West and in the post-Soviet space. Castaneda and Harner are the best - known neo-shamans, both Berkeley anthropologists, but if the former promoted phenomenology in the image of shamanism, the latter's core shamanism is a sincere attempt to isolate the essence of shamanism and reintroduce it into the culture that Harner believes it lacks. 29 Such an attempt caused considerable resistance among traditional shamans, but this is a separate big topic. In the post-Soviet space, Koenig-Lopsan, the current supreme shaman of Tuva, has long held the position of a junior researcher-ethnographer, although here, probably, the post of ethnographer was more a means through which shamanic knowledge could be obtained than an end in itself. In any case, the current situation is such that neo-Shamanism is almost entirely the work of ethnographers, and it traces purely ethnographic concepts all over the world.

28. See for example: Kapitsa G. I. Energy vampires. Metody samozashchity [Methods of Self-defense], Saint Petersburg: VSE CJSC, 2000.

29. Harner, M. (2005) "My Path in Shamanism", in R. Walsh and Ch. S. Grob (eds) Higher Wisdom. Albany: State University of New York Press.

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Personal mythology of occultists also often speaks of past lives in other worlds, about other, otherworldly magic that works very badly on Earth. The mythologeme "Earth - world-prison, world-exile" is also widespread, an echo of the Gnostic myth, which most likely came through Scientology, but due to the power of the metaphor and the general social tension of the post-Soviet period, it became quite widespread outside this context. It is interesting that this "Gnostic" concept quietly coexists with the idea borrowed from the Strugatsky brothers, a "homeostatic universe", which turned into an abstract network appeal "dear Mrdd". "Mrdd" is a friendly place, somewhat reasonable, gently and unobtrusively caring for its inhabitants. It is a softer, new-age variation of the idea of a responsive world. The question of whether the world is friendly or hostile is one of the most reliable indicators of which part of the occult a respondent belongs to. Friendly World - the influence of New Age or English-language witchcraft. Hostile world - some radical representatives of ceremonial movements and those who have magic tightly connected with personal mythology about past lives.

This concludes our brief review of the transformation of the concept of" magic " and related concepts in the post-Soviet space. We have not yet touched upon many important topics: for example, the relationship between the concepts of "know" and "do" in folk magic and their interpretation in urban magic; extrasensory perception and its relationship to the occult; original magical orders, the dynamics of their growth and decay, the transformation of practices in them; interpretations of the Tarot as a magical and mantic system, and so on. But we hope that we have managed to give a general outline of the sources of modern magic, to show its view of itself as a skill and craft that the magician owns, its focus on skill and personal power, rather than on knowing or achieving a place in a particular hierarchy, and its emphasis on personal responsibility. All of the above, and not the forms of rituals or systems of correspondences, are at the moment the essence of the magical worldview.

Conclusions

So, to summarize: first of all, there is no single concept of "magic". It has different content depending on the culture, and is associated not with one key concept, but with a circle of ponies-

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The first thing that a researcher should do when entering a new context is to determine the position of magic in it relative to other discourses.

Secondly, in the post-Soviet space, magic is moving from the archaic idea of knowledge = power = power to the idea of power > knowledge and power. The concept of personal power, responsibility for one's own circumstances (including how the universe functions around us) comes to the fore. Dry knowledge confers neither power nor power; power inherited through initiation or acceptance into a group is not always reflected as a direct force for influencing the world; but personal power is perceived as the most direct path to both knowledge and power. It is possible to transmit power, and with it knowledge and power. Thus, we see a shift from medieval and archaic folk elements to modern elements. At the same time, medieval and archaic elements do not completely disappear from use - they remain common, but they are less common.

Third, many concepts that were purely negative in the context of folk magic are transformed into positive ones in the context of urban magic. So, a witch and a non-human are not an insult or a reason to be wary, but self-identification. The concept of "otherworldly" has been transformed into "otherworldly" - our Earth is often perceived as part of a larger world order, and you can be "your own" in the universe, but "alien" on earth.

Fourth, a huge number of concepts and ways of thinking are borrowed by the Russian-speaking occult subculture from the occult of the West. Most of them, however, acquired their own local flavor and took a completely different place than in Western occult culture. So, if the concept of intent in the English-speaking subculture is not known to many people, except for narrow followers of Castaneda, then in the post-Soviet space there is hardly a representative of the occult who is not familiar with it. If in the West more often there are techniques focused on establishing magical authority, then in the post-Soviet space they are much more often looking for personal power.

Fifth, the practice of magic simultaneously supplies and feeds on fiction. A fairly complete invention will somehow be reflected in real practices.

Sixth, urban magic reflects and borrows elements of scientific discourse about itself. Folk magic this is more often pre --

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it doesn't care, except that sometimes an "informant" from scientists or a particular work will accidentally come to hand.

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