Greetings, netizens.
Let me introduce myself. I am born Russian, right after the Communist era, so, Orthodox "by default", baptized, but the family was not very religious, and, until recent events (take your guess which) neither was I. Currently I am working a science job in London, which is a lot more boring that I imagined it to be, even back when I was a student here.
I have pretty much registered on this forum after a certain acquaintance of mine mentioned that, apparently, there is a rapidly growing Western Orthodox movement. I initially assumed it is mostly coming from Catholics dissatisfied with the roguery that "Francis" Bergoglio pulls every other day, although correct me if I am wrong.
Still, people named John and Jack going to a Russian-style church and listening to Divine Liturgy in Greek or Church Slavonic seemed a mental image too silly, and so, being a skeptic and a scientist, I have decided to research the main influences. And, well, this is not exactly leptonic decays of B mesons - while there were, of course, Orthodox communities in America before there were United States of America, mostly in areas with lots of Russians, Romanians, Greeks, Bulgarians, Lithuanians and other peoples with Orthodox majority or strong minority (while Poland is usually presented as bastion of Catholicism, for example, there is a significant Orthodox minority, especially in Warsaw and in the East of the country - and it is not all Russians who stayed behind after the independence), writings of Seraphim Rose are usually credited with exposing wider American, and, by the continuity of language, English-speaking public to the theory and praxis of the oldest branch of Christianity.
I was, of course, familiar with Father Rose. Or rather, some of his writings. But on the Russian side, he is seemingly disliked. May be it is due to the rift that used to exist between Russian Orthodox Church in Russia and Russian Orthodox Church Abroad. May be it is because of his past. Well, since, evidently, he is a rather successful missionary, perhaps the most successful in the whole XX century, may be our hierarchs misjudged him due to petty factionalism - we should remember that priests, monks, and bishops are as human as we are, and are prone to mistakes and limitations of their judgement (but it does not mean that they're all frocked atheists and pederasts, like certain group of people who like to wear small hats also likes to imply about our Catholic brethren). So, I've decided to read some more Rose, and let's say, it was a mixed impression. Rose makes no secret of his fascination with Rene Guenon, and, although he has come to a rather different point of view, seemingly admired the eccentric French philosopher for ever and ever.
People in modern Russia usually hear about Guenon from his self-proclaimed acolyte, Alexander Dugin. Which carries a great deal of prejudice, for Mr. Dugin has a well-deserved reputation as a crook and a charlatan, at least among the "intellegentsia" classes (but other classes don't hear about him unless he gets mixed up in a scandal, like when he became a target of Ukrainian assassination plot that killed his daughter. Poor guy. I might not like him, but it doesn't mean I sympathize with wanton murder of him or his relatives). Furthermore, having read Rene Guenon for myself - in English, as I don't know French, and Russian translations seem to be mostly coming from Dugin's people, who will editorialize in favor of their master - I haven't seen anything remotely similar to the theory of civilizational struggle that Dugin tries to teach, and, indeed, not much on politics at all beyond taking anti-modernism further than most Conservative philosophers. Well, I was exposed to Guenon by a very different route - by a Dutch symphonic metal band Epica, and the same ideas coming from a strikingly beautiful singer might sound very different.
Now, to the writings of Guenon himself. While he shied away from the name, I don't think it is inappropriate to call him a Gnostic, for in all of his writings the idea of salvation by obtaining some kind of special knowledge, above ordinary human reason, can be seen. He himself mostly calls it "initiation". In other words, there is little doubt that the French philosopher was a massive heretic. May be that's why Russian Orthodox Church doesn't like Rose - they're suspicious he's an acolyte of Guenon masquerading as a genuine Orthodox. However, in his apocalyptic writings ("Crisis of the Modern World" and later "Reign of Quantity and Signs of the Times"), Guenon demonstrates a remarkable degree of foresight, regarding the further degradation of society and human race, and in his earlier writings he criticizes the occult movements of his time - Theosophy was the big one - showing them to be a dud from philosophical point of view and dangerous delusions from a sacral one. Rose' critic of the so-called "New Age" """religion""" is a natural extension.
Coming back to the present day, 90's in Russian Federation saw an explosion of every form of occultism, and both the Church and the Academy of Sciences could hardly do anything to stop it. One modern Orthodox writer - deacon A. Kuraev - wrote a few books against the deluge, and, since they deal with the same problem 100 years later, they are not dissimilar to Rene Guenon's writings, although much more specific, but it looks like the occult craze subsided mostly on its own when people got tired of handing money to swindlers. I'm afraid with the Ukraine war it is coming back, as crooks are slithering out of the shadows to rob desperate people.
So, have any of you read Seraphim Rose or Rene Guenon? Did they influence your decision to become Orthodox, or to take your own religion more seriously?
Let me introduce myself. I am born Russian, right after the Communist era, so, Orthodox "by default", baptized, but the family was not very religious, and, until recent events (take your guess which) neither was I. Currently I am working a science job in London, which is a lot more boring that I imagined it to be, even back when I was a student here.
I have pretty much registered on this forum after a certain acquaintance of mine mentioned that, apparently, there is a rapidly growing Western Orthodox movement. I initially assumed it is mostly coming from Catholics dissatisfied with the roguery that "Francis" Bergoglio pulls every other day, although correct me if I am wrong.
Still, people named John and Jack going to a Russian-style church and listening to Divine Liturgy in Greek or Church Slavonic seemed a mental image too silly, and so, being a skeptic and a scientist, I have decided to research the main influences. And, well, this is not exactly leptonic decays of B mesons - while there were, of course, Orthodox communities in America before there were United States of America, mostly in areas with lots of Russians, Romanians, Greeks, Bulgarians, Lithuanians and other peoples with Orthodox majority or strong minority (while Poland is usually presented as bastion of Catholicism, for example, there is a significant Orthodox minority, especially in Warsaw and in the East of the country - and it is not all Russians who stayed behind after the independence), writings of Seraphim Rose are usually credited with exposing wider American, and, by the continuity of language, English-speaking public to the theory and praxis of the oldest branch of Christianity.
I was, of course, familiar with Father Rose. Or rather, some of his writings. But on the Russian side, he is seemingly disliked. May be it is due to the rift that used to exist between Russian Orthodox Church in Russia and Russian Orthodox Church Abroad. May be it is because of his past. Well, since, evidently, he is a rather successful missionary, perhaps the most successful in the whole XX century, may be our hierarchs misjudged him due to petty factionalism - we should remember that priests, monks, and bishops are as human as we are, and are prone to mistakes and limitations of their judgement (but it does not mean that they're all frocked atheists and pederasts, like certain group of people who like to wear small hats also likes to imply about our Catholic brethren). So, I've decided to read some more Rose, and let's say, it was a mixed impression. Rose makes no secret of his fascination with Rene Guenon, and, although he has come to a rather different point of view, seemingly admired the eccentric French philosopher for ever and ever.
People in modern Russia usually hear about Guenon from his self-proclaimed acolyte, Alexander Dugin. Which carries a great deal of prejudice, for Mr. Dugin has a well-deserved reputation as a crook and a charlatan, at least among the "intellegentsia" classes (but other classes don't hear about him unless he gets mixed up in a scandal, like when he became a target of Ukrainian assassination plot that killed his daughter. Poor guy. I might not like him, but it doesn't mean I sympathize with wanton murder of him or his relatives). Furthermore, having read Rene Guenon for myself - in English, as I don't know French, and Russian translations seem to be mostly coming from Dugin's people, who will editorialize in favor of their master - I haven't seen anything remotely similar to the theory of civilizational struggle that Dugin tries to teach, and, indeed, not much on politics at all beyond taking anti-modernism further than most Conservative philosophers. Well, I was exposed to Guenon by a very different route - by a Dutch symphonic metal band Epica, and the same ideas coming from a strikingly beautiful singer might sound very different.
Now, to the writings of Guenon himself. While he shied away from the name, I don't think it is inappropriate to call him a Gnostic, for in all of his writings the idea of salvation by obtaining some kind of special knowledge, above ordinary human reason, can be seen. He himself mostly calls it "initiation". In other words, there is little doubt that the French philosopher was a massive heretic. May be that's why Russian Orthodox Church doesn't like Rose - they're suspicious he's an acolyte of Guenon masquerading as a genuine Orthodox. However, in his apocalyptic writings ("Crisis of the Modern World" and later "Reign of Quantity and Signs of the Times"), Guenon demonstrates a remarkable degree of foresight, regarding the further degradation of society and human race, and in his earlier writings he criticizes the occult movements of his time - Theosophy was the big one - showing them to be a dud from philosophical point of view and dangerous delusions from a sacral one. Rose' critic of the so-called "New Age" """religion""" is a natural extension.
Coming back to the present day, 90's in Russian Federation saw an explosion of every form of occultism, and both the Church and the Academy of Sciences could hardly do anything to stop it. One modern Orthodox writer - deacon A. Kuraev - wrote a few books against the deluge, and, since they deal with the same problem 100 years later, they are not dissimilar to Rene Guenon's writings, although much more specific, but it looks like the occult craze subsided mostly on its own when people got tired of handing money to swindlers. I'm afraid with the Ukraine war it is coming back, as crooks are slithering out of the shadows to rob desperate people.
So, have any of you read Seraphim Rose or Rene Guenon? Did they influence your decision to become Orthodox, or to take your own religion more seriously?
